The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars “Vivre le difference,” but too much contrived suspense Best friend lovers Lisa “Lee” Chandrapraiar (studying zoology) and Elsinore “Mal” Mallory (literature) are into “cryptozoology,” hunting legendary monsters (“crypoids”) on YouTube, when at 19 they get onto the trail of a “birdman,” visit a rural farm in the South of England, and at the site of three standing stones strangely called the Six Brothers discover that actually finding a monster brings terror and loss. This starts the plot of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s novel The Doors of Eden (2020), which, in addition to Lee and Mal, features the transgender genius mathematician/physicist Dr. Kay Amal Kahn, MI5 agents Alison “Matchbox” Matchell and Julian “Spiker” Sabreur, nationalist-fascist-xenophobe-homophobe wealthy businessman Daniel Rove and his military-veteran thug Lucas May, as well as an assortment of “monsters,” aliens from a variety of alternate Earths where alternate time lines have produced alternate evolutionary paths and sentient beings, from pacifist Neanderthals, dinosaur-bird-people, and rat-ferret-people to immortal vast spaceship trilobites, frozen fish computers, and an ediacran sponge thing covering an entire Earth. As a character says at one point, “Vivre le difference.” “Their Earth was part of a sequence of variables, each one branching off from the next… and now the principles that had separated them were failing.” Yes, Tchaikovsky is developing a theme present in his sf like the Children trilogy and in his fantasy like Redemption’s Blade: although the alien Other is often terrifying, cultures are stronger in proportion to the amount of difference they accept from within and without. He likes to depict aliens interacting with each other as he tries to make us open our eyes and minds and get past difference to find common ground. Repeatedly in his work, he arranges things so that embracing the other leads to survival and thriving (“Difference is strength”), while remaining unable to handle “Bugs and monkeys and vermin and queers” leads to collapse and death. Tchaikovsky excels at imagining different ways of living and being and thinking according to different environments and variables. Here he inserts between chapters excerpts from a book on alternate evolutionary paths of different Earths, with a variety of sentience and civilization, including scorpions, cockroaches, mollusks, trilobites, spiders, monkeys, and more. And his writing is clean, witty, and fast-paced. However, I found this book less impressive than the others of his I’ve read. For one thing, he writes only human point of view characters (while I loved the spider and octopus and microorganism aliens of the Children trilogy). His point of view characters come in a varied group (lesbian, trans, hetero; military, MI5, scientist; evil mastermind, good; white, dark; etc.), but they’re all human and all British. Furthermore, I regret his making the trans woman Dr. Khan a foul-mouthed chain-smoker who doesn’t emit any genius mathematician-physicist vibe. The characterization of Khan is stereotypically female as a man and stereotypically male as a woman, and it’s never easy to believe that she’s a unique genius vital to the survival of multiple alternate Earths. And for the sake of his non-stop frantic action plot, too many of his characters do unbelievable things given their character development, like Lee, Julian, and Alison being too xenophobic at key points, given their experiences and situations. And the reverse movement happens with the Neanderthal types, who early on perform (offstage) sensational ultra-violence in beating a few white nationalist thugs to death with furniture but later are said to be, due to their biology, environment, and culture, averse to conflict and violence. A related problem is that the fractures between the alternate Earths are too plot convenient, letting Tchaikovsky do all sorts of suspense-inducing tricks at will by opening “doors” between Earths and instantly moving people into or out of tight spots or not opening “doors” and keeping people where they are. At one point he has his characters fall into our Earth on the 80th floor of a tall building and then makes them climb up 15 flights of stairs to the top while everything’s breaking apart around them, when he could have just had them fall into our Earth on the top of the building, but then that wouldn't be so exciting. He works in plenty of popular culture references (because his story largely occurs in contemporary London), like Narnia, Star Wars, James Bond, Flatland, The Hills Have Eyes, The Lord of the Rings, Apocalypse Now. Such things are fun, but fix this novel in time more than his Children trilogy. Finally, Tchaikovsky does nifty things with alternate endings based on alternate choices made by the characters that along with the wonderful excerpts from the book on evolutionary biology in between chapters (almost) makes the book a four-star novel for me. But though I’ll surely read more books by him, this one was rather forgettable. View all my reviews
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