Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Aug. 20th, 2026 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emperorThis was the last of the Hugo Novels, which the library system finally got to sending me an ebook of.
I feel like a bad SF fan for saying this, given all the rave reviews, but I hated this. While I did like the final section, it felt a bit inevitable, and the journey to get there was a complete slog. I understand that it was meant to be a slog for the characters, but it was also a slog for me. I found the narrator's habit of adding "of course, it was about to get much worse" all the time extremely grating, and I guess I couldn't suspend disbelief enough that ( spoiler ), so there was a lot of "oh just get on with it already".
Similarly, whilst it's a cool idea to have sections narrated by the Shrouded, somehow the sections where both parties narrated the same events from their different points of view ended up reminding me of the romance trope where you just want both parties to have a grown-up conversation already. Or at least, I ended up feeling that way.
Shroud has things to say about colonization, capitalism, and how systems feel inevitable if you've grown up within them; and the final section of the book was more enjoyable. But I can't recommend it at all.
I feel like a bad SF fan for saying this, given all the rave reviews, but I hated this. While I did like the final section, it felt a bit inevitable, and the journey to get there was a complete slog. I understand that it was meant to be a slog for the characters, but it was also a slog for me. I found the narrator's habit of adding "of course, it was about to get much worse" all the time extremely grating, and I guess I couldn't suspend disbelief enough that ( spoiler ), so there was a lot of "oh just get on with it already".
Similarly, whilst it's a cool idea to have sections narrated by the Shrouded, somehow the sections where both parties narrated the same events from their different points of view ended up reminding me of the romance trope where you just want both parties to have a grown-up conversation already. Or at least, I ended up feeling that way.
Shroud has things to say about colonization, capitalism, and how systems feel inevitable if you've grown up within them; and the final section of the book was more enjoyable. But I can't recommend it at all.
