Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Doors of Eden Book Review

 The Doors of Eden 

By Adrian Tchaikovsky 

Published Year: 2020

Page Count: 607 pages

Medium Used: Kindle Scribe 

Genre : LGBTQ, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Multiverse, Thriller, Science and Tech, Multiple Earths, Evolution Stories, 2025-read. 

Rating :5/5

What an amazing ride! What a brilliant read! What a spectacular author!! Mind Blowing imagination. Such a prolific writer.. for me, he is alike to Stephen King of Science Fiction. I have admired the vision and the world creation of Adrian Tchaikovsky since I first read The Children of Time and he hasn't disappointed,ever since, even once. With this book too, Adrian did what he does and knows to do best! He spun a revolutionary tale of multiple worlds and evolutionary stories of different entities on them. These worlds have been existing for billions of years and some organisms on them have perished, some have found cures for cancer, some have very advanced technology to ours, some are not so advanced as us etc. 

I liked the numerous worlds out there in this book and the creatures that have evolved to lord over them. Like the slothful cats who depend on their subordinate species for everything, the pugnacious lemurs that have built a kingdom shutting out every other species from their world, other kinds that have excessively intermarried among themselves and perished to mutating virulent agents etc. I liked the world with sentient ships,an ice machine world, a world that is covered up in a sentient moss all over like one huge grave. I also liked the premise of a dying multiverse and the calling for a few brilliant, scientific minds to help prevent it. What do they do that addressed a situation of failing universes? 

Lee and Mal are lesbian friends who have the craving to search after spectacular cryptoid occurrences. On one of their hunt, Mal disappears. She reappears in Lee's life four years later and takes Lee with her on a world hopping tour. There is a brilliant mathematician and physicist, Dr. Kay Amal Khan, after whom two rival groups are running to kidnap her and use her for their own universe saving enterprises. One side of the game are Neanderthal like primates(called Plug-Uglies/Cousins/Stigs) from a neighboring Earth/world and they need her to address the issue of closing/sealing off all these multiple worlds from collapsing into one another. There have been some fault lines/ cracks between multiple universes that helped these Stigs jump from one Earth to the other since ages. Now they are sensing that these cracks are becoming more prominent and occuring more, spinning out of control. This could end up in a full blown collapse. How do the brilliant minds like Dr. Khan, a rodent leader from world of rats, a Murther from world of Stigs, a living ship from world of trilobites address the situation ? On the other side, there is a selfish business man called Rove who wants to kidnap and hold Dr. Khan for his own self serving desires. I liked the payout of all the different possibilities as timelines by the God-like Mother universe towards the end. We all want to desperately save something from failure, to restore it to former set of conditions and call ourselves victorious..but, what if, just for a second, our interference is not what is called for?

 It somehow doesn't read like scifi to me. Maybe it will happen or come true one day, who knows? If ever we have to coexist with other sentient creatures from other worlds, will it be any different than living with robots? I, for one, would love to embark on an adventure across multiverse for sure. Loved the book a lot! Do check it out.