Infinite earth's, infinite dimensions and infinite ways for things to evolve. A good read however its so crammed full of these metaphysical what-ifs that it reaches the point of silly very quickly. I'm usually rooting for novels like this but I think some poor choices were made which cast a shadow on what could have been a real classic of the genre. For all of that though, it is very well presented, good characters and for the most part it holds together well. You'll either love it or sit aghast thinking "ohhh no, why'd you go and put that in there"

The Doors of Eden isn’t so much genre spanning as genre destroying. It begins with a pair of cryptozoologists hunting for birdmen on Bodmin Moor, and ends with… well, that would be spoiling it. Along the way, it flits through virtually every fiction genre going, with so many twists and turns that it makes you dizzy. Take note of everything that happens, as none of it is wasted.

This novel should be an utter mess and completely beyond belief, and it’s a testament to Tchaikovsky’s skill that it’s most definitely not either. He leads a diverse cast of disparate characters through challenges great and small, and somehow creates an engrossing read that doesn’t suffer by becoming increasingly complex as it unravels. I generally hate the “If you like ‘x’ author, you’ll love this” comparisons, but in this case, I’ll stick my neck out and suggest a hybrid of Neal Asher, Michael Crichton, and Douglas Adams.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Utterly engaging and compelling read.

The book has a range of characters and has the capacity to make you laugh and react to it.

It is well written and a very good read.

1st of all kudos to Tchaikovsky for the f/f and m/m relationships and not making them into a big deal. They were just normal the same as the straight relationships in the book.

This is such a difficult review to write because I absolutely love sci-fi and I was so excited to jump into this one but it just didn't do it for me. It fell completely flat. In this book you follow 6 points of view. Now, don't get me wrong I have read and loved books with that many points of view before but in this there was just far too many things going on and i just couldn't keep up. Every chapter would pose more questions than answers and I found that once I had gotten to the end of the book I was none the wiser as to what had actually fricking happened.

The thing that I disliked the most about this book was how frustrated it made me. It was too jumpy and there was no flow to it. Despite so much happening at once the book felt really slow and at the beginning it felt like I was reading 3 different books.

Some writers seem to have an almost inexhaustible source of ideas and foremost among them is Adrian Tchaikovski. Science fiction is the literature of ideas and so it follows usually that good ideas make good science fiction. This is a story on a familiar sf theme: doors or gates opening on one or many alternative worlds. Like much good literature of the genre the concept is based on the controversial "many worlds" theory as expounded by the physicist Hugh Everett giving it that "just possible" feel that makes it compelling and provides an endless source for stories and interpretations. This is hardly surprising since the theory proposes that there are limitless worlds in an infinite universe. As you might expect there are a rich cast of characters human, animal and thoroughly inhuman set in a kaleidoscope of settings both strange and oddly familiar. This take on the subject is inventive and well written and the richness of the story made it a gripping read.

Where do I start? I was intrigued by the comments I had heard about this book being "Science fiction for the non Sci-fi reader" and yes I would probably agree with that to a point. While there are many aspects of your general thriller like a David Baldacci or James Patterson in this, with ex-SAS officers, Secret Service data analysts, opportunist billionaires etc, there is still a lot of 'science' to get your head around. This is certainly not a book you can skim through as there is so much detail and many different characters and story lines to get through. Simply put, it is a story set in modern day London about what the world might be like if there were 'cracks' in time through which people and 'monsters' from other worlds could slip though back and forth. Imagine if there were many different time lines running parallel of how a species may have evolved differently to what happened in our evolution and somehow they could pass into our world and we into theirs. I could see definite touches of things like Cloud Atlas or the TV series Primeval. This is a very visual book which would make great TV and I really loved the interspersed chapters on how these different species may have evolved in the form of a science journal. From an intriguing start with two teenage girls discovering 'bird-men' and one of the girls vanishing, I felt the middle bit did drag a bit and could have been cut down to keep up the pace, but it definitely picked up towards the end. If this sounds like your type of book then make sure you have a good amount of time to give to the story and you won't be disappointed!

Time to put my prejudices up front. I have enjoyed (and been actively evangelical at points) about the recent Tchaikovsky I have read. However, I have a real problem with modern sci fi fantasy set in London. London fantasies are generally the worst, I know it is me, not it as a genre, but sadly Neverwhere and its bloody tube stations as fantasy characters burnt me and I have rarely been able to go back. The Doors Of Eden is sci fi, not fantasy, but it does have a whole load of character types and tropes that set my teeth on edge, from good but trouble secret service agents, to hot LARPing lesbians through the compromised merc and of course the mysterious but super evil CEO. So The Doors Of Eden was always going to be fighting with a hand tied behind its back against my prejudices. And its left hook probably got me to a draw at best.

