Status Updates From Grauw

5*, An interesting and creative science-backed hellscape of a dour ride for our twosome w a bittersweet ending told in a dryer tone that still highlights some of humanity's best and worst traits

+evolutionary and biome evidence for Shroud's environment and fauna
+cool af creatures (nightmare fuel)
+Shrouded chapters were awesome
+capitalism sucks! don't shelve me!
+bittersweet ending depending on how you look at it, from an individual it sucks but from a collective, yay a new member!
+despite the dryer tone, the anxiety WAS there
-a little dry
-could have used a little trimming in the middle

“Then it begins, that familiar voice of a woman lost to the worst of all possible worlds.” Juna along with her thoughts/knowledge is now an Otherlike, part of the Shrouded and as an individual is “lost” but she is not dead (though she won’t survive on this planet as of now, but who’s to say cuz the colonies are coming so maybe she lives??) Does this mean they know they are about to be mined to filth and colonized?

I liked meeting different creatures and the two-person crew acting as one trying to finagle their way out of a completely foreign situation each and every time. One or two of them could have been either summarized or just removed altogether, but either way I was engaged the entire time and wondered what would happen when they went back to the ship with 20% still left! And the ending line… GAGGED

It did make a point to note the value of empathy, working together (as one) and while each character didn’t have chapters worth of backstory I did understand them by the end. At this point, even I am scared of being shelved from my uselessness.

And having two sapient intelligent species each thinking the other is not b/c they cannot comprehend any of their motivations was chef’s kiss

I do think it needs to be said, that from a science fiction standpoint, that while it is heavy on the science and still having so much humanity interwoven, it is on the dry side. This did not at all detract form my enjoyment of the book, but it is not for everyone, sure

The Me vs You, Us vs Them, All vs One is so prevalent, the women knowing what humans as a whole will do (tho they are not One) and are learning what the Shrouded do as a whole. The plot of humans being aggressive, greedy and for-profit is nothing novel but set in this hellscape does the trick

The Shrouded’s POV was so cool! I loved to see how diff it and the pod viewed the scenario, 2 creatures from diff worlds rly wouldn’t be on the same page about things. As it progresses the Shrouded devolves, losing memories and intelligence, becoming more baseline animal than high-processing being. And thus, the humans evolve, learning more and more, raking in data. There is a kind of evolution happening here as well

I originally went in thinking this would be more explicitly horrific but it ended up being more implicitly, as one of the characters state themself, that humans can find a face in the clouds. A lot of the fear comes from not knowing what’s happening, limited senses, and then filling in the blanks with our own imaginations.

I can tell the author made an effort to research the biome of this planet and added explanations for the things that happen on Shroud including evolutionary history, weather patterns, gravity, chemical components etc. It was quite refreshing that they cared so much to make it feel real

And I see the author has an interest in entomology, we can tell! Nightmare fuel of kaiju bugs

The Shrouded takes the pod to it’s chamber where other signals are blocked to better understand. A final gift to copy. It touches it’s thoughts to Juna’s.

On the ship, Juna’s voice comes through and Mai grasps at the controls to speak back, in Juna’s voice it says “let me put this into words you can understand” which is exactly how each Shrouded chapter begins WOWOWWOWOWOW

but before Set Etienne could settle down Jerennian hauled her out kicking and she cried, Juna said only one person or else the signals would get muddy, but she really just didn’t want her to be traumatized again JUNAAAAAAA MY GIRL

Pod releases and when she lands they are waiting for her, she thinks of their adventures to see if her thoughts would be heard

The main goal was to disconnect from the anchor tether to get out of the Shrouded’s reach but the mining operations was also shut down and they weren’t connected via cable

But the stim system wouldn’t connect cuz the Shrouded shut them out, so Set Etienne comes up w head gear to broadcast Juna’s brain activity; the 2 women get back into the pod

so as a final farewell it takes all their systems on the Gravaneer to send out the 3-beat to no response

Juna says they have to make the Shrouded understand individuals, connect/communicate w them. They take the guns off the pod and remove any programming regarding it then connect the ship comms to the stim systems b/c it monitored brain activity constantly

