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veloverso's review against another edition
4.0
Fascinating and hard to put down! What happens on an alien planet when the descendants of space explorers decide to break six generations of blind tradition and risk the unknown?
I read this so quickly I'm sorry it's over; but it's okay, there's a sequel :)
I read this so quickly I'm sorry it's over; but it's okay, there's a sequel :)
majkia's review against another edition
4.0
What happens when a small group of humans are stranded on a frightening alien world, one with no sun of its own. It isn't necessarily pretty.
sandraaa_xo's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
- Strong character development? Yes
4.0
bepevy20's review against another edition
2.0
Interesting concept but I feel like it could have been a better story. The writing was intentionally simplistic, the plot was very slow and thin, and there was only really one character I found interesting. Everyone else seemed to be created specifically to revolve around him.
Very little happened in this book and I was grateful every time a time skip occurred. I felt like I spent the whole book waiting for something bigger to happen. That's not to say I need action packed books to have an enjoyable reading experience. One of my favorite books last year could be summed up as "a young woman goes home for the weekend." but somehow it felt like less happened in Dark Eden than in that book.
The book could have been greatly improved by making this story shorter and jumping much further into the future at different intervals. Or maybe a better story would have been (SPOILERS!!!!) ......... If earth humans actually had come back to get the people on Eden ...... (end spoilers) Sadly, neither of those things happened and the whole book felt underdeveloped. There is a good story that could be told with this premise but this is not it.
Very little happened in this book and I was grateful every time a time skip occurred. I felt like I spent the whole book waiting for something bigger to happen. That's not to say I need action packed books to have an enjoyable reading experience. One of my favorite books last year could be summed up as "a young woman goes home for the weekend." but somehow it felt like less happened in Dark Eden than in that book.
The book could have been greatly improved by making this story shorter and jumping much further into the future at different intervals. Or maybe a better story would have been (SPOILERS!!!!) ......... If earth humans actually had come back to get the people on Eden ...... (end spoilers) Sadly, neither of those things happened and the whole book felt underdeveloped. There is a good story that could be told with this premise but this is not it.
ncrabb's review against another edition
4.0
I would not have read this had it not been reviewed by someone I follow here. Her reviews have guided me in amazing and better directions than I ever would have achieved otherwise. I tend to avoid fiction labeled "young adult," mistakenly believing that I'll not be satisfied with the book because it would presumably lack sophistication. My public thanks goes to that reviewer who's work elevates my life in ways she may never fully understand. This book left me with a lot to think about. I am particularly struck by the idea rather well explored in this book that we all build incredible prisons into which we insert ourselves at great cost.
As the book opens, we meet John Redlantern, a 15-year-old young man whose spirit is even more restless than you might encounter in a young man of his age. John lives on a nearly sunless world which draws most of its light from trees and most of its heat from beneath the ground. Young John's ancestors settled the planet centuries earlier, and their descendants dream and hope for the time when an expedition from Earth will come and rescue them. It is that hope, in fact, that keeps the more than 500 members of the colony together. They have strong taboos about leaving the place originally settled by their ancestors, convinced as they are that an expedition to rescue them is inevitable.
this is an unusual colony. There are elaborate ritualistic ceremonies designed to remind the colonists of their past, but there is no marriage ceremony to speak of. It's a rather matriarchal society where kids know who their mother is, but have no idea who their father is. The colony suffers significantly from in-breeding. Many colonists deal with either a cleft palate or club feet.
john is not content to remain passively in this colonial dark Eden forever. He sees on the horizon real problems for the colonists if they can't expand their living area. Like many people with new ideas, John is much misunderstood by his fellow colonists, and it doesn't help that John is struggling to learn much about himself as well. One of the people who helps John on his quest to depart the cold Eden of his boyhood is Tina Spiketree. She's his on-again, off-again girlfriend, but the story is told primarily through her view and John's.
ultimately John proposes to the family that its members branch out and move to different sites. But what he proposes is unspeakably frightening to the other colonists, especially the old ones who strive with such fervor to keep the old stories and traditions alive. They bring out artifacts from the Earth colony every year and make the colonists re-enact plays about the original settlers. These artifacts are nearly worshipped by the old ones who try to force that form of worship onto the young people, known as Newhairs. When John deliberately destroys the most sacred place in the original colony, he is cast out of Eden, so to speak, and he and a handful of his followers set out to explore a world so cold and dark that no other colonists have dared explore it.
just as the scriptural Adam and Eve were introduced to hardship and contention upon their eviction from Eden, John and his followers learn hard lessons about sudden and violent death. But they also discover within themselves a resourcefulness they never believed possible.
