Darwinia

In 1912, "The Miracle" occurs. Most of Europe is suddenly replaced by an entirely new landscape, known as Darwinia. With strange creatures and new perils, it's a completely unknown and unexplored land. Guildford Law, photographer, leaves his wife and child behind in the newly re-founded London, and joins an expedition to explore the newly unknown continent and as they face not only the dangers of the unknown wildlife and environment, but also attacks from bounty hunters sent to sabotage their mission by some unknown source.

It's reminiscent of older science fiction such as Edgar Rice Burroughs or Jules Verne, and of Victorian tales of exploration. However, part way through things take a rather bizarre twist as the reason for the "Miracle" is revealed, first to the reader, and only much later to the actual characters. What starts as a somewhat bleak exploration-of-the-new-frontier style story turns into something more like The Matrix, as the nature of reality itself is called into question.

Overall interesting and thought-provoking, but a rather bleak read. Many of the characters aren't particularly likeable, and/or are killed off abruptly or otherwise meet not particularly happy fates. I wasn't a big fan of the early and abrupt reveal of the origin of the Miracle to readers; I would rather have learned about it as the characters did. Still, there's some thought-provoking ideas and interesting philosophy, and the book definitely goes into unexpected places. I'd rate this somewhere between 3 and 4 stars really; interesting, but not necessarily extremely enjoyable.

I didn't give this book a solitary star because it was badly written. I chose one star because I just didn't like it. So, take the below with a grain of salt.

Not the book you think you are getting -a very slightly spoilery review

Darwinia is two and a half books caught under the skin of one, and the finished piece suffers because of it.

What I would call the first book is a 'new world to explore' adventure playing with history as we know it and as it is changing in the new Europe of Darwina. The author has a lovely 'voice' and paints a clear vision of the his new world. You can see it. Every page or so introduces what seem to be new puzzle pieces as you try to work out what happened, as the main character travels through a strange and alien ecology that has sprung up where the Continent used to be, capped by his arrival at a strange city ruin deep in the wilds where man has never been.

Now, insert a little novella of philosophical science fiction a la Banks Culture novels in which the Big Mystery is baldly explained. Perhaps those weren't puzzle pieces after all.

The 'second book' dumps you into the main characters depressing and regret filled life a decade or so later. By this point I felt little connection to the characters, as they died, changed, or were unpleasant to begin with. Female characters especially were badly represented, being for the most part shallow caricatures. Some of the characters in the final half of the book seemed to have no purpose at all beyond killing each other off and all of the 'bad guy' perspectives could have been removed without making the slightest difference to the story.

The final confrontation of our guys vs their guys felt pro forma without any sense of real struggle - and the climax where Luke blows up the Deathstar was so weak I nearly missed it.

So, Darwinia ...well it's got a plot, and it sticks to it. It has a nice flow of words, and left me thinking quite a bit of the story it could have been.

Ok in reading my own review I realize I do think this book was badly written. For all the author's grasp of lovely words and painterly description of the story, it is, imo, just a bad book.