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The Doors of Eden

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The Doors of Eden

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
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About this listen

They thought we were safe. They were wrong.

'A terrific timeslip / lost world romp in the grand tradition of Turtledove, Hoyle, even Conan Doyle' – Stephen Baxter, author of the Xeelee Sequence

Read by Sophie Aldred (Doctor Who)

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 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 Cornwall to London and alternate versions of earth. This is an extraordinary feat of the imagination and a thrilling adventure.

‘Inventive, funny and engrossing, this book lingers long after you close it’ – Tade Thompson, award-winning author of Rosewater

©2020 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd (P)2020 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd Adventure Romance Science Fiction Fiction

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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, author of The Thousand Earths)
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, author of Rosewater and Far From the Light of Heaven)
What a ride . . . talks like big-brained science fiction and runs like a fleet-footed political thriller (John Scalzi, author of Starter Villain)
With The Doors of Eden, Tchaikovsky has created a fantastic and highly imaginative new genre: evolution SF (Peter F. Hamilton, author of Salvation and The Reality Dysfunction)
Unlike anything I've read in a very long time, and all the better for it . . . Tchaikovsky is clearly at the top of his game right now (James Oswald, author of the Inspector McLean novels)
As all right thinking people know, Adrian is the best . . . But this, my friends, is the best of the best (Ian McDonald, author of Luna)
All stars
Most relevant  
A scream of frustration at human pettiness and selfish and a fierce reminder that we're at our best we we look at what we have in common. Unity saves. Devision destroys.
Tchaikovsky does it again and Sophie Aldred effortlessly bring his novel to life.

A brilliant, angry and pointed novel

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Occasionally a book comes along that you can't put down. This is one of those. Interest all the way through.

Great Scifi

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I loved this book. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but this is not the monsters on the moor adventure you might expect from the description on Audible. It is a beautiful story, complex yet engagingly told, and excellently narrated. At the time of listening I felt like I could do with something uplifting at a difficult time for the world. I expected the book to be good. What I didn’t expect was it to be such an uplifting, joyful parable showing what we might achieve if we could learn to get along with those who seem different to ourselves.

Beautiful parable - highly recommended

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Having been thoroughly impressed with Children of time and loving how Tchaikovsky writes from wildly different points of view in that book this is very similar he can somehow put himself in others shoes and write from their perspective.
He also writes from a women's perspective in many cases and always seems comfortable in that role.
The plot had some hole's in it but trotted away at a good pace and never felt drawn out or too unrealistic but he develops character's and role's very well.
All in all a good read 😃

A triumph of innovative sci-fi and perspective

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The narrators American accent every few chapters was cringe-worthy, and hard to listen to. The ending was an underwhelming damp squib. Disappointing, especially considering some of the author's other works.

If you like Tchaikovsky, you will probably enjoy this; it's standard stuff for him; history, evolution, language, spiders, sentences ending in prepositions, technology, humanity's tendency to destroy itself. I just don't feel like this was great, and parts of it were tedious. The interesting bits were underdescribed while ages was spent on snooze-worthy stuff.
On the plus side, no awkward scenes, the author keeps it classy.

Awkward Accents and unsatisfying conclusion

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This is more science fantasy, than hard science fiction, like the Children of series. In this novel AT looks at different minds and how if evolution had stuck with certain designs, how life on Earth could be different, using the idea of parallel multi verse as the way of viewing these different takes on evolution from Space fairing Trilobites to an Ice mind made by fish. It definitely plays a homage to TV shows such as Sliders and Doctor Who, with great world building and enjoying the vocal work of a former Doctor's assistant, is just Ace! For me there were a few moments in the story that didn't quite work, the bad guy was a bit too Nigel Farage for me, not very smart but irritating as hell! Then there was the lack of character awareness, the UK government spooks seemed to be very slow and dim, not very smart at all. I know this is a standalone novel, but it does seem itself up for a sequel, maybe in a few years, after the events at the end of the book and the world changing to deal with these events.

Ace Narrative

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⭐ 3.25/5 ⭐

My first dive into Tchaikovsky's work. A girl falls through a crack between parallel worlds on Bodmin more. Neanderthals appear in London. The universe is under strain, cracking, and all these parallels have to work together to stop it collapsing

- The premise of this story was awesome and I appreciate the idea. At times it because a little boring or just too weaving and I found myself zoning out but overall it was enjoyable.

- I really enjoyed the interludes between the plot chapters where the reader is treated to the history of lots of different parallel earth's and their sentient species. I'm a sucker for prehistoric life and speculative evolution and this very much appealed to that side of me.

- The characters sometimes felt a little flat. There were a lot of them and I think that prevented some of them being fleshed out properly.

Enjoyable but not stunning sci-fi. Would recommend for those who enjoy speculative evolution, parallel worlds and portal sci-fi.

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I have read / listened to several or Adrian Tchaikovsky’s books now and this was probably the best. The interludes of alternative timelines and the different paths of evolution were themselves worthy the listen, but there was also a decent story stringing the whole thing together. The performance was also great; the accents were decent and didn’t make me cringe. Buy it.

Great

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Fast-moving speculative adventure with some thinly-veiled parallels to our world, ironically enough. Brilliantly narrated by Sophie Aldred - looking forward to finding more of her work on here.

Excellent allegorical adventure

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Great story that really makes you think just how small we are in the universe, or universes! Great performance by the narrator and really good storyline, will purchase the next instalment with my next credit!

Mind boggingly good!

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