The Doors to Eden

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s writing is dense. He takes his time to build a solid story before adding the pressure of the crisis to be overcome. By the time we have to save the world we understand the various factions involved and the problems that might have to be faced. He also offers plausible metaphysical issues that give the reader something substantial to think about.

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Would that allow them to sew up each rent and tear by hand, technology being their needle and mathematics their thread?

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In this one, he builds his story around the idea that there are cracks opening between probable realities; that on most other Earths the dominant species didn’t evolve from apes and they are much more technologically advanced than us.

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On some Earths the dominant entities have known about the cracks and have been exploiting them for decades. The cracks suddenly begin to open much more rapidly and, if the probabilities detach from each other, each and every Earth will dissolve into nothingness.  

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Later species will begin to sound off at one another, generating gas within their shell chambers and mantles and agitating it against their septa. They’ll produce basso profundo groans that can be detected across a hundred leagues of ocean by another of their long-lived, lonely kind. Over ten thousand years, the ocean fills with their conversational flatulence.

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Individuals from various walks of life and various Earths gather together in the gut of a giant benevolent, space-faring trilobite to solve the problem while keeping an eye on an evil dude who seeks to spin the situation to his advantage.

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And within the vaulted chambers and organs of its body, within the hundred-metre-thick shell, there is a mind vaster than you can imagine. It regards the universe with a patient curiosity, a being that knows it has all the time there ever will be to discover everything there is to know. Because they are realistic about their accomplishments, they consider themselves the lords of all creation.

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Most books require about a hundred pages to pull me into the plot. I didn’t begin getting interested in this one until about 60% of the way in, which, because this book is a thick 640 pages, is about 380 pages. From the beginning, the genius and sense of humor of the author is obvious, but it took me some time to get invested in this.

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It’s a solid story, though, that celebrates diversity, postulates feasible interconnections between worlds and, with a slightly comical undertone, takes the reader on a ride across multiple realities to save Earth, in every reality.

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