This was fascinating, even if it did run a bit too long for the story it intended to tell. Characterization was somewhat weak, but the ideas were mind-boggling! I particularly liked the structure and the "interludes" that split the narrative. Adrian Tchaikovsky is such an imaginative writer and I'm looking forward to exploring more of his work.
Full review on YouTube

Eden, such a powerful word: to some, it's a name, to others, an imaginary thing or altogether, a place of delight and contentment laden with cosmological or eschatological imagery to others. In Tchaikovsky's THE DOORS OF EDEN, it is the inception of many worlds that began like ours with a differentiating evolutionary timeline and development with variant extinctions. A novel that combines fantasy, realism, science, technology, and history into a readable feast for the mind and senses. A modern sci-fi thriller that the father of science fiction novels H.G. Wells would have loved to bits.

Foreword: To lost chances.
The book begins with a pictorial timeline of evolution beginning 565 million years ago in the Ediacaran Period, proceeding through the main Eras to our Modern Day. A Prelude on Speculative Evolution and Intelligence sets the reader up for the scientific parts of the novel explaining our evolution and poses ideas of variations to what we know. This storyline alters in interludes with the actual thrilling plot of characters who will come in contact with parallel earths via cracks in the fabric of time throughout the end of the novel in 4 parts.

Most fascinating is Tchaikovsky's use and combination of biological processes that hold true to their mechanisms and initiation but by chance or lack of predation and other circumstance develop perhaps plausibly, I can't say, differently in his imagination. Survival of the fittest, each species at a given time, a pose of redevelopment and adjustment from the first to the last creature and various ways every time.

"What if - bear with me - a civilization of gigantic immortal spacefaring trilobites didn't evolve? I know, it seems hardly credible, but imagine if you will.
Our own timeline shared the events of the trilobites' time until it didn't. Until that point in a shared Cambrian where the arthropods sealed their eternal dominance in their version of history. Whereas in our timeline, the plucky vertebrate descendants survived and prospered and went on to..."

"By the time the dinosaurs of your world are glancing anxiously up at the sky in case that dot has grown larger since yesterday, there is only one eurypterid way of life across the globe: a fierce one. The territoriality that one marked individuals is now espoused by communities. Each clawed polity knows only two states: war today or preparation for war tomorrow. A fight for resources is subsumed into a fight for us against them."

As the (very) leisure and fascinated geek of geological timelines and evolution, I enjoyed the presentation and concepts of the different developments in this novel. Though fictitious, this added food for thought and more ground for the storyline to stand on, which all begins with Lee and Mal. They are friends turned to lovers since childhood and have a knack for the supernatural. Together they travel to the three stones of the Six Brothers and after witnessing a gruesome, bloody scene, Mal disappears among the fog, never to be found. Years later, Lee receives a phone call out of the blue that sounds like Mal but she can't be sure. When the two of them end up meeting, Mal has changed physically and quickly Lee becomes swept up in a world very different from ours/hers: a very dangerous one, at that!

From there the story is told with other pov,s independently. There is the brilliant, transgender Dr. Kay Amal Khan who started her career in Defence Science & Technology. Along with Julian and Royce who are part of the counter-terrorism watch they have been trying to trace illegal shipments, extraterrestrial occurrences, artificial intelligence, and strange disappearances.

From a completely different view, we learn of the voice of other worlds, their thoughts, and the wars fought among. But cracks are happening and creatures begin to cross over between the other Earths in various stages and developments that differ drastically from ours. So, it is that in one world the rats have become this armored dominating force, whereas, in others, bird-like men are trying to mend the broken cracks. And as in any good story and world, there are the bad guys fighting for the ultimate dominance of it all.

In a culminating fight for survival, Lee, Mal, and the other characters converge in dangerous ways to save their respective worlds and some have to pay the price.

