The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This is one crazy book. Tchaikovsky always gives his readers mind bending concepts to grapple with but this reminds of the very end of Men in Black when the camera pans out from our planet, our solar system, our galaxy and then our entire universe only to reveal we are a marble being played with by a being of such scale that it makes one feel utterly insignificant. Not that I was there but it reminds of the first pictures of the earth as seen from space being sent back to earth and no one really gave a fig about the moon that was also visible. It’s that moment of realising what’s right in front of you and how fragile and impossibly beautiful that existence is.

Two amateur monster hunters, Lee and Mal, are drawn by credible footage to a location visited by 'The Birdmen'. The weather around them turns freezing cold and after they see with their own eyes a creature that could only have come from another world, they are separated and only Lee is returned to familiar surroundings. It’s four years later when Mal makes contact again.

Julian and Alison are members of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the first a field agent though definitely not James Bond and the second an intelligent and resourceful analyst. Tasked with keeping an eye on a brilliant theoretical mathematician, a trans woman known as Dr Kahn who has been threatened by radical forces, they are drawn into the otherworldly plot when strange people intercept a group on their way to do her harm and utterly eviscerate them whilst also kidnapping the aforementioned Doc.

It seems that the universe and in fact the multiverse is collapsing in on itself and the brightest minds are being gathered together to try and stop the end of everything we know.

Running parallel to this main storyline is a series of interludes that discuss different branches of evolution the world may have taken. If you like having your mind blown you’ll find these sections a great deal of fun. It’s a bit like David Attenborough finding a multiverse where creatures of all kinds have at some stage or another somehow gained an evolutionary foothold and for whatever reason have been the beings to progress. Space faring Trilobites, crabs that terraform an entire planet, rat/mole creatures that multiply faster than the world can kill them and so many more...nothing is off the table when you’re dealing with the imagination of Tchaikovsky.

In regards to these epic concepts it’s certainly an indomitable strength of his as a writer but it can also lead to a few moments where, as a non scientific reader, it is really hard to keep up. I’m totally okay with admitting there were a number of occasions in the final third of the book where things just went over my head so whilst I hesitate to say this book is for everyone, I personally enjoyed the ride and it’s one I’d recommend.