Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Earth has been taken over, or more taken over, by right-wing religious extremists who maintain a prison camp on a very strange alien world called Kiln. They do lots of other things that are more practical, too; the alien prison camp is basically an expensive example of what could happen to you.

Professor Arton Daghdev, a professor and scientist, ends up on Kiln for fomenting revolution. About two-thirds of the book is an account of life in the prison camp, which is full of deliberate cruelties both large and petty. It's very plausible and very oppressive, both for the prisoners and for the reader - the latter feeling is added to because the prisoners also dislike and distrust Daghdev, as they suspect him of turning in the other revolutionaries. So for most of the book, everyone is mean to him, he has no friends, and nothing nice happens ever. There's tantalizing hints about the mystery of the alien world, but they're mostly in the background.

In the last third, we get to see more of the alien world FUCKING FINALLY. Also, Daghdev makes some... friends might be pushing it... but at least allies. And at the very end, we learn the secret of Kiln, which is extremely cool.

This is a good book that I did not enjoy. I wanted more weird biology. I got mostly prison politics. The cruelty and oppression are both pervasive and extremely believable, as it's all extrapolations or transpositions of bad stuff happening in reality right now. Again, well-done but not enjoyable.

I also didn't enjoy Daghdev's narration. It's very exposition-y. It makes sense for his character and is clearly a deliberate choice, but not one that I liked. What I don't think was deliberate was that the characters mostly blend together. At one point there's a dramatic revelation of who the mole is, and I could not for the life of me remember who that character was.

Unlike many writers, Tchaikovsky is 100% capable starting with the ending revelation about Kiln, and spending the whole book exploring that. I would have liked that 100% more.

What did I like? The thematic unity, which is extremely well-done. Kiln - the planet, not the prison camp. The revelation of the mysteries of Kiln, which is original, clever, and cool.