Tchaikovsky's brilliant imagination is brimming with ideas and full of what-ifs. Tethering on our knowledge, combined with speculative fiction, this sci-fi read not only considers expansion but also affords a look into the past. Though I didn't connect with some of the action sequences as much, this book was an amazing reading choice for me and had my all gitty over the speculative evolution and intelligence. The writing was superb and the storylines skillfully crafted to a culminating conclusion. If all his books are this good, then my library will be growing quickly as I'll be sure to read all his other works.

This is the perfect book for science and sci-fi geeks, though the thrilling plot can also be enjoyed by those who love exhilarating reads.

Highly recommend!

In his latest novel, Adrian Tchaikovsky takes his imagination into a new area of SFF: portal fantasy. It quickly becomes clear that this is more evidence that the author really can turn his hand to anything. An intriguing mix of mystery, fantasy and science fiction. I enjoyed this.

I started reading The Doors of Eden when I was in quite a book funk. Typically, this can prevent me from enjoying anything I try to read. Luckily, this novel is packed with interesting and cool ideas, an engaging and diverse cast of characters, and some fantastically imaginative elements. As a result, and coupled with Tchaikovsky’s excellent, clear prose, this was a good read. That being said, I think the pacing wasn’t as even as some of his other novels, which did trip up the momentum on occasion.

I don’t really want to go into the plot too much, as there are plenty of surprises and developments that change things up quite frequently. What I would say is that it’s excellent: I loved exploring not only the lives of the characters in the real world, but also as the weird and otherworldly starts intruding on their lives — some of them are maybe semi-prepared, most are… not — seeing them adjust and adapt. (You know, I think this is the first book by Tchaikovsky that I’ve read set even a little bit in the now.) The author’s prose and descriptions are kept in control, and things never get out of hand, overly descriptive, or info-dumpy. The transitions between worlds, in particular, was very well done — disorienting, yet also subtle at times. The author does a great job of writing his characters’ confusion, bafflement, horror, and wonder at this reality.

If you’ve only read Tchaikovsky’s sci-fi — for example, his superb and award-winning Children of Time — and aren’t sure about something more in the fantasy genre, then I’d recommend giving this a try. It has a nice balanced feel of fantasy and sci-fi. I also liked the elements from British crime and mystery fiction dropped in (sure, some of this is just because characters are cops, but still, I liked it). There are also some good moments of social commentary, expertly woven into the story. If you enjoyed the evolutionary science portions of Children of Time and Children of Ruin, then I think you’ll also find a lot to like in the interlude “excerpts”.

The Doors of Eden isn’t my favourite of Tchaikovsky’s novels (although, I’m not sure how I’d pick a favourite — perhaps Guns of the Dawn and/or Children of Time), but it’s still a very good novel. If you’re a fan of portal fantasy, or sci-fi novels with a contemporary setting, then I’d definitely recommend it.

There are multiple versions of Earth out there, but they're all starting to splinter into each other, and it's up to a strange assortment of humans, humanoid creatures, and rats to fix it.

The Plot: A Dizzying Assortment of Edens

Best friends and lovers Lisa "Lee" Pryor and Elsinor "Mal" Mallory are monster hunters (think the Yeti). They don't seek to find proof of strange creatures, but instead dream of being the ones to capture the blurry photo. Until they end up on Bodmin Moor, on the other side of a doorway. Only one girl comes back.

Years later, the brilliant Dr. Kay Amal Khan is virtually kept under lock and key by Her Majesty's Government, but that doesn't stop the mysterious Daniel Rove's men and some seriously foreign individuals, including Mal, from trying to extract her for their own uses. Mal can't stop herself from contacting her friend, but, as much as she tries to warn Lee, it's inevitable that The Girl Who Came Back is about to tumble back into parallel worlds she can't even comprehend.

In a dizzying maze of worlds with an incredibly strange and diverse set of companions, Lee finds herself running in and out of trouble, but at least her best friend is at her side again. They have a bigger problem, though: whatever created all the parallels is collapsing and the seriously foreign individuals are assembling a team to solve the problem, all while Rove is at their heels.