This is a book about the precious nature of freedom, the value of seeing possibilities over problems, and the untenable cost of walling oneself off in a prison of his or her making while insisting that the prison is a paradise compared to the unknown that lies just over the hill. It is a well-written story that reaffirms the immense value of "opposition in all things,” as one writer has written.
I'm not a big fan of the casual sex structure of the society created by this author. Granted, he explains how it all started, but a society in which healthy young men pop it to women as old as their mothers so as to nonchalantly propagate the colony creeped me out a bit. As I said, the author does well in explaining why this must be, but it was still a little creepy; not a deal breaker, mind you, just a little unsettling in a place or two. Additionally, I was quickly annoyed by the unconventional profanity here. The original settlers were named Tommy and Angela. The language that passed for profanity in the society referenced those early settlers and their body parts. So there is reference to "Gela's tits" or "Tom's neck" when one of the young people wanted to powerfully express him or herself.
I really loved the way the author placed value on freedom, curiosity, and risk taking. Beckett thoughtfully creates an impressive world filled with dangers and challenges that keep you reading and actively engaged. This isn't merely excellent young adult fiction; it's interesting science fiction as well. I read the audio edition of this, which was narrated by several people, and I thoroughly enjoyed the narration. There's something about Beckett's writing style that is melodic and haunting in a passage or two. He doesn't merely describe the planet as cold. it's "cold, cold." Interestingly enough, what would be written off as redundant in someone else's hands is an interesting way of drawing readers into the Dark Eden universe more fully. I suspect young people would gravitate to this story with its burning need to escape social strictures that are so firmly implanted that no one even thinks to ask why those strictures are in place at all.
As the book opens, we meet John Redlantern, a 15-year-old young man whose spirit is even more restless than you might encounter in a young man of his age. John lives on a nearly sunless world which draws most of its light from trees and most of its heat from beneath the ground. Young John's ancestors settled the planet centuries earlier, and their descendants dream and hope for the time when an expedition from Earth will come and rescue them. It is that hope, in fact, that keeps the more than 500 members of the colony together. They have strong taboos about leaving the place originally settled by their ancestors, convinced as they are that an expedition to rescue them is inevitable.
this is an unusual colony. There are elaborate ritualistic ceremonies designed to remind the colonists of their past, but there is no marriage ceremony to speak of. It's a rather matriarchal society where kids know who their mother is, but have no idea who their father is. The colony suffers significantly from in-breeding. Many colonists deal with either a cleft palate or club feet.
john is not content to remain passively in this colonial dark Eden forever. He sees on the horizon real problems for the colonists if they can't expand their living area. Like many people with new ideas, John is much misunderstood by his fellow colonists, and it doesn't help that John is struggling to learn much about himself as well. One of the people who helps John on his quest to depart the cold Eden of his boyhood is Tina Spiketree. She's his on-again, off-again girlfriend, but the story is told primarily through her view and John's.
ultimately John proposes to the family that its members branch out and move to different sites. But what he proposes is unspeakably frightening to the other colonists, especially the old ones who strive with such fervor to keep the old stories and traditions alive. They bring out artifacts from the Earth colony every year and make the colonists re-enact plays about the original settlers. These artifacts are nearly worshipped by the old ones who try to force that form of worship onto the young people, known as Newhairs. When John deliberately destroys the most sacred place in the original colony, he is cast out of Eden, so to speak, and he and a handful of his followers set out to explore a world so cold and dark that no other colonists have dared explore it.
just as the scriptural Adam and Eve were introduced to hardship and contention upon their eviction from Eden, John and his followers learn hard lessons about sudden and violent death. But they also discover within themselves a resourcefulness they never believed possible.
This is a book about the precious nature of freedom, the value of seeing possibilities over problems, and the untenable cost of walling oneself off in a prison of his or her making while insisting that the prison is a paradise compared to the unknown that lies just over the hill. It is a well-written story that reaffirms the immense value of "opposition in all things,” as one writer has written.
I'm not a big fan of the casual sex structure of the society created by this author. Granted, he explains how it all started, but a society in which healthy young men pop it to women as old as their mothers so as to nonchalantly propagate the colony creeped me out a bit. As I said, the author does well in explaining why this must be, but it was still a little creepy; not a deal breaker, mind you, just a little unsettling in a place or two. Additionally, I was quickly annoyed by the unconventional profanity here. The original settlers were named Tommy and Angela. The language that passed for profanity in the society referenced those early settlers and their body parts. So there is reference to "Gela's tits" or "Tom's neck" when one of the young people wanted to powerfully express him or herself.
I really loved the way the author placed value on freedom, curiosity, and risk taking. Beckett thoughtfully creates an impressive world filled with dangers and challenges that keep you reading and actively engaged. This isn't merely excellent young adult fiction; it's interesting science fiction as well. I read the audio edition of this, which was narrated by several people, and I thoroughly enjoyed the narration. There's something about Beckett's writing style that is melodic and haunting in a passage or two. He doesn't merely describe the planet as cold. it's "cold, cold." Interestingly enough, what would be written off as redundant in someone else's hands is an interesting way of drawing readers into the Dark Eden universe more fully. I suspect young people would gravitate to this story with its burning need to escape social strictures that are so firmly implanted that no one even thinks to ask why those strictures are in place at all.
jedbird's review against another edition
4.0
This was a hard one to rate. The premise is interesting. Under unclear circumstances, humans are stranded in space on a sunless planet. One man and one woman. Now there are 500+ people. So, yeah. There are birth defects and no one is very smart. The stories of Earth and humanity have been distorted by time and, probably, by people being kind of dumb. Everyone is waiting for Earth to come back and save them.
The story is told from several points of view, the main one being John. John is different in that he has ideas, and ideas aren't generally popular in their Family. He does something that horrifies everyone and he's cast out. But he's not by himself for long.
I overall really enjoyed this. There were parts where I got tired of being in the heads of dumb people nonstop, but John and other smarter people start doing interesting things. The world and its animals are imaginative and it actually sounds quite beautiful, though I wouldn't want to live there.
I'm kind of expecting the series to culminate in an alpha male showdown, which doesn't interest me at all, but I intend to continue with the series.
ETA: Or maybe not. Apparently the second book is a future story with whole new crew of people, but I want to know what happens with *these* characters.
The story is told from several points of view, the main one being John. John is different in that he has ideas, and ideas aren't generally popular in their Family. He does something that horrifies everyone and he's cast out. But he's not by himself for long.
I overall really enjoyed this. There were parts where I got tired of being in the heads of dumb people nonstop, but John and other smarter people start doing interesting things. The world and its animals are imaginative and it actually sounds quite beautiful, though I wouldn't want to live there.
I'm kind of expecting the series to culminate in an alpha male showdown, which doesn't interest me at all, but I intend to continue with the series.
ETA: Or maybe not. Apparently the second book is a future story with whole new crew of people, but I want to know what happens with *these* characters.
shadowcat47's review against another edition
1.0
I don't like leaving negative reviews but let me qualify by saying I did not finish this book. I COULD not finish this book. I was persuaded to read it by the intriguing premise and the good reviews. The writing style is different to most things I have read and the world-building initially grabbed my attention. However, I quickly lost any interest in the plot and I could not engage with the characters for the life of me (one of my main issues with it). I read a lot of sci-fi and can see why this is included in this genre. I can also see why it won awards, being a bit different from your run of the mill sci-fi stories. But this is not my type of sci-fi. I have read books with very similar plots, which I felt were so much better. I felt I knew what was coming too soon into the book and wasn't that bothered about finding out if I was right. Maybe it gets better further into the book but I am done with it.
danprisk's review against another edition
3.0
This is quite an enjoyable and well written book, but I'm not sure why it's as highly lauded as it is. It's certainly well put together, but not so much that it particularly stands out in the genre: there's an awful lot of exceedingly well written scifi out there. Largely though it fails thematically, by portraying a particularly conservative and essentialist perspective.
Science fiction at its best is a format that allows the writer to explore new ways of being, to prefigure potential futures, and to articulate some aspect of how those futures may be in the world. Look to writers like Le Guin, Leckie, and more for this sort of work. By contrast, Dark Eden posits our own world—with all it's patriarchy, competition, division, and individualism—as an innate manner of being. In this sense it writes from a point of view of bio-essentialism, where, for instance, characters who have never known monogamy find themselves thinking in it's framework. This isn't challenging our world, or exploring possibilities, this is naturalizing our currently constituted ways of living.
Perhaps that's why it seems to have gained acclaim? Rather than unsettling, such a manner of writing comforts the reader in their learned sensibilities.
Science fiction at its best is a format that allows the writer to explore new ways of being, to prefigure potential futures, and to articulate some aspect of how those futures may be in the world. Look to writers like Le Guin, Leckie, and more for this sort of work. By contrast, Dark Eden posits our own world—with all it's patriarchy, competition, division, and individualism—as an innate manner of being. In this sense it writes from a point of view of bio-essentialism, where, for instance, characters who have never known monogamy find themselves thinking in it's framework. This isn't challenging our world, or exploring possibilities, this is naturalizing our currently constituted ways of living.
Perhaps that's why it seems to have gained acclaim? Rather than unsettling, such a manner of writing comforts the reader in their learned sensibilities.
fuzzyfrogs's review against another edition
1.0
I am so confused.
Dark Eden is one of the most bizarre books I have ever read (or tried to), and I’m still not entirely sure that I understand what was actually happening. The novel is written in multiple perspectives, but mainly focuses on the main protagonist John. We follow John and various other characters of Family, who live in Eden – a sunless planet with lanterntrees, woollybucks and other oddly named animals, plants and places. Eden, and its 500 odd inhabitants are struggling to find food to sustain them, and John is of course, the saviour who decides to venture into the dark, never-seen-before places on their planet… and thus the story begins.
First of all, there are SO many new words I had to wrap my head around in this book, many of which I still don’t know what they mean. There was never any explanation, and it’s up to the reader to figure everything out themselves, making Dark Eden feel a bit like a puzzle. It was definitely a workout for my brain, that’s for sure. Though there was some terminology which I found easy to understand such as time being referred to as ‘wombtimes’ instead of years, and ‘slip’ being used as a replacement for anything sexual.
“That cheeky minx. Gave me a bit of a slip once or twice way back. Gave me a nice little slippy slide. She still alive, is she?”
“No, Oldest. Cancer ate her, four or five wombs ago.”
I think the main reason I had difficulty with these words is the lack of description throughout the novel. I don’t recall any real description about what anything looked like, which made it hard to visualise the already confusing words being thrown at me from all angles. Another linguistic element that irritated me was the continuous repetition of words. I got very sick sick and tired tired of this being used constantly throughout the boring boring book, and wanted to throw it into a dark dark dark place. Not even joking, this is what many of the sentences looked like.
When you finally break the initial language barrier and dive into the story, things were really no less confusing. The culture of how these people live is utterly bizarre, and I just couldn’t connect to their way of living, and their beliefs (there are religious elements scattered throughout). Everyone wants to have a slip, or slide with John – particularly middle aged women who believed his ‘baby juice’ would produce babies without genetic deformities… because incest is a thing in this book, though they frown upon slipping with siblings. I don’t even know. Honestly, this review probably isn’t making much sense, because I’m still so confused.
Needless to say, I didn’t finish this book, and take my hat off to anyone that could. I was not expecting to feel like I’d taken drugs whilst reading Dark Eden, and was disappointed that it wasn’t a fast paced, action packed sci-fi novel with amazing world building, character development and aliens. If you’re expecting any of those things, I don’t recommend you read this book.
Dark Eden is one of the most bizarre books I have ever read (or tried to), and I’m still not entirely sure that I understand what was actually happening. The novel is written in multiple perspectives, but mainly focuses on the main protagonist John. We follow John and various other characters of Family, who live in Eden – a sunless planet with lanterntrees, woollybucks and other oddly named animals, plants and places. Eden, and its 500 odd inhabitants are struggling to find food to sustain them, and John is of course, the saviour who decides to venture into the dark, never-seen-before places on their planet… and thus the story begins.
First of all, there are SO many new words I had to wrap my head around in this book, many of which I still don’t know what they mean. There was never any explanation, and it’s up to the reader to figure everything out themselves, making Dark Eden feel a bit like a puzzle. It was definitely a workout for my brain, that’s for sure. Though there was some terminology which I found easy to understand such as time being referred to as ‘wombtimes’ instead of years, and ‘slip’ being used as a replacement for anything sexual.
“That cheeky minx. Gave me a bit of a slip once or twice way back. Gave me a nice little slippy slide. She still alive, is she?”
“No, Oldest. Cancer ate her, four or five wombs ago.”
I think the main reason I had difficulty with these words is the lack of description throughout the novel. I don’t recall any real description about what anything looked like, which made it hard to visualise the already confusing words being thrown at me from all angles. Another linguistic element that irritated me was the continuous repetition of words. I got very sick sick and tired tired of this being used constantly throughout the boring boring book, and wanted to throw it into a dark dark dark place. Not even joking, this is what many of the sentences looked like.
When you finally break the initial language barrier and dive into the story, things were really no less confusing. The culture of how these people live is utterly bizarre, and I just couldn’t connect to their way of living, and their beliefs (there are religious elements scattered throughout). Everyone wants to have a slip, or slide with John – particularly middle aged women who believed his ‘baby juice’ would produce babies without genetic deformities… because incest is a thing in this book, though they frown upon slipping with siblings. I don’t even know. Honestly, this review probably isn’t making much sense, because I’m still so confused.
Needless to say, I didn’t finish this book, and take my hat off to anyone that could. I was not expecting to feel like I’d taken drugs whilst reading Dark Eden, and was disappointed that it wasn’t a fast paced, action packed sci-fi novel with amazing world building, character development and aliens. If you’re expecting any of those things, I don’t recommend you read this book.