Customer Reviews

West of Eden

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4 star:		(10)
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An outstanding alternative future, where intelligent dinosaur and man collide.

When I bought this novel, I could not put it down. I really mean it, I started to read it one Friday evening, kept going all day Saturday (even when I had stuff to do!) to finish it that night. I tried to put it down, but I couldn't. Toilet breaks and food aside, I spent all day with this book (is that too much detail? What the hey, I'll leave it in).

This book must be the best written, researched, and thought about alternative futures ever written. What really impresses is the detail and the authenticity that Harrison brings to this alternative future. Things are so different that it really gets you thinking "what if...", and the story line is infectious, you just have to keep reading. The moment you put it down you start to wonder what's going to happen? It's almost painful to put down! Harrison is a master storyteller.

The story involves humans at a stone age/bronze age level, confined to North America. Mammals are abundant, but so are dinosaurs, but of the big and dumb variety. The humans don't like the dinosaurs, they consider them filthy and taboo. Over in Africa and Europe, however, there are no humans, and the dinosaurs have developed intelligence and also a sophisticated culture, far more sophisticated than the human one across the Atlantic. Here is where it gets interesting.

The Yilané (they're the dinos) culture that Harrison describes is totally different from any existing even now. Their speech is by means of sound, movement and colour of hands, arms, face and crest. Ability to speak their complex language is their main social determinant, only the best get to fully join society. Females are in charge, with the males confined to special compounds by birthing beaches, and they never join society. The males incubate the eggs, much as seahorses do, and rarely last past two or three seasons. Their technology is highly advanced, but is based on biology rather than physics, chemistry or engineering, as ours is. Everything is grown, from the cities (which span whole continents) to houses, to clothing. The Yilané have developed gene manipulating technology, and use it to grow things like giant Ichthyosaurs with large body cavities in their dorsal fins (kind of organic submarines!), and small frogs with hollow heads and large eyes that act as microscopes!

An ice age is coming, and the Yilané, who are cold blooded, are being forced south into Africa, their cities dying from the cold. One of the city leaders decides to move her city west, across the hitherto uncrossable sea, to North America. She sends her lieutenant, Vainté, a fearsome and ambitious yilané, to scout it out, form a beach-head and to sow the city seed. There she finds Kerrick, a young boy, who is taken hostage, and brought back to Africa (what a delicious irony, a white North American boy brought over to Africa as a slave to a terrible and alien culture!). There he learns the language, and becomes a kind of court favourite. Then he's brought back to America, where he sees humans again, but as horrible, filthy, dirty creatures, not like him, a clean, strong Yilané!

I'm sure you can guess where it goes from there, rediscovery of roots, torn between two cultures, neither fully understanding both, nor fully accepted by either. Vainté is the arch villain, and I found myself always worrying about what she was going to do next! She dominates the book. Another very strong theme is that among the Yilané a new religion has begun, with vaguely Christian overtones, but quite different too. This new religion is undermining the existing culture in all sorts of strange ways, and is persecuted by the Yilané social structure. Other features are the different tribes of humans the Kerrick's people discover as the flee from the Yilané, early farmers across the Rockies, and Eskimos further North (these guys are really cool, totally oversexed!). All of these forces interact, humans, Yilané, new religion, new technology, new ideas moving from one race to another, and produce fascinating results.

Harrison has done a fantastic job in creating an entirely new and quite attractive culture, with a very strong environmentalist tinge to it. I found myself wanting to be like them, and even speak like them! How sad is that? Still, that's a sign that this book profoundly impressed me, and not many do. What are you waiting for, buy this book!

Added bonus, there are two sequels. At least you won't have to wait a year and a half for the second book like I did!

What if the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs had never hit? Would they eventually become extinct anyway, or would one species become intellegent? Harry Harrison suggests what the world might have been like had the latter come to pass - his intellegent dinosaurs are the dominant species over most of the planet (Eurasia, it's implied). Meanwhile, intellegent mammals (i.e. humans, at the pre-Columbus America level of technology) have arisen in the Americas. The coming of an ice age drives these two intellegences towards each other, and this book is the first tale of their battle for supremacy.

The dinosaurs (Yilane) have an interesting technology, based entirely on genetic engineering (and the book was written before it was such a hot topic). Fire is unknown to them (having evolved/lived in tropical rainforests), as is all the associated technology (metallurgy, etc.). Their weapons, houses, even grooming tools are all animals especially bred for these purposes. The Yilane technology, mating habits, social order, and language are very well described and an interesting creation. Most of this is revealed through the eyes of Kerrick, a young boy captured and raised as a Yilane. He is eventually rescued by a hunter-gatherer band of humans and must relearn his roots. The second half of the book revolves around the now adult Kerrick leading the humans in battle against the Yilane. This consists of collecting allies amongst the other tribes, puntuated by short, violent confrontations with the Yilane army.