With parallels drawn to Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, it's impossible to not think of a crazy maze in and out of reality, where things are and are not as they seem, where the impossible is indeed possible, where what cannot exist does. I loved the exploration of multiple Earths, each branched off from different points in time and left to its own devices. The Doors of Eden is such a massive story because of it, but really boils down to the boundaries between each offshoot breaking down and needing to be fixed. Simple, but so complicated because it deals with foreign (really foreign) creatures, dodging in and out of parallels, and trying to stay one step ahead of the ever-calculating Daniel Rove.

This is an amazing massive story that somehow rests quite comfortably on the single point of: what if the world is collapsing? The reader is drawn across our own London, dodging human and non-human pursuers, and somehow leaping into other parallels. There are so many threads, so many characters with their own motivations and story lines that somehow tie the whole story together. It was almost too much for my mind to make sense of. But then it narrowed, became focused, with the single question of how to save every iteration of Earth. While I often felt like I was swimming out to sea, I managed to take comfort in the fact that most of the human characters also had no clue what was going on. It made it so much easier to figure things out as they figured them out. What could have been a completely overwhelming story somehow managed to keep its focus and never, ever forget what it revolved around, which made it easier to focus my reading mind. Most of the time.

The Characters: An Incredible Set of Main Characters

The Doors of Eden has so many characters, but I still somehow wish there had been more. Kind of a head scratching idea, but, with so many worlds introduced, I really wanted to meet creatures from all of them. Friends Lee and Mal, government agents Julian and Alison, the devious Mr. Rove and his man Lucas, Dr. Khan, the Nissa, and the rats did a great job of shouldering the story, though.

The roles the characters played was the most fascinating thing. Usually I find it easy to pick out the main protagonist, as well as the antagonist, but something about how The Doors of Eden was written made that seem irrelevant. Most of the characters shouldered the weight equally, telling different parts of the story to sew it neatly up into a single massive story. Every time I thought I had pinpointed the main character, there was a shift and I suddenly wasn't so sure. I even had a hard time envisioning Rove as the clear antagonist because his motivations were so clear and his characterization was interesting.

Alison, though, felt like the lynch pin, the one the whole story revolved around even though she self-deprecatingly kept saying she wasn't of much use to anyone. She felt like she'd been placed in the Alice role, the one tumbling down the rabbit hole, the one who was granted special access that was indispensable. Perhaps the one the reader is supposed to latch onto in order to even begin to understand what's going on, to see the bigger picture.

But, if I had to pick favorites, I'd go with Lee and Mal. The story starts with them and they help get things spinning. But I love them because they were just so true to each other. Even after four years apart, they were still each others' whole world and, when the world seemed to be collapsing, it feels like they were the only thing that made sense, that held it together. They're an incredible couple and really brought a beautiful emotional undercurrent to this crazy story that had me spinning in so many directions.

The Setting: Earth, Earth, Earth, Earth, etc.

The Doors of Eden is set on Earth, but various iterations of Earth. This was masterfully set up, not so much in the descriptions as we tumbled into them along with the characters, but by the Interludes. Supposedly a book or manuscript written by Professor Ruth Emerson of the University of California discussing the possibility of multiple parallels, it takes every major era in Earth's history and supposes how life could have evolved differently from what we know. While they initially seemed a bit dry and dusty, much like an academic tome, they quickly became utterly fascinating and, slowly, the different worlds came into focus. It became easier to see how these different parallels might have diverged and how it would have affected life if it had continued on to their present. As the story itself wound it's way to its conclusion, I became very excited to see some of the worlds that had been discussed in earlier Interludes, and my mind couldn't work fast enough to make all the connections.

Overall: Incredible

The Doors of Eden is an incredible novel. It's a massive story with a lot to wade through, but it's only as overwhelming as the reader lets it be. I, for one, had to pause once in a while to really gnaw over the information and story presented to me. It sometimes felt like it was going at a dizzying pace, but, at the same time, it wasn't actually difficult to keep up with. It turned out to be a beautiful story of interconnectedness, though I would surely freak out if rats came out of thin air and started trying to talk to me. I adored the characters, every one of them, and how they took up the mantle of the story together to create something incredible. This is one book I'll be thinking about for a long time, a story a part of me will always wonder if it could possibly be true. I mean, it does make a compelling argument...


