I received a free copy
of this book from Blogging for Books.
I want to give this
author some credit for an interesting idea. The closest things I can
compare it to are classic stories like Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss
Family Robinson, and maybe the more recent movie Castaway, though
it's very different in setting and tone from those.
Maybe that's one of my
main hang-ups with this story, too.
For me, the first
several chapters were a bit of a slog. I found it difficult to feel
much of anything except annoyance at any of the characters.
Everyone's interest seemed to solely focused on sleeping, eating, and
having sex (called “slipping” in this book). Family structures
are nonexistent, the consequences of which show up in the large
number of people with various kinds of genetic deformities.
It does get better
towards the middle and end, though not much outside of location has
changed for the main group of characters. I thought the chapters
being essentially written or narrated by different characters provide
some points of interest, for example in how different characters
viewed the same events or even each other.
One of the big problem
I had was with the planet itself. Perhaps I am only showing my
ignorance concerning how such a planet might really be, but if it's
either a free-floating rock not orbiting any star, or doesn't rotate
on an axis so that one side is always in night, then I'd think that
such a place would be almost as cold as the vacuum of space, and
humans could be unable to live there, especially in such a primitive
fashion.
Another problem with
the story could to traced to one of the big differences it has from
works like Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson. It's been
many years since I've read either of those books, but I do remember
that they were books solidly rooted in the Christian view of things,
thus the characters sought to improve their lots and had some idea of
how to do it.
For example, in his
book Orthodoxy, Chesterton wrote “Crusoe is a man on a small rock
with a few comforts just snatched from the sea: the best thing in the
book is simply the list of things saved from the wreck. The greatest
of poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because
Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea.” Orthodoxy (p. 56). Some
of the better scenes in Castaway are when the stranded character
opens up boxes to find out what's in them, and to find ways to make
use of those things in his current situation.
In Dark Eden, though,
the few things they have from Earth are kept locked away, taken out
and shown only at special occasions, more useless to them than museum
pieces. There is a lot of talk about things people had and did on
Earth, but that's about where it begins and ends. There's more to
admire in The Professor on Gilligan's Island making a contraption out
of coconuts, bamboo, and one of Ginger's hairpins then the sad
community in this book.
I can't say that I
really like this book, though I didn't come away disliking it all
that much, either. Some of the talk about slipping (sex) got a bit
much for me, though the overall casual sexual practices (and the
results) were most uncomfortable. Still, there is a good story there,
but for me, I'm not sure it's worth slogging into again.
No comments:
Post a Comment