Review: Walking to Aldebaran
Walking to Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: [usr 4.5]
Blurb:
I’M LOST. I’M SCARED. AND THERE’S SOMETHING HORRIBLE IN HERE.
My name is Gary Rendell. I’m an astronaut. When they asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “astronaut, please!” I dreamed astronaut, I worked astronaut, I studied astronaut. I got lucky; when a probe exploring the Oort Cloud found a strange alien rock and an international team of scientists was put together to go and look at it, I made the draw.
I got even luckier. When disaster hit and our team was split up, scattered through the endless cold tunnels, I somehow survived.
Now I’m lost, and alone, and scared, and there’s something horrible in here.
Lucky me.
Lucky, lucky, lucky.
Review:
[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]
A short book (more novella than novel) about exploration, the unknown, first contact(s), and horrors lurking in the darkness.
The narrator, Gary Rendell, is an astronaut who got separated from his crew while exploring an odd artefact/construct he has nicknamed “the Crypts”, at the edge of the solar system, and suspected to be a gate to other parts of the galaxy. Gary’s narrative is disturbingly humorous, which in itself was not surprising to me, as a “buffer against madness” attempt at coping. Because the Crypts will eat you alive if you’re not careful, walking from one “biome” to the other, every time wondering if the air will be breathable, or if his body will be able to tolerate a new gravity, or if some other wanderer will decide to make him their dinner. And Gary is definitely not alone in there.
The story is told in chapters alternating present and past: Rendell’s roaming in the Crypts and what led him and the exploration team there. Both worked well for me, and were never too hard to follow or confusing. The science/technology part is not really explored here—it’s assumed that in the not-too-distant future, when the artefact was discovered, humanity is space-savvy enough to send a crew in semi-suspended animation past Neptune. And in itself, the “how” is not the point here, just the method by which the actual point is reached.
There are disturbing little hints here and there, that you don’t necessarily pay attention to at first. Rendell has been in there for days or weeks or months, and somehow you want him to find the exit, while knowing all too well it probably won’t happen, or not like a breeze. There are the names, too: the Frog God, Aldebaran? Brush up on your Lovecraft and you’ll see what I mean. There is a twist as well, and the aforementioned hints may or may not be enough to sense it coming, but once it’s here, you can’t unsee them, so to speak.
I’m just not too happy at the last chapter: I felt something was missing—that perhaps Gary should’ve gotten slightly less screen time here, so that we could also see what happened from the other party’s point of view? I’m not sure exactly, only that it didn’t thrill me as much as the rest of the book.
This said, I definitely recommend this novella.
Bonus: A fairly good soundtrack for this novella would be The Little Cloud Who Wouldn’t And The Rainbow Who Couldn’t… Lyrics included.