Book Review: Eden

A cinema-ready eco-horror, Tim Lebbon's Eden is sci-fi on crack, deftly mixing action, apocalyptic thrills, and climate science into an absolute page-turner. In the Book of Genesis, the Garden of Eden is the very definition of paradise, with man put in charge of guarding the Tree of Life. Here, it's a last ditch effort to save the planet from rising water levels, deforestation, and mass extinctions. Set in an unspecified future devastated by catastrophic climate change — when special protection areas called "Virgin Zones" have been established in an attempt to fence off humans and reverse the damage inflicted on the environment, allowing nature to reclaim, rebuild and restore the regions to their pristine condition — a team of thrill seekers plan a clandestine, illegal adventure to run across Eden, the oldest and wildest of the Earth's 13 virgin zones. It doesn't take long to put two and two together, and for things to go south. Lebbon's worldbuilding is delightfully creepy and unsettling — reminiscent of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy — even as he paints a tale of survival in an unchartered wilderness that's evolved in terrifying ways, allowing it fight back against human intrusion and protect itself. The ever-shifting landscape, coupled with harrowing anecdotes of indigenous populations being forcibly resettled, lend it an all-too-real urgency, but shallow and broad-stroke characterisation come in the way of rending it effective, thus diluting some of its wondrous, claustrophobic hylophobic premise. Fans of anxiety-inducing sci-fi horror-thrillers, look no further.