In general the book is well written, and as mentioned, the Yilane are fascinating creations, as are the human tribes and their customs. Unfortunately, the Yilane seem to exist mostly as the enemy of the humans - you never learn to sympathise with them and openly root for the humans.

It's interesting to note the similarities to the Vietnam War - presumably it's deliberate. The Yilane are a centralised, technologically advanced group, with control of the air (they have "spy birds"); they depend on their superior weapons to allow them to invade the human territory. The humans, on the other hand, are much like the Viet Cong - highly mobile, skilled in camoflage, controlling the night, and fighting for their traditional lands.

This book can be read either as the beginning of the series (there are two sequels) or as a stand-alone. Unfortunately, having read and enjoyed this first book, I have little desire to read the subsequent novels. Perhaps I just don't like these semi-prehistoric stories, or perhaps it's because I don't care for/about the Yilane.

Alternate History stories are one of Harry Harrison's favorite subjects. He had already written three trilogies: "The Hammer & the Cross", "Stars & Strips" and the present one "Eden" series. He situates them in very different eras and contexts: Middle Age, Civil War and a world where dinosaurs are the dominant specie.

Harrison is a great narrator, skilled, with a fertile imagination and proposes the reader astounding scenarios.
The present one, assumes the extinction of dinosaurs hasn't occurred, so they are the Kings of Creation. Human are very tiny marginal actors, overshadowed by omnipotent dinos. The only reason why they had survived is that they dwell in America far from the Ylane dominions in Eurasia, but this is going to end. The dinos crossed the ocean, forced by a major climatic change and clash with the mammals. One human cub is captured and raised by the Ylane but some years after is freed by a hunting party.
Kerrick has been "civilized" by the dinos and is able to unite different scattered human groups to face up the menace.
This book and the two that follows tell us the story.
Harrison develops an absolutely different civilization: no fire is known to them; technology is based on biology; the Ylane are not able to lie, due to their very special way to communicate among themselves. All this issues implies an enormous amount of imagination to make all details coherent and believable.
Harrison also creates different languages for each human group, with their own linguistic structures and provides the reader with an ad-hoc dictionary.

This book may be read as a stand alone story, but if you are hooked as I was, you'll jump to read the next installments!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

From a master of imaginative storytelling comes an epic tale of the world as it might have been, a world where the age of dinosaurs never ended, and their descendants clashed with the humans.

The story is set in the Americas, where a clan of native humans survives by hunting and fishing. Suddenly they clash with a new race that comes from across the ocean - the lizards who are a much more advanced civilisation, progressing not through technology, but through animal-breeding. They breed new kinds of animals, each one serving as a machine desined for a specific purpose.

A human teenager is caught by the lizards and survives in their city, first as an animal, then as a prizoner, then as a member of society. Still, his human instincts takes over and he betrays his masters, escapes and leads the humans to destroying the lizard city and driving them back across the sea.

The book is very hard to put down, it's a very exciting read. recommended to everyone! (5 points)

Alternate History stories are one of Harry Harrison's favorite subjects. He had already written three trilogies: "The Hammer & the Cross", "Stars & Strips" and the present one "Eden" series. He situates them in very different eras and contexts: Middle Age, Civil War and a world where dinosaurs are the dominant specie.

Harrison is a great narrator, skilled, with a fertile imagination and proposes the reader astounding scenarios.
The present one assumes the extinction of dinosaurs hasn't occurred, so they are the Kings of Creation. Human are very tiny marginal actors, overshadowed by omnipotent dinos (the Ylane). The only reason why they had survived is that they dwell in America far from the Ylane dominions in Eurasia, but this is going to end. The dinos crossed the ocean, forced by a climatic major change and clash with the mammals.

One human cub is captured and raised by the Ylane but some years after is liberated by a hunting party.
Kerrick has been "civilized" by the dinos and he is able to unite different scattered human groups to face up the menace.
This book and the two that follows tell us the story.

Harrison develops an absolutely different civilization: no fire is known to them; technology is based on biology; the Ylane are not able to lie, due to their very special way to communicate among themselves.
All this issues implies an enormous amount of imagination to make all details coherent and believable.
Harrison also creates different languages for each human group, with their own linguistic structures and provides the reader with an ad-hoc dictionary.