Thank you to Angela Man at Orbit for a free e-copy. All opinions expressed are my own.
Link to post: https://thelilycafe.com/book-review-the-doors-of-eden-by-adrian-tchaikovsky/

I am very appreciative of Adrian Tchaikovsky continually putting out solid standalone science fiction novels. His latest book, The Doors of Eden, is the next in a long chain of satisfying and meaty stories that are nicely contained in a single novel. Tchaikovsky’s latest novel has cemented him in my mind as a reliable author who always has something interesting to say and explore with his novels. As you might have guessed, I enjoyed The Doors of Eden, and I suspect that you will as well.

The Doors of Eden is about parallel Earths. In this story, there exists a multitude of timelines dating back to the dawn of life on Earth, each with its own branching path to evolution. The story explores the question “what if the dominant species of different eras of Earth’s history kept evolving and became the dominant lifeform?” As usual, Tchaikovsky sets these ideas up brilliantly and the exploration of what a society of Trilobites looks like is fascinating. There is this cool “strangeness” paradigm that he uses in building the societies which really tapped directly into my imagination. The closer to the dawn of Earth a species is from, the longer they have been around to advance their technology - and the less they resemble humans. Thus, the older species are god-like spacefarers that humans struggle to communicate with, while the younger species are something like “rats who have cured cancer.” It was a cool way to lay out all of Earth’s history and did a better job of teaching me the differences in the prehistoric eras than any high school course did.

The tension in our story comes from reality collapsing (no biggie, obviously). A group of scientists across the parallel Earths realize that realities are starting to bleed into one another and citizens from different Earths are leaking into non-native parallel worlds and scaring the locals. They also realize that these leaks are heralding the end of all existence entirely, and decide to band together to see if they can maybe stop it.

The narrative in The Doors of Eden is split into two different story types that alternate between chapters. The first storyline is the present, where a ragtag group of characters is trying to keep reality from ending. The second storyline is academic vignettes that dive in, catalog, and explore all the different versions of Earth and how they came to be. The academic vignettes are incredible and sucked me into the book as violently as explosive decompression. The present storyline was also very enjoyable but had a couple of issues that kept me from loving it with the ferocity of the second narrative.

The vignettes have no specific characters and are told from a distant academic point of view. The present story has a myriad of characters that I had mixed feelings about. The first (and greatest) character is Kay Amal Khan - a male to female transgender math god who is leading the ‘keep reality from ending’ effort on the human side. She is funny, fierce, brilliant, and has both a scientific and personal arc that I was heavily invested in. Tchaikovsky managed to give a lot of time exploring the discriminatory garbage that trans people have to put up with while also losing none of his signature sci-fi concepts. She is wonderful and I would die for her.

Up next we actually have an antagonist, sorta. The real antagonist of the story is the heat death of the universe, but Lucas is the right-hand man of another man who isn’t improving things. Lucas is a complicated character who falls into being a bad guy and doesn’t know how to stop. He doesn’t necessarily have a redemption arc, but his story does an amazing job exploring how the tiny choices we make build momentum into who we become, and in some ways how our circumstances--not our inherent nature-- determines whether we are good or bad. His story is great; you will have to read the book to understand it better than I can reasonably explain here.

Then we move to the lesbian teenagers in love, Lee and Mal. They are fine. Their story isn’t particularly interesting, and they don’t feel like they mesh well with the urgent narrative - but their budding relationship is still enjoyable and they have relatable personalities. They felt like they were around to catalyze a few “aha” moments for other characters and I wish they had a little more agency in the actual story.

Then we have the MI5 agents, Alison and Julian. Alison is also fine. The two of them mostly seem to exist in the story to foil the rest of the characters and argue that strange events the reader knows are happening actually aren’t happening. However, while Alison eventually becomes more integral to the story and has some agency, Julian’s entire deal is to continuously whine about how he doesn’t really love his wife and secretly wants to bone his coworker (Alison). He refers to it as the “unspoken connection” they have, then talks about it in his head constantly. Not a huge fan of him.

