A novel showing survival isn’t enough.
Dark Eden describes a culture born from ours, but one where time has turned technology into relics, stamped its mark on the language, and turned adult minds stagnant. People appear content to scrabble for survival in a world of dwindling resource, unwilling and unable to plan for any future.
Readers will want to know how people found themselves in this dark world, where cold seeps everywhere, even chilling the human spirit. There’s no mundane narration of the back story. The author depicts a piece of theatre, acting the ancient story out, showing how people stripped of technology strive to remember their past. What would have been a mundane rehash of events becomes a compelling, deeply moving scene.
Escape is down to the young, shown in convincing detail by Beckett, who refuse to accept the lack of future.
‘Dark Eden’ is an almost perfect piece of world building.