Mother of Eden

March 30, 2015
Beckett’s second Eden Saga SF novel (after Dark Eden) once again fails to stretch beyond the familiar. Several generations after John Redlantern shook up the stunted culture of the planet Eden, humankind’s new home, its residents are split into factions. Starlight, a young woman who lives in a small tribe but dreams big, finds herself part of a political struggle when she falls for Greenstone, the new head of a violent, patriarchal oligarchy. She becomes a pseudoreligious stand-in for Gela, Eden’s first woman. Starlight tries to make life better for women and the serfs, but she predictably pushes too far, leading to tragedy. There are substantial echoes of what has come before, including multiple narrators, linguistic quirks, and garbled accounts of the first book’s events. However, Beckett frustratingly refuses to deviate from real-world historical lines, and the extreme villainy of Greenstone’s rivals (along with the recurring threat of rape against Starlight), significantly detract from a strongly fleshed-out world that’s sadly just too close to ours to stand on its own. Agent: John Jarrold, John Jarrold Literary.

This sequel to DARK EDEN finds the inhabitants of New Earth spread amid a number of communities, some of which cling to the old ways 150 years after being stranded on this hostile planet. But others are beginning to question the old ways. The story is told in the first person from a number of points of view, each of which has a separate narrator. Each narrator has a distinctive personality and style, and provides variations on the dominant accent. There are enough differences to help the listener keep track of the characters and the weaving threads of the plot, and enough similarities to suggest the isolation of the planet. The background of the prior book is helpful, though not essential. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine