David’s Reviews > Shroud > Status Update

This is a cool alien mentation model: a distributed identity that attenuates with distance and eventually calves into a new iteration.

Proceeding along the lines of Asimiov's _The Gods Themselves_, here we have alternating chapters from human pov ("light") and alien ("dark"). And some third omniscient historian interludes telling us how life evolved on Shroud. The Shrouded (alien) is rather astute, and I would call bullshit, but for its fatal mistake. This is no Mary Sue alien! Good stuff, and believable.

Houston, we, uh, we are running out of main characters here....

"[T]here was a bit of a spark there. More enthusiasm than she usually let show. Devilment, basically. Devilment in an engineer is a terrible thing."

Definitely getting Alien Clay vibes: "We were going to spread ourselves across the near-side section of the galaxy like a rash."