The Doors of Eden

Typical Tchaikovsky. Great beginning, great end, lots of meandering boring pages in the middle.
I adore the man for his great, unique, mind boggling ideas but I can not get onboard with the execution. The author can't write dialogue for the life of him and relies on repetitive, sloggy inner monologue and info dumps. It's just not for me.

4.5 stars.

WHAT?? WHAT?? The other day I was looking for a film to watch, I skimmed the channels and ended up at the Syfi channel where a man was being chased through the snow by another man dressed in a rubber shark costume. The man in the rubber shark costume was being controlled by an evil genius (played by a lesser known Kardashian) who was a war with a tribe of tech savvy lobsters (played by former members of NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys). In the end, the world was saved by a flying wood louse and a talking blancmange.

This book is 10 times madder than that.

A heady mix of..

PRIMEVAL, DR WHO, SPOOKS and .............. FRIENDS??

Lee and her girlfriend Mal are investigating an alleged monster sighting when Mal suddenly disappears in a blizzard. Mal's mysterious return 4 years later is of interest to MI5 agent Julian Sabreur. He's investigating a crime committed by a group of people who don't quite look human, and Mal is somehow involved.

Then the sci-fi aspect of this novel kicks in as it's revealed there are worlds parallel to our own Earth. Evolution has diverged at a different point in each world and created a different dominant species. As cracks form between worlds and monsters slip through, humanity may lose its position at the top of the food chain.

I would have preferred to see more of Lee and Mal, and less of the MI5 agent Julian. He's less of a suave James Bond type and more of a grumpy everyday man with a struggling marriage. How much you like him probably depends on how well you can relate to him.

The parts of the other parallel worlds that we did get to see were excellent, and I would have loved to read more about that. For me the best part of sci-fi is reading about a completely different setting - whether that's the future or somewhere in space. So the bits set in “present day” Earth weren't as interesting to me.

Tedious

Long, slow, and uninvolving..As ever, Adrian's concepts are amazing, but this time let down by too may characters I had no interest in. This took forever to read and I'm glad it's over.

The first quarter or so of this one is really good and drew me into an intriguing mystery. The climax is exciting, satisfying and technically interesting. So why did I find this to be such a frustrating book? The ideas are good, and the set up is strong, but it sags badly in the middle. There's a large principal cast, and the momentum is slowed dramatically as the author tries to find something for each of them to do. In all honesty, I think this could have been a much better book if some of them had been amalgamated, scrapped or relegated to a smaller role. It also doesn't help that the villain turns out to be fairly unimaginative and one dimensional. Another draft or a ruthless edit could have produced a really good book, but we've had settle for something that is less than that. It's decent and readable, but it won't last long in the memory I fear.