Dark Eden
A Novel
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
On the alien, sunless planet they call Eden, the 532 members of the Family shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest’s lantern trees. Beyond the Forest lie the mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it.
The Oldest among the Family recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross the stars. These ships brought us here, the Oldest say—and the Family must only wait for the travelers to return.
But young John Redlantern will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. He will abandon the old ways, venture into the Dark…and discover the truth about their world.
Already remarkably acclaimed in the UK, Dark Eden is science fiction as literature; part parable, part powerful coming-of-age story, set in a truly original alien world of dark, sinister beauty--rendered in prose that is at once strikingly simple and stunningly inventive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On an alien world, the inbred descendants of a cop and a criminal grapple with their future, but predictability mars a solid concept. Teenager John Redlantern sees a future beyond waiting for voyagers from Earth to rescue the Family, but his battles against tradition and the elements lead to only minor losses, while technology is recreated too easily to be credible. Beckett (The Peacock Cloak) hews too closely to historical patterns, such as the change from communal matriarchy to aggressive territorial patriarchy. The use of multiple narrators is clever, as are creatures like singing leopards and the changes to English over generations, but it's not enough. The ending just confirms what readers will have suspected from early on the last in a long series of missed opportunities.
