Blimey! Eden’s Shore is a novel that demands a lot from you as you read but it’s a rewarding experience.

Angel sets sail with the intention of setting up a new colony in Brazil, creating his own utopia, but he unknowingly takes a passage on a slave ship full of interesting characters. When they are shipwrecked after a mutiny, he gets involved in all kinds of difficulties and crises.

The writing is dense and lyrical with a real dreamlike quality - I found myself having to read passages several times to work out what was going on and even then I wasn’t sure. Reality and imagination are often intertwined and switching between points of view sometimes made it hard to follow. I think a lot of the subtle points of the novel passed me by but I did enjoy the exploration of empire, conquest and the eighteenth century.

It’s sold as historical fiction but it almost doesn’t fit into that category - there’s a lot going on, lots of imagination and strangeness.

It’s definitely not one I’d say I enjoyed reading as it was so challenging but I’m glad I read it!

Oisín Fagan’s Eden’s Shore is a bold and ferociously imaginative novel that plunges the reader into the turbulence of the late eighteenth century—a time when empires expanded, revolutions brewed, and the line between idealism and delusion was perilously thin.

At the centre of this sweeping historical epic stands Angel Kelly, an Irishman driven by utopian dreams, who sets sail from Liverpool with grand notions of founding a commune in Brazil. It’s a noble ambition, but one that’s quickly undone by a mutiny aboard the Atlas, leaving him marooned in an unnamed Spanish colony on the edge of the known world.

What follows is a sprawling, intricately layered narrative that explores the collapse of ideals in the face of realpolitik, violence, and the ever-churning machinery of colonial power. Fagan populates his pages with an extraordinary array of characters—revolutionaries and pirates, capitalists and aristocrats, enslaved people, spies, and soldiers—each sketched with vivid intensity. This is not a world of moral binaries but one riddled with compromise, betrayal, and the desperate search for agency in the shadow of empire.


The novel’s scope is staggering, but what’s most impressive is Fagan’s control of tone and texture. His prose is dense, lyrical, and dreamlike yet unflinchingly visceral. The writing is drenched in dark wit with a philosophical propensity and a deep awareness of colonial entanglements that lends the novel both urgency and depth.

Edens Shore is messy, magnificent, and mad. It is historical fiction, but like nothing you've read before. It demands attention and rewards it generously. With this work, Fagan establishes himself not only as a writer of great ambition but as a singular voice capable of reimagining history through a lens that is as unflinching as it is humane.

Many thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy via NetGalley. As always, this is an honest review.

Irish author Oisin Fagan sets his latest novel in the eighteenth century and introduces us to the idealist and naive Angel Kelly who aims to create on a piece of land in Brazil a society where everything is just and fair, but first he’s got to get there.

As a passenger on the The Atlas he sets sail not knowing that he is on a slave ship and the crew are less than harmonious. It is only a matter of time...

So far, so good. I got involved with the grim realities on board ship, strong vivid characters are established but there were times when I felt a little unsure as I couldn’t quite grasp where the author was leading readers and this sense of disassociation increased as the novel progressed.

On the very striking cover a comment from The Observers states; “A writer out to do whatever the hell he wants” and I applaud such independence of spirit and was looking forward to some fresh original writing and ideas but the writer has to take the reader with them and I certainly got left behind. For the last third of the novel I found it very difficult to keep up with what was going on. Those vivid characters lost a lot of focus and those I found myself looking out for in the early sections I just couldn’t care about because they didn’t seem to hold their identities. A nightmarish quality seems to increasingly pervade the narrative once the characters reach land. I was unsure who was dead, who was alive, plot-lines became vague as well as cluttered and I had to accept I didn’t know what the author was aiming for. Keeping the reader alongside might have been as simple as arranging the text differently, maybe sub-headings so we knew where we were from time to time. There was no need to compromise on the author’s vision (and by the end I’m not sure what it was) but there is a requirement to support readers to some extent and it didn’t happen for me on this occasion.

Feeling bewildered and looking at Good Reads I saw more “did not finish” than I expect everyone working with this book would hope. I did get to the end hoping that things would slot into place but at this point I just wanted it to be over. I’m miffed with this book because the opening third suggested really positive things and it disappointed. There is no doubt that this is the work of a highly proficient wordsmith with strong story telling skills but they weren’t used here to sustain a cohesive tale. My patience was tried by this novel, there was the strong start and so many glimmers throughout but ultimately I didn’t enjoy feeling so confused.

“Eden’s Shore” is published on 10th April 2025 by John Murray. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

In the 18th century, a young Irish man named Angel decides he will take his inheritance and get rich off land in Brazil. He boards a ship unaware of the type of ship it is & there is a mutiny. He ends up shipwrecked not in Brazil.

I found this quite difficult to follow? People disappear and die and reappear… is it real? The writing has a dreamlike quality which makes it a little harder to figure out.

I don’t typically read a lot of books similar to this (perhaps there aren’t any! I wouldn’t know!) so that could be why I got lost. I am very sure there is a keen audience for this book but I’m just not one of them sadly.

2.5/5 stars*

Firstly thank you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Eden's Shore explores the brutality and chaos of colonialism, following a mutiny aboard a ship bound for Latin America. Oisín Fagan takes on this complex topic and precisely highlights the greed and disregard shown by colonisers. The first POV character we meet, Angel Kelly, naively boards the ship to create a community in Brazil, treating it like a gallant adventure, yet the events that follow turn this entirely on its head.

With this comes violence, horror and grief as power-hungry men attempt to form the colony in their own image, whatever it takes. I'm not particularly good with graphic descriptions in books as I'm rather squeamish, but some of the imagery made for difficult reading at times. I understand why it was included, but I'm including a content warning for this in particular.

There are a lot of characters, particularly POV characters which can make the plot challenging to follow at times. I was most intrigued by Llewyn's story. I was also anticipating that Esa would appear more in the book. I found her compelling and would have liked to have seen a bigger role for her.

I don't think read was for me in the end, but I can definitely see the appeal for historical fiction fans and those in search for their next epic read, with plenty of characters, locations and time jumps to get stuck into.

CW: graphic violence, slavery, racism, death