The Shrouded took over the drones listing a few of itself, and it’s like what are a few segments anyway then it had a somewhat imperfect control of the drone in the ship that fired so some people died and it says it again, what are a few segments cuz it’s not You, and that’s who it is looking for but the Shrouded only finds hollow bodies in all the machinery so it doesn’t think You exists

Jerennian, the 3rd person, speaks up that all the drones came back fully loaded w ammo, no bullets fired HAHA

They check one drone and it starts firing! The recoil is the only thing that saved them but the Director gets killed (good), ship systems don’t respond and the emergency alarm goes off in a 3 beat signal w a small pause before the last one… Set Etienne grabs Juna’s hand, they both know it’s the Shrouded WOW

The Shrouded’s senses go up the anchor to the Garvaneer, looking for the Stranger and eventually it figures out what the humans are planning

The drones come back each one displaying 50 kills, Juna feels sick

The director tells them the good news that the remaining moons and planets in this system will be colonized thanks to their efforts

The new Director shows them upgraded pods now w guns…all 4 of them (the 3 crew and FenJuan) are uneasy they don’t want to go to Shroud at all but that’s why they were still awake, you don’t consent to your assignments and if you don’t prove useful off to the shelves you go.. the plan went so quickly from defense to offense, the two women when alone call it murder

The crew is struggling with the fact that they were protected by the Shrouded but they need to earn their keep or else they’ll be shelved again, so they have to give advice and data constantly to the company, arguing to themselves that no matter what Acquisitions was always going to do this eventually, it’s human nature

it seems they never crossed that boundary b/c whenever they got woken up from shelving there’s no guarantee when or where that would be, so they’d never see each other again. And it would hurt… :(

FenJuan thinks that with human tech the Shrouded might be gearing up and that the Garveneer should prep for a possible war

They show footage of one Shrouded with drum inside their exoskeleton and a bunch of cable rolled on it mimicking the cable-laying drone the pod used to escape

Juna thinks how she is fiercely protective and loyal over Set Etienne but maybe the forced separation of their individual couches in the pod wouldn’t let them cross that physical boundary, but as they have gotten closer Andean even “read” each other’s thoughts

41 days later the 3 of the remaining crew are woken up from shelving to work under FenJuan an alien-enthusiast so they can assume why they’re here

Acquisitions is losing units and even the recovery units sent out to retrieve them and they think it’s the Shrouded

FenJuan says their theory about the Shrouded saving them, answering to the 3 beat signal etc might be something that Acquisition won’t like

The Shrouded learns to make cables and uses fliers to bring thoughts swiftly to neighbors w dangerous terrain in-between w/o losing itself in the process so Otherlike colonies join and become greater than itself and it has learned so much of the human tech that it thinks it might be able to penetrate it with it’s mind… oooooh

They get into a meeting with Advent, Umbar and recently awaken Big Mike who says Special Projects is being disbanded as it wasn’t profitable and used too many resources for no results, but Acquisitions has already started asset stripping so they will do that instead

They get shelved with Mike just like that, no fight no rebellion

Interlude: Shrouded remembers when the channels weren’t clogged and they could express thoughts halfway across Shroud but now so much activity that signals can only cross at the pace of physical travel but now the pod brought them enlightenment

The two women get rehab from stim cocktail and lack of muscle mvt, forced out of hibernation eventually and give full reports, Juna’s more detailed obv than Ste Etienne’s

They continue their trek and see light! But its form volcanic vents not humans

They continue until they hear the familiar signal of their own craft’! They chase down a robot laying cables and tap into them, sending signals back to the Garvaneer and then two days later they got rescued!

The Shrouded watches the pod go up the cable and it sends signals to all Otherlikes that there is something of interest here

and then they finally pass the point their original drone had gone, they release a small tethered drone to ping below and help map out the terrain, as the winds died down they were lowered onto scraggly mountains where creatures were waiting with their mouths bloomed open it nets and hooks
They land but not too harshly and then recognizable Shrouded come helping remove them from their cradle of the flier