The Doors Of Eden is a big chunky adventure which starts as a mysterious portal fantasy, shimmies around espionage and ends up in a multiverse spanning chose your own adventure for survival. What I have enjoyed elsewhere about Tchaikovsky is his ability to quickly sum up a big idea and then fold it into his plots, Children Of Time managed to jump generations and evolutionary epochs and tell the same story but with multiple protagonists. Here he has a bit of that going on, interludes where he invents entire evolutionary timelines which are exceptional fun, and do inevitably become relevant too, but then we get back to a car chase or and escape from a hotel in Kings Cross (it doesn't help me that the London in this book - Camden / Kings Cross / Mount Pleasant - are bits I know exceptionally well - even if he gets it right).. And like I am always going to question a British sci-fi novel for being set in a country that has little global importance, that is doubled down here when the mutliverse spanning crew is 60% from London and really only one of them should be there.

None of this means I didn't enjoy it, but it suffers from a sense of scale and a poorly defined cataclysm that never worked for me. I liked some of the more formal risks he takes with its ending (albeit the Brexit timeline is too much), but it feels like an older piece of work that has been retooled now he can get anything published. Not least because a set piece involving Mail Rail is now hopelessly out of date, and everyone is still pretty much using their phones as - er - phones. I know its me, and I think others will lap the London stuff up. Whether they also have some of the other issues with it depends on how they feel about multiverse stories with finite branches (again, I am sanguine at best on this front - having been through the New 52, and Fringe). But I could read the alternate evolution stories of Earth forever though.

[NetGalley ARC]

Lee and Mal two girls went off to Bodmin Moor to seek a stone semicircle. To find monsters. One ,Lee came back Mal went missing for four years before turning up.
So starts a scramble to find and heal cracks in the time universe. Through these cracks there appeared monsters that the two girls wished that they hadn't found.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is the fore runner of new science fiction with an imagination beyond anything that has gone before. He has this balance between humour and scary science.Great to read and appreciate .

Love his books, and this one is a continuance of his skill, from the first book I read from him, Children of Time.

Really fascinating tale of multiverses, which is the explanation for multiple worlds in different dimensions.

I think this is a good read, however i think its best suited as a film. I would also change the main characters to kids because with all the fantastical worlds being shown, it doesnt resonate with me as an adult, it reads more like a childrens book, and i imagined it as such as i was reading it which was strange for me but thats how i visualised it.

I would also add illustrations because the descriptions of the creatures are amazing but having a hardback with illustrations would be incredible.

If you enjoy YA Sci-fi then you’ll love The Doors of Eden. A group of unlikely characters are sought out and thrown together by entities from an other Earth to work in collaboration to save the universe. Adventures abound as the individuals travel through ‘cracks’ from one world to the next, escaping within the nick of time with seemingly inexplicable consequences. During their absence from home Earth, shared otherworldly knowledge of their own future allows the protagonists to act on deliberate decisions as to their place in the world.

This book is phenomenal! I'd never read the author before but am now going to read his other books. The world-building, science, relationships and multiple viewpoints were woven so beautifully together, I couldn't put it down. Okay, the science went pretty much over my head, but reading it was never hard work. A lot of books have the feeling of just being dashed off, but this book, I can't even fathom the time and energy that went into it. Highly recommend!

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.

I’ve never read a book by the author before so I didn’t know what to expect. I found that once I got into it, I did enjoy it. I will also try other books by the author. It took me awhile to get into the book but I did eventually.
This is a sci-fi with parallel worlds which I really enjoyed. The worldbuilding was amazing and I loved some of the set pieces that happened. Some parts really stood out to me and they will stick with me for awhile. There is so much and the more evolutionary side of things was a little confusing for me at first.
The characters were all okay, there is a wide range of them and there are multiple povs in the book. I was a little confused with the different povs but I got to enjoy them and liked when they crossed over. I also enjoyed the thriller aspect to the book as a character disappears and reappears years later which was interesting.
There are also interludes of a book discussing other potential earths which was interesting but I also felt it pulled away from the story a little.
I loved the diversity. There are trans characters, lesbian characters and more. I really love seeing diversity in books.
Overall it was an okay read for me. I think a lot of people will love this one.

This is a good novel, but at one point the author succumbs to the temptation to be lazy (perhaps even ignorant) about his political villainy and this is why he misses out on the five star recommendation that he might have got.

It is about parallel worlds, but not necessarily parallel universes because if you travel far enough from Earth after reality has branched, the rest of the universe has not necessarily changed at all. Or, if it has, the changes may be unrelated to any change on Earth.

The novel builds on small ideas to convey bigger ones, which facilitates the suspension of disbelief necessary to its enjoyment. It starts off with a small adventure gone wrong and a mystery, and it also starts off with a pair of young lesbian heroines, which is not a bad thing. (I once wrote a whole series of SF novels about an entire planetary colony of lesbian heroines. Which I wouldn’t get away with doing in the 21st century as it’s turning out so far.) The parallel worlds theme allows for both adventure and whimsy (there is a world where super-intelligent big cats suborn all other species to their will) and the author has some fun with the attempts of staid MI5 officers to understand the weird. Mystery turns to conspiracy and then existential crisis, for the universe and not just all the parallel Earths. The conspiracy surrounds the character of Daniel Rove, who for most of the novel is convincingly and accurately drawn as a sociopath (and insider-dealing venture-capitalist).

Parties in conflict must be turned, somehow, into a coalition to solve the existential crisis. This happens slightly too easily, really, given how divergent the world views are of people from the alternative worlds. I was disappointed that neither the big cats nor the intelligent bird-man dinosaurs were asked to contribute to the solution. Cat-logic can be brilliant, in its own way.

Despite dealing with parallel Earths, the narrative is mostly sequential until the end is nigh, at which point there are several alternative narratives. There is a good reason for this, though, and it’s not just an attempt to meet an overall “mind-blowing weirdness” target set by a deranged publisher. None of the divergent narratives is a solution to the crisis: the fact that there are divergent narratives is itself the solution, which is not what the coalition of experts solving the crisis want to hear.

It is at this point that the Rove character, hitherto an insider-trader and laissez-faire capitalist, turns into a 21st century Oswald Mosley, complete with an England-fixation. Of course, in the 21st century you are not allowed to hate anyone, except racists, so Rove has to have a “racist” placard hung round his neck so the author can decently lynch him.

The real Oswald Mosley was the anti-thesis of a laissez-faire capitalist. He was First Secretary in a Labour Cabinet and he was economically hard left, just like Hitler and Mussolini. The state was to own everything and everyone. He was personally wealthy, but he did not earn any of it, and this is the key to understanding Oswald Mosley. As George Orwell observed of his classmates at Eton, it was extremely common for someone with an expensive education and a socking great trust fund, to be a hard-left socialist. It still is. Most people who have worked for their own bread are sympathetic to the idea that it is a matter of natural justice for people to actually benefit from their own efforts. When you deny that this is so, as Mosley consistently did, and as many Momentum activists do today, then you and the slave-trader become one flesh. Pharaoh, Lenin, Mosley and Hitler were all willing to make people slaves to build their Utopia.

If the Mosley persona is just meant to be shorthand for “appalling racist” then it’s still problematical, because sociopaths are available in both racist and anti-racist versions. The former blatantly try to divide communities to manipulate them, the latter are generally less blatant and this means they actually do more damage, to individual victims and the fabric of society, because their subtle lies can divide brothers and sisters, even husband and wife, in a way that racist lies cannot do.

Imagine if homo sapiens had been beaten to the post in the evolution race and it was trilobytes, or fish, or a little rat like mammal, that developed an advanced civilisation. and imagine if it is not 'instead of' but 'as well as'. Not in the same world though, this is a many worlds novel: all possibilities are real on some timeline.

And of course there would be no story if the many worlds did not intersect as the barriers that divide them begin to break down. It's good stirring stuff and the novel is well constructed. I thought some of the characters were a little formulaic, in particular the villain, but that is a minor quibble. On the whole a most enjoyable read.

Tchaikovsky's weird alternate biospheres are the highlight of this first contact thriller-esque sci fi

The Doors of Eden is a novel about alien worlds, as you've never seen them before - because every one of these alien worlds is, in fact, our earth, in a timeline where the development of sentience spun off a little differently each time. Within the confines of our planets fixed geological ages: the early conditions for life, the Permian extinction, the era of dinosaur potential (although not always dinosaurs), the meteor strike and the march to our own present, The Doors of Eden imagines planets full of immortal trilobites, isolationist orthocones, raptors, rodents, asshole cats (naturally), giant amphibious scorpions and of course some spiders, all of whom inherit the earth at some point and must then figure out how to keep going with the hand they are dealt. Most of the inhabitants of most of these worlds remain unaware of each other most of the time, but for a few, knowledge of each others' existence comes either accidentally or deliberately through accessing doors between realities - and its these convergences which create the plot of this book.

We open with the story of Mal and Lee, two young women who take on cryptid hunting as a hobby, only to have it go horribly wrong when they accidentally go through a portal on Bodmin Moor and find themselves being chased by weird dinosaur birds. Lee makes it back, her girlfriend Mal does not, and Lee spends the next four years trying to make sense of the whole experience. Elsewhere, government agents Julian and Alison are investigating a criminal case into which mathematician Kay Amal Khan has been drawn, and when the gory death of a group of thugs implicates a man who looks rather unlike the average homo sapiens and a woman who looks very much like an older, grittier Mal, storylines collide, a creepy interdimensional computer genius racist gets drawn into the mix, and everyone finds themselves in a dimension hopping thriller with more episodes and reversals than I can reasonably summarise here, with the universe at stake.

Most of the species of the various earths are introduced through extract from an in-universe academic text which outlines the different divergence points in chronological order, although in the case of several of the main species, we meet their representatives before the worlds they come from are fleshed out. The introduction of Neanderthals - who are able to operate more comfortably in our world than, say, the three foot tall ferret creatures or the gargantuan space bugs - drives the sense of early contact in The Doors of Eden, and the juxtaposition of Neanderthal society and culture with Homo Sapiens remains an interesting aspect of the story whenever it comes to the fore. In contrast, the inclusion of the "birdmen" is interesting but significantly more episodic, and some of the other species representatives are more explanatory factors for elements of worldbuilding that would otherwise feel like deus ex machinae than active "characters" as such.

What I liked about The Doors of Eden had far more to do with its concept than its somewhat disjointed plot - for most of the novel I was content to be reading a story that was just a vehicle for exploring alternate evolution and, towards the end of the novel, the concept of alternate timelines in general, rather than having any specific aspirations of most of the characters. At times, Doors of Eden is held back by the lack of role for its most interesting humans (Mal, Lee and Kay), instead relying on the viewpoints of bigoted genius Rowe's henchman Lucas, and the less objectionable but somewhat bland Julian and Alison. All of the present day narrative comes from a human perspective, which makes sense in that The Doors of Eden is already too jam packed for a deep dive into what alternative cognition would look like for these species from the inside, but it does mean we are sometimes focused on painfully incomplete human interpretations of alien behaviour.

That said, The Doors of Eden does keep a lot of balls in the air and its three act plot - a first act with equal parts horror and real-world thriller, a second of dimension-hopping adventure, and a third of time-bending science exploration and world-saving shenanigans - covers a ton of fast-paced, interesting ground that it's impossible not to get swept along with. While it can be challenging to follow a narrative where many of the characters thrown together through circumstance haven't even bothered to learn each others' names, by the endgame there's an intriguing core of human and non-human characters whose fates we are (with the exception of Rowe and Lucas) pretty invested in. Some of the personal and interpersonal outcomes are harder to root for - am I supposed to be cheering on a character cheating on their spouse just because I can see they have chemistry with the person they are cheating with? - but, hey. The end of the world is at stake here, so there is something we can all generally agree on even if the particulars of who ends up in what dimension banging who might not be something we should dwell on.

Fundamentally, though The Doors of Eden is a tricky book for me to put a final quantification on, simply because I don't think it landed where I expected it to be, and I'm not sure what to make of what it was. As speculative science fiction, this is an awesome premise, and there's so much chewy worldbuilding included that it basically carries the novel on its own. The mash up of science fiction and thriller adventure has potential but it never quite squares the circle of balancing the action between characters who are interesting and fresh-faced, and those who are experienced and capable, sidelining the former while the latter remain a bit of a snoozefest. Still, this is solid Tchaikovsky and as an exploration of sentience with an awesome hook, that kept me searching Wikipedia for real-life critters of bygone ages, I have to give this one a thumbs up for keeping me entertained, and if it sounds like your thing you could do much worse than to give it a go.

I should preface this review by saying that I'm still relatively new to the world of Science Fiction. Yes, I've devoured Becky Chambers, and the Children of Time Books but other than that my experience with the genre is spotty at best. So you'll have to forgive me if a fair amount of this book went over my head...but I can only review from my own experience and I'm reading more and more science fiction every year - I'll be a pro in no time - for now, I'll just have to rely on search engines to work out some of the weirder aspects of this story...

But on to the story. The actual plot/setting of this book (because the two are very much intertwined) is one that, at first glance, feels familiar. I don't know if I want to spell it out in this review because this really is a book to discover on your own. But let's just say it's a science fiction trope/idea onto which Tchaikovsky puts his own spin. 

Oh wait I checked the description and it does say parallel Earths so I can talk about that. It's parallel Earths. But there's an element of the Children of Time books in there - it's a look at the what could have been of evolution, and how those worlds might find a way to interact. It's weird, and a lot of the science definitely went all the way over my historian's head - but it's also fascinating and even if none of it has any basis in real science it feels convincing enough to me that I wouldn't know (I don't know - genuinely - this much science scares me). 

I thought that hinging this weird and wonderful world on these very human characters was a great choice. We have Lee, the Lesbian Cryptid hunter, Julian the somewhat jaded MI5 agent and Dr Khan, a trans scientist whose works become increasingly important as the book goes on. I actually enjoyed all of these characters - and some of the other side characters we meet along the way. I'd have maybe enjoyed a little more time spent on the character side of things but I think that's my own preference shining through. 

One thing of which I was a little dubious was the representation of Dr Khan - I loved that Tchaikovsky had a trans character in his book and her own character was good, there was just a lot of essential description of what she looked like before - at multiple points, that just hit a wrong nerve for me. I don't mind characters mentioning that they had known her before, but the description was unnecessary and felt poorly done - just say "I knew her before" (if it is plot-relevant) and focus on who she is now. It was one little niggle that set me on edge throughout the book and was frustrating. Admittedly I read these things with more of a magnifying glass than a lot of people might, and certainly more so than I might have done three years ago - but that's my experience. 

This is a long book, surprisingly so, coming in at over 600 pages in hardback - but there's a lot to pack in. If you're thinking about reading this I'd suggest pacing yourself, trying to take all of it in in one go is going to give you a headache!

Overall I mostly thought this was an excellent book - though one that will definitely benefit from multiple re-reads as I'm sure I didn't take it all in first time. I can't speak to the audiobook for The Doors of Eden but the Children of Time audiobook is excellent (though at the time of writing I can't see who the narrator will be) so that might be a good option if, like me, you are easily confused. 

My rating: a strong 3.5/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley - all opinions are my own. 

The Doors of Eden publishes August 20th (at the time of writing)

I went into this book without any expectations and found it to be very enjoyable.

It has many points of view which I initially found a bit confusing but once i got into it I found I was quite grateful and intrigued by all of the POVs.
The plot was well fleshed out and i loved the way the book is written, its gripping and interesting and manages to offer lots of integral information without info dumps.

Would definitely recommend.

I loved this science fiction novel which was full of parallel worlds and giant creatures.

The world building was amazing and there were so many intricate details. This is a book that you really need to pay attention to.

I loved Mal and Lee and their relationship. You can clearly tell right from the start that they are in love.

Then Mal disappears, seemingly into mid-air as there is no body and no trace of her. This book is so cryptic and, at times, scary. You can really sink your teeth into this one!

This book was one hell of a rollercoaster ride, indeed: there is something to be said about starting a novel with little or no idea, or expectations, about what you’re going to find, and it’s like embarking on a journey into a strange land, not knowing what kind of peoples or beasts you will find. The Doors of Eden is exactly like that, and not just in a figurative way, because the phrase “worlds enough and time” - which ends up being quoted at some point - describes perfectly the core concept of the story.

It all starts like a mystery, with two girls - Lee and Mal - taking a trip in search of outlandish creatures and with Mal disappearing into what looks like the portal into a strange, impossible world, the disappearance being recorded by the authorities like an accident and Lee having to deal with survivor’s guilt and the burden of being a witness to something that defies reason. That is, until four years later, when Mal reappears out of the blue while freakish events start sending the world into turmoil, adding new elements - science fiction, pure science, thriller, just to name a few - to the narrative mix.

At the same time, MI5 agents Julian and Allison are investigating the home incursion on renowned physicist Kay Amal Khan, and soon find themselves facing inexplicable episodes like untraceable phone calls or information windows appearing on computers disconnected from power. Not to mention some equally eerie matters like the strange individuals, looking like one of the discarded branches of humanity, popping up here and there, or the shady activities of tycoon Rove, whose figurative fingerprints seem to be all over the place.

What it all boils down to, as it’s evident from the incident of Mal’s disappearance, is that the theory of parallel worlds, where evolution took widely different paths, is not a theory at all and for some reason the barriers between these worlds are getting thinner, with an ever-increasing risk of intrusions between realities. Dr. Kahn’s theoretical work postulated this possibility, but now that it’s become a dangerous, potentially deadly reality, everyone is after her - either to fix or exploit the situation…

If Adrian Tchaikowsky’s previous book, Children of Time, put me in connection with his notions on the path of evolution of creatures different from mankind, this new novel takes that concept and multiplies it for what looks like an infinite number of instances: between the chapters dedicated to the core events and characters, there are interludes written in the form of an academic lecture on parallel evolution, where every possible permutation of intelligent life is shown with an abundance of fascinating detail. Where at first I saw that these… interruptions as a distraction from the story, after a while I understood they were an integral part of it, better still, they were the way to introduce the crucial idea at the basis of the novel - and to show how these endless shifts were the result of small changes growing into an avalanche effect.

The logical progress from the primordial ooze to these mind-boggling alternate Earths is mind-blowing and nothing short of fascinating: the way Tchaikowsky turns the words on the page into a cinematic depiction of steamy jungles or endless seas, peopled by the most bizarre creatures, is nothing short of riveting while being at the same time an informative and easily understandable presentation of the infinite possibilities of evolution. I can make no claim on scientific knowledge of the processes of evolution, but reading those sections of the book was no struggle at all, while it proved equally fascinating and a close look into this author’s scope of imagination.

The characters are as carefully drawn as the background in which they move: Julian and Allison have something of a Mulder & Scully vibe, in that they are attracted by the spookier aspects of their investigation and are not afraid of getting their proverbial feet wet, while the antithesis between her willingness to take the weirdest of clues at face value and his very British adherence to propriety serves to define them well and make them quite relatable. One of my favorite characters is that of Dr. Kahn: highly intelligent and amusingly sarcastic, she’s quite different from the prototype of the brilliant-but-detached scientist in that she’s very rooted in reality and possesses a huge capacity for empathy, particularly when she finds herself among non-human creatures (I will come back to them in a short while) and realizes, after the first understandable moments of revulsion, that no matter the shape, people are still people with all of their fears, desires and needs. And she, being a transgender and the continued object of hostility and scorn, is best qualified to see beyond mere outward appearances.

The “bad guys” are given as much depth as the “heroes” and if it’s simply impossible to share Rove’s world-view or his ultimate goal - particularly when the plan is revealed in its complexity, ruthlessness and longtime preparation - it’s also easy to see where he comes from and what shaped his mindset, not least because his kind finds far too many real-life examples in the present world. Rove’s main henchman Lucas is also an interesting character, balanced between opportunistic choices and some faint glimmers of a conscience, which gift him with more facets than one would expect from someone in his position and… career choice.

I want to reserve a special mention to the non-human creatures I spoke of before, from one of the many Earths: once again Adrian Tchaikowsky managed to offer a different point of view on animals I find absolutely repulsive, and to turn them into beings I could empathize with. If it looked difficult with the spiders from Children of Time, here it seemed impossible, because we’re talking about rats - yes, critters that manage to make those spiders look like house pets and who come on the scene Hobbit-sized and even more revolting for their humanlike appearance:

"""They were hunched, half the size of a man, wearing rubbery black uniforms with gas masks and goggles and wielding ugly-looking weapons designed for use up close against crowds, because that was their entire life where they came from."""

If you add the detail of their world being literally swarming with them due to unchecked breeding, the picture being painted here is something straight from the worst of nightmares. And yet the author is able to humanize these rats, give them distinct personalities and add poignancy to their appearance: much of it is due to the character of Dr. Rat, but also to a scene in which a whole family group runs for safety bringing all their worldly possession with them. Ludicrous as this might sound, in that moment I thought of the cute rats in Disney’s Cinderella, and stopped seeing these as the scurrying vermin that would otherwise have me run for cover. Yes, Adrian Tchaikowsky did it again…

Prepare for a full immersion in a huge story teeming with amazing ideas and graced with as much heart in it as there is science. It might feel like far too much at times, but it’s a journey totally worth taking.