In addition to the characters, the science also has its ups and downs. The parts that cover the evolution of other Earths are detailed, imaginative, and exciting. However, the parts of the book that actually talk about trying to fix reality usually involve some people going off-screen and “doing some math,” then coming back and reporting whether it worked or not. On the one hand, it isn’t a huge detail as the themes and ideas of the book are more closely tied to how the characters process the multiple Earths - not the actual fixing of reality. On the other hand, given how delightfully detailed the other Earth vignettes were, I found it disappointing that Tchaikovsky just handled the crisis-solving off-screen.

Overall, The Doors of Eden is a great book with both heart and science. Tchaikovsky has a real talent and imagination for alternate realities and seems to have a vault of ideas to explore that never runs out. I absolutely loved the glimpses in Earths that could have been, but the characters that were the focus of so much of the story were a bit mixed. Still, I definitely recommend this standalone sci-fi novel as one of the most enjoyable things I have read this year.

Rating: The Doors of Eden - 8.5/10
-Andrew

The Doors of Eden is the latest book from British SF/F author Adrian Tchaikovsky. I've read one novel and one novella by Tchaikovsky and had mixed feelings. The novel, the much acclaimed "Children of Time" (Reviewed Here), was a fascinating idea-based SF novel featuring the evolution of an alien species (Spiders!) over generations, but well it didn't have any characters that I particularly enjoyed, limiting my excitement about it (I'm more into character-focused stories). The novella, his "Firewalkers" (Review Here), had much more interesting characters while still exploring interesting ideas about artificial intelligence, class, and more in a post-apocalyptic world. So when I was given the chance to read his latest novel (out already in the UK) in advance, I was a little bit hesitant.

And The Doors of Eden kind of justifies my hesitancy. Like both of the aforementioned works, it has strong interesting ideas - dealing with evolution, parallel Earths, and different ways of existence here - and it even has a few characters whom I really liked. And then it has certain character relationships and behaviors that just seem treated kind of poorly - particularly in the transphobic actions of its villain - which kind of mar the whole thing. The result is an uneven book with enough moments to keep me interested throughout, but repeatedly had me facepalming at times at how some things played out, which prevents me from recommending it wholeheartedly.

Trigger Warning: The antagonist deliberately deadnames (and worse) a trans character, seemingly just to show how evil and transphobic he is. It's....not done well. More on this after the jump, but if that's a problem, this book is not going to be for you.

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------

Lisa "Lee" Pryor and her girlfriend/lover Elsinore "Mal" Mallory, aspiring "Cryptid Hunters", followed a youtube video to a spot of the British countryside where a strange bird-like creature had been seen. The two expected to find nothing, but instead found themselves in a strange freezing cold blizzard that came from nowhere, hunted by such creatures....and as they tried to escape, only Lee returned.

4 Years Later, Lee has half convinced herself that it was all a hallucination, when she is contacted out of the blue by Mal by a mysterious phone call. That call leads Lee to the site of a strange break-in at the home of a famous scientist working with MI5 and a cryptic encounter with Mal and a strange-looking companion.....

Soon Lee finds herself tied in with circumstances involving MI5, a possibly Mad Scientist, a Data Analyst with special intuition, and a powerful corporate big head with his own personal hit squad. Circumstances stemming not just from our own world, but from the beings that have evolved on many many other version of Earth - beings who are starting to appear more and more in our very wold. Circumstances that threaten to destroy every Earth....if the right people across many worlds can't come together to find a way to save it all.....

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In a way, The Doors of Eden feels very much like a combination of Children of Time with a more character focused novel. Each chapter is preceded by an excerpt from a book telling how evolution differed on a different parallel earth from our own, and how those worlds were transformed as a result, and these passages are very reminiscent of COT and nearly always interesting (some of these passages come into play in the main story, others do not). Meanwhile in between those we follow a series of viewpoint characters: Lee, Julian (an MI5 Agent), Alison (an MI5 Analyst), Kay (A Scientist who everyone wants), and Lucas (a henchman for the antagonist), all of whom get involved in the story as things move along.

