The Doors of Eden

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Narrated by: Sophie Aldred

Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

They thought we were safe. They were wrong.

Lee and Mal went looking for monsters on Bodmin Moor four years ago, and only Lee came back. She thought she’d lost Mal forever, now miraculously returned. But what happened that day on the moors? And where has Mal been all this time? Mal's reappearance hasn’t gone unnoticed by MI5 either, and their officers also have questions.

Julian Sabreur is investigating an attack on top physicist Kay Amal Khan. This leads Julian to clash with agents of an unknown power – and they may or may not be human. His only clue is grainy footage, showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor.

Dr Khan’s research was theoretical; then she found cracks between our world and parallel Earths. Now these cracks are widening, revealing extraordinary creatures. And as the doors come crashing open, anything could come through.

Adrian Tchaikovsky brought us far-future adventure with Children of Time. Now The Doors of Eden takes us from Bodmin Moor to London and alternate versions of earth. This is an extraordinary feat of the imagination and a thrilling adventure.

©2020 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd (P)2020 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd

Critic reviews

Full of sparking, speculative invention . . . The Doors of Eden is a terrific timeslip / lost world romp in the grand tradition of Turtledove, Hoyle, even Conan Doyle. If you liked Primeval, read this book (Stephen Baxter)

The Doors of Eden shows a combination of tight, evocative prose combined with erudition. In a story whose scope is the broad canvas of the history of all life in the universe, Tchaikovsky manages to zoom in on human moments without breaking a sweat. Inventive, funny and engrossing, this book lingers long after you close it (Tade Thompson)

What a ride . . . talks like big-brained science fiction and runs like a fleet-footed political thriller (John Scalzi)

Delivers

Enough layers to keep me interested, but not too many that I get lost or have to replay. Great narrator, fun story

Tidily done brain stretcher

I held off from buying this one for a while because some of the reviews suggested this was an unusually bad Tchaikovsky title particularly loaded with some kind of malevolent agenda. I'm happy that I pushed through despite it. It's a good title, and the reviews complaining about the preachiness are... confusing. The book depicts a bunch of civilisations and bunch of viewpoint characters. Some to better and worse than each other at navigating a hostile universe. All have flaws and strengths, and a depicted reasonably sympathetically, even the antagonists. If you want to read a "moral" into the story, it is that people, and civilizations, who can learn to work together despite their differences do better than those that backstab each other for selfish gain. I don't think this is a controversial message? If you want an antidote to that message you can certainly find books out there where there are goodies and there are baddies and it is the righteous duty of the goodies to crush and kill the irredeemable baddies. This book is not that.

Disappointing

Has all the elements of captivating book, but ultimately sinks in swamp of author's ideological agenda. Preachy.

real pure garbage!

didn't finish, I have been listening to it for almost 2 weeks and oh boy what a drag it has been!!! It was super disappointing! Not my first Tchaikovsky book and I don't know who wrote this! It's a pile of popular tropes thrown in one garbage bin and fired up to dumpster fire! I have no words, just butt-stupid characters, All the baddies were some weird racist mix of "ex-military specialists" who were shit at violence and planning. It felt like a woke YA book with some random plot and Tchaikovsky's name added to cover!