This book may be read as a stand alone story, but if you are hooked as I was, you'll jump to read the next installments!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

I have longed considered Harry Harrision one of the masters of the science fiction genre. In West of Eden, Harry Harrison takes his considerable literary talents a step further. This novel is based in a what-if world where the mass extinction of the dinosuars never occured, thus allowing a species of intelligent dinosuars to evolve. Harry Harrison, imbues this intelligent race of dinosuars with its own unique culture, language and characteristics. He not only creates a story, but a whole vivid world filled with a strange assortment of animals and compelling characters. In creating this whole new world he invokes the scholary aspect of Tolkein's writing such as creating a large appendix that contains the history of the world and a section on the finer points and pronunciation of the languagues he creates. Combining this scholarship with an easy to read story produces a book of excellent breadth and scope. Reminds me a lot of "Battlefield Earth."

The premise underlying Harrison's trilogy is that the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs never hit the earth, thereby allowing dinosaurs to evolve in parallel to humans. Harrison's genius is that the resulting struggle between the two types of intelligent life is not only believable, but riveting. The coldness of the ruling dinosaurs jumps off the page. Each faction uses its strengths and the other's weaknesses to try to gain the upper hand.

This book is good enough and original enough that it defies genres. It's a war novel, it's an adventure novel and it's the very best fantasy. I enjoyed the first entry in the trilogy the most, but all three are very, very good and deserve a place on your bookshelf.

All too often, works of alternative history fall into the trap of Roth's "Plot Against America," where after a bump "history" reasserts itself and all things proceed pretty much as they did in the real timeline. No danger of that, however, in Harry Harrison's West of Eden, for the change he imagines is truly cosmic in nature. The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs never happens, and so saurian not only continue to rule the earth, but eventually evolve into an intelligent species, the Yilane. More than merely intelligent, the Yilane develop an advanced technological civilization, and it is in his expounding on this which Harrison's imagination really shines. Unlike Boulle's simian culture, the Yilane's technology and social structure evolves in directions entirely different from that of humanity, their society being strictly matriarchal and their technology based, not on fire and inorganic development but rather on gene manipulation ( a considerable leap when this novel was published in the 1980s).

The novel follows the story of a group of Yilane who migrate to the southern part of North America fleeing the encroaching ice age which is leaving Europe uninhabitable. There they encounter mammals and Neolithic human hunter gatherers, one of whom, Kerrick, is captured and raised among the Yilane. Of course some may quibble with some of Harrison's science, such as humanity developing outside of Africa - indeed it is when he tries to explain himself in the notes like explaining why there are no "old world mammals" in West of Eden, when humanity is perhaps the ultimate "old world" animal - but only the stodgiest of readers should get hung up on this point. After all, lacking humanity, the novel would hold little dramatic tension.

The works only shortcoming is that Harrison's prose come rather wooden and his characters tend toward the two dimensional. Yet I have a hard time imagining that many read "West of Eden" for its literary merits; the joy of this novel beyond the base adventure story is learning about the alien civilization the author creates with such extraordinary depth.

I picked this book up on a trip about 6 years ago. It nearly ruined the trip. I couldn't put it down. This is the first in a great trilogy. I am shocked that the second and third book are out of print! I only wish more people knew of this series and gave it a try. The only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is because it has been so long since I read it. Pick this one up if you're thinking about it!

Imagine a world where the dinosaurs were never extinct. More than that, imagine that they have evolved into a sentient race, ruling over the continents, genetically modifying other reptiles to fill their most important needs like transportation and weaponry. Now imagine that, being a cold-blooded species, and with the ice age coming fast from the north, they have to leave Europe and cross the Ocean to what is, to us, known as America... the only problem is, in America another sentient species is experiencing its dawn: man.

"West of Eden" is, mostly, the story of Kerrick, one of the Tanu (The people, Homo sapiens), kidnapped by the Yilanè (dinosaurs) when he was a boy. Kerrick learns to live with the Yilanè, but never looses the status of an animal. Suddenly, he's brought back among the Tanu. And, among them, he could be their most effective weapon in a war that will only end when one of the species is exterminated. But, for that, Kerrick has to will and learn to live among his peers again.

Harrison's book is one of the very good surprises I come across now and again. The writing style is simple, yet the reader is able to notice that there was a huge amount of thinking prior to the writing. The Yilanè society is wonderfully depicted, together with their achievements and their limitations. In fact, there's an amazing appendix at the end of the book, considering questions like Yilanè biology, reproduction, diet, language and their genetically-altered animals. This is an amazing job, a very enjoyable book to read, and although I think the ending was a little too rushed - the book could be at least a hundred pages longer - I think this is one of the best works of science fiction / alternate history I've ever read.