These characters work to varying degrees, with some being very easy to root for and read and others just falling flat. Lee is easily the most empathizable, the young lady with no reason to be dragged into all of this other than circumstance - her lover's falling into a parallel world 4 years prior - and Lee's handling of it all - the crazy circumstances, Mal's return, and more - is really done very well. Julian and Alison's stories (they're kind of tied together) are more of a mixed bag: Julian is clearly interested in Alison and can't admit it, but he's married already to a woman we never actually see which kind of makes the relationship aspect of their story feel more awkward to read than for him to live, and Julian's status as the straight man MI5 agent in the wackiness just makes him kind of boring. Alison by contrast is a bit more interesting - she's an introverted (possibly on the spectrum) data analyst who winds up getting involved in the whole mess through an out of our world contact, and her reaction to it all is always fascinating.

And then there's our final two characters, Kay and Lucas. Kay is a trans woman scientist, who is easy to like as she is fought over for her abilities....but otherwise is more of a macguffin than anything else. And Lucas seems to exist solely to give us the lowdown on what his boss Rove is doing, as Lucas finds himself going along more and more with Rove's plans seemingly on the certainty that Rove is going to scheme his way to the top, and therefore Lucas might as well make himself too useful to get rid of. But it's kind of an annoying point of view, because you keep waiting for Lucas to decide enough is enough long before the book really decides to come to such a point.

These characters all wind up in a plot that's really interesting in how it combines this concept of multiple Earths and parallel evolutions into what is first a thriller plot and then more of a high concept scifi plot in the final act. This works out really well overall, and the ideas are really interesting - Tchaikovsky does a great job demonstrating the many ways life could have evolved, and what results from those choices (sometimes good outcomes, sometimes not so much) and our characters interacting with some of these really adds to the interludes telling the stories of those evolutions straight out.

At the same time, that plot is lessened by the utter waste of a human antagonist, in the form of greedy corporate bigwig Rove. Rove works fine as a villain as an evil corporate bigwig who wants to take advantage of the multiverse for his own greed, no matter the costs to anyone else. But then the book decides to make him extra villainous first by having him be not just a transphobe, but forcing the book's only trans woman character (Kay) to dress in male dress and to deadname/misgender her. And then when his final plot is revealed, it's the least interesting thing ever, he's basically a Nazi. Lucas - Rove's henchman from whose perspective we see his actions - basically comments how uninteresting Rove's nazi plot is when it's revealed, and as a reader I can't help but basically agree - it's completely unnecessary for his actions to make sense or to be evil, and just feels like a pointless addition that could be offensive to some readers. Just like we've thankfully evolved (mainly) past the idea that SF/F villains need to rape (or threaten rape) to demonstrate their evilness, having them demonstrate transphobia for the same end is just something authors should not be doing anymore unless such actions serve other purposes in the narrative, and well they really don't here.

The result is a novel that is somewhat uneven, with some parts I really liked and others that just seem to be a total waste in the narrative. Which makes it kind of hard to recommend, so fair warning.

Science fiction ,alternative worlds,creepy sentient creature all combine in this mind blowing work. It begins innocently enough with a couple of girls who like to explore looking for cryptids — mysterious animals such as Loch Ness monster, Yeti,etc. They go to to Bodwin Moor to search for a monster that has been reported there but while there one of the girls disappears. Four years later she reappears but where has she been and where does she return to. She seems different — stronger and more powerful than the girl who disappeared. Some chapters introduce the alternate worlds in order of their biological and evolutionary progressions, this appears to be in depth hard science.MI-5 is investigating ,and a shady businessman and a trans mathematician who has proposed alternate worlds are all involved in this . Creatures have begun to cross over from other worlds and the characters are in a race to find out why and if they can stop them.The world building is spectacular. The book is a slow meticulous read, but truly fascinating.