This was my first Tchaikovsky. To be fair, I'd only recently come across him. A 99p Kindle deal opened the door and I had already secured my next Tchaikovsky before finishing this one.
Two lesbian crytozoographers are seeking monsters on Bodmin Moor when something happens. Mal disappears completely, Lee is left alone in London. Four years later Mal gets back in touch - a different Mal, tougher, fitter, and with what looks like a Neanderthal in tow. Meanwhile transsexual maths genius Kay Amal Khan is attacked by rightwing loons. This draws the attention of MI5's Julian Sabreur and his partner Alison Matcham, whose boss Leslie Hind is fixated on a techno-billionaire called Rove, who is somehow involved.
Thus we are drawn into a multiverse which is literally coming apart at the seams. We discover other Earths which have diverged from ours and are populated by very different evolutionary outcomes. Tchaikovsky's first stroke of genius is to seduce us with scholarly interludes in which these branches of the Darwinian tree are outlined by Professor Ruth Emerson of the Uinversity of California. These, she reminds us, are not our Earth - and Professor Emerson is not entirely what she seems. The second stroke of genius are multiple-choice solutions for the threatened universes, all of them set out in alternate Chapter 17s.
The sheer inventiveness drew me in. Then there is the scientific/technological depth on one hand, the wit with which leading characters like Lee and Khan are handled. I normally baulk at books this long but I enjoyed every minute of The Doors of Eden. Highly recommended.
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