Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

(Tor, 2025)

Reviewed by Stuart Carter

As an elevator pitch for Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest novel, Shroud, I can think of none better than “it’s Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film, Brazil, meets Peter Watts’ 2006 novel Blindsight.” Pitch that to me and I’d buy it—not just because both are personal favourites, but because Tchaikovsky, against all odds, somehow succeeds in bringing these strange bedfellows together.

The spaceship Garveneer is orbiting the planet Shroud, looking for material resources to exploit. It’s just another step on an endlessly bootstrapping mission: Earth has been exploited past bearing and is no longer habitable, so humanity, having apparently learnt nothing, is relentlessly expanding, and each new system is stripped to pay for the exploitation or colonisation of the next.

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Review from BSFA Review 25 - Download your copy here.