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barb4ry1 's review for:
The Doors of Eden
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Adrian Tchaikovsky continues to impress. Is there a genre he hasn’t tried yet? In The Doors of Eden he looks at parallel worlds coming together and the things that are coming through the cracks. Ever considered taking a deep dive into a multiverse of parallel Earths? If yes, don’t wait any longer and experience an insane interdimensional adventure.
Lee and Mal, two British girls fascinated by cryptozoology, are an item. During their hunt for a mysterious Birdman somewhere in Wales, they make a breakthrough discovery. Before they can share or document it, one of the girls gets lost. For years. As if she disappeared from the surface of the Earth.
Four years later, the missed girl contacts the other one through a phone call that leaves no record. From there, things go downhill quickly. The Doors of Eden combine a techno-thriller narrative with evolutionary biology and hard sci-fi. And it rocks. The book awes with mind-bending concepts such as moving between the worlds. Sometimes through walls and sometimes through “doors” that appear in most unexpected places, just for a second. The worlds we explore feel distinct and their inhabitants took biology in most unexpected directions. Among bizarre creatures introduced in the book, you’ll find, for example, fishes that upload their minds into ice-bound supercomputers or super-intelligent squids. We get a secret agent, trans mathematician, and intelligence analyst added to the mix. It tackles serious themes like Brexit, English nationalism, climate change but keeps them relevant to the story.
Tchaikovsky does an amazing job of fleshing out all the characters, bad guys included. The book introduces a lot of POV characters. Some get a lot of screen time, others a little. Things feel balanced, though. The multiverse itself is a marvel to behold. World-building rarely impresses me, but in The Doors of Eden, it left me speechless and awed. I found it bold, imaginative, with a sense of scale epic in scope, but not so large as to detract from the complex relationships between characters. To make things even more thrilling, Tchaikovsky throws in plenty of surprises. He makes his characters struggle as they fight to save one another, but also to change the world in unexpected ways.
The Doors of Eden explores big ideas and rewards patient readers. Despite a strong focus on evolutionary science and detailed world-building, it keeps a compelling character journey that heightens the emotional core of the novel. Not an easy read by any means, but it’s well worth the time.
ARC through NetGalley
Lee and Mal, two British girls fascinated by cryptozoology, are an item. During their hunt for a mysterious Birdman somewhere in Wales, they make a breakthrough discovery. Before they can share or document it, one of the girls gets lost. For years. As if she disappeared from the surface of the Earth.
Four years later, the missed girl contacts the other one through a phone call that leaves no record. From there, things go downhill quickly. The Doors of Eden combine a techno-thriller narrative with evolutionary biology and hard sci-fi. And it rocks. The book awes with mind-bending concepts such as moving between the worlds. Sometimes through walls and sometimes through “doors” that appear in most unexpected places, just for a second. The worlds we explore feel distinct and their inhabitants took biology in most unexpected directions. Among bizarre creatures introduced in the book, you’ll find, for example, fishes that upload their minds into ice-bound supercomputers or super-intelligent squids. We get a secret agent, trans mathematician, and intelligence analyst added to the mix. It tackles serious themes like Brexit, English nationalism, climate change but keeps them relevant to the story.
Tchaikovsky does an amazing job of fleshing out all the characters, bad guys included. The book introduces a lot of POV characters. Some get a lot of screen time, others a little. Things feel balanced, though. The multiverse itself is a marvel to behold. World-building rarely impresses me, but in The Doors of Eden, it left me speechless and awed. I found it bold, imaginative, with a sense of scale epic in scope, but not so large as to detract from the complex relationships between characters. To make things even more thrilling, Tchaikovsky throws in plenty of surprises. He makes his characters struggle as they fight to save one another, but also to change the world in unexpected ways.
The Doors of Eden explores big ideas and rewards patient readers. Despite a strong focus on evolutionary science and detailed world-building, it keeps a compelling character journey that heightens the emotional core of the novel. Not an easy read by any means, but it’s well worth the time.
ARC through NetGalley