Mother of Eden

Summary: Starlight Brooking is bored bored with her communal island life on Eden and ventures into the dark dark realities of industrial progress. Will capitalism and misogyny destroy her or will she destroy them first?

A glimmer: "When Johnny told the story it was like a way out opening up. I felt excited, and my head filled up at once with thoughts about new possibilities." (7)

A dubiously self-aware spotlight: "And I tried not to notice how jealous I felt of the love she gave that child." (14)

Thoughts: A continuation of Beckett's examination of the perils of ambitious leadership, but where Dark Eden grips with sensawunda setting and character self-deceptions, Mother of Eden manipulates with a plot about the bad bad guys versus the good good guys. Fueled by provocative feminist and Marxist themes, it's enough to cause fist-clenching and teeth-gritting, but, counter-intuitively, the inordinately self-aware nature of the characters fosters a lack of narrative maturity from the first page (making Dark Eden all the more impressive for how it disguises its clearly YA elements).

Possible side-effects: Audiobook version may cause double adjective speaking. Your internal voice will become annoying annoying.

Rewriting the Edenic mantra: "We are here. We are here here." Right?

Save the UK Authors Telethon: This is the the third setting of total darkness I've read from new novels in the UK in the past year. Perhaps there is a need for a Vitamin D Care Package Drive for UK-based authors? (Dark Universe(1961) is still the best of perpetual darkness SF, by the way.)