Customer Reviews

Winter in Eden

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is extremely rare that a sequel equals the original for obvious reasons: (1) If the author does not emphasize character then he/she must rely on the novelty of the original work to carry forth of introduce still more novelty or (2) If the author does emphasize character then the reader is usually all too familiar with their lives.

Harrison solves this by limiting the material offered to the reader on the humans in the first novel. Throughout the series he has tried to remain factually or scientifically correct such as the idea that huge dinosaurs could have never developed the brain size or build the structures required for their use and that without the devastating asteroid dinosaurs would have remained the rulers of Earth.

We continue our adventures of the "human boy" who interacts with the dinosaur culture. The dinosaurs are, in the end, simply prototypes of humans in their emotional and ethical outlook - some are good, others bad. This is a good read.

While I'm not a hardcore sci-fi fan,I was totally blown away by the concept of the "West of Eden" series. I especially liked book II..."Winter in Eden". This story really became a character study for heros. While there is one main character throughout the series, in book II the focus quickly gets shifted to a female,(our main character's mate) and forget everything you ever knew about heros!This woman is devoted to her mate, and will do anything to maintain their family's well being. Some of the situations faced by these characters is a true testament to human endurance. The very idea that nomadic tribes could exist under some of the conditions described with-in the pages of this gripping story still give me shivers, and I fully intend to read this wonderful series again. Mr. Harrison is truly one of my favorite Authors.

It is a real shame that this series is out of print because I fell in love with it. Now all you can get is the first in the series (West of Eden). This story is along the lines of Tarzan with some Battlefield Earth in there, if I had to compare it to anything. I read this series when I was sixteen in hawaii. I couldn't put it down and don't remember anything else about the trip. But I'll never forget these three books. The characters and story were simply gripping. I would encourage anyone interested in an epic alternate world journey to grab a copy of West of Eden then hope you can hunt down the rest of the books. It's worth it!

I had read the Stainless Steel Rat series and enjoyed them, so I decided to try the Eden series. The story reminds me of E.R.Bourghs "At the Earth's Core" series. The story is about reptiles being the dominate spices on earth and how primitive man interacts with them. A very good story.

Winter in Eden is a 1986 science fiction novel, second in the Eden series, by Harry Harrison that tells an alternate history of planet Earth in which the extinction of the dinosaurs never occurred. The story began in West of Eden in which there is a war between a group of Cro-Magnon-level humans and a reptilian race called the Yilané, who are descended from dinosaurs and have become the dominant lifeform on the planet. The central characters from the first book return: Vainte, an ambitious Yilane, and Kerrick, a "ustouzou" (the Yilane word for mammal) who was captured by the Yilane as a boy, raised as a Yilane, and eventually escapes to rejoin his own people and burn the Yilané colony city.

In Winter in Eden, the dinosaurs use their mastery of biology to reconquer human territory. Desperately, Kerrick launches an arduous quest to rally a final defense for humankind. With his beloved wife and young son, he heads north to the land of the whale hunters, enlisting their help to venture further east into the enemy's stronghold, and south to a fateful reckoning with destiny.

The trilogy continues with Return to Eden.


Highly recommended for fans of Harry Harrison.

Gunner December 2007

If West Of Eden was a rich story full of events, this one was quite "static" and almost boring. It seems that author did not know really where to go. After 260 pages, it looks like that nothing has yet happen. As another reader said, the Vainte/Kerrick confrontation was absent.

It is extremely rare that a sequel equals the original for obvious reasons: (1) If the author does not emphasize character then he/she must rely on the novelty of the original work to carry forth of introduce still more novelty or (2) If the author does emphasize character then the reader is usually all too familiar with their lives.

Harrison solves this by limiting the material offered to the reader on the humans in the first novel. Throughout the series he has tried to remain factually or scientifically correct such as the idea that huge dinosaurs could have never developed the brain size or build the structures required for their use and that without the devastating asteroid dinosaurs would have remained the rulers of Earth.

We continue our adventures of the "human boy" who interacts with the dinosaur culture. The dinosaurs are, in the end, simply prototypes of humans in their emotional and ethical outlook - some are good, others bad. This is a good read.

I enjoyed this book better than the first. Maybe it's the development of the story, or just revisiting an incredