Review: Dark Eden

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dark Eden is a wonderfully unique novel written from the perspective of an accidental colony on a wholly alien world. The world itself appears to be a rogue planet with no nearby star to provide warmth or light, but is livable due to the volcanic nature of the planet. The indigenous animal life has evolved mechanisms to produce bioluminescence and the indigenous flora has evolved to produce both heat and light.

The accidental colony of humans have been living on Eden's surface for over five generations in the hopes of Earth's return. The civilization is a primitive hunter-gather culture that is deeply set in its ways and firmly entrenched in the stories of the first people who came to Eden. The people of Eden are clustered around a small and sacred area where the landing craft sat down years before. In their sacred stories, it is said the people of Earth will return and take them back to Earth.

Dark Eden takes the reader on an adventure in an environment that is totally alien to everything we take for granted on a planet like Earth, full of light and life. The reader experiences the heartaches and growing pains of a long-forgotten people living on a deserted planet who must learn to do more than just survive. The people of Eden must learn to look to the future rather than living in the past, but change and growth do not come easy as they must confront some of the darker aspects of the human condition in order to move beyond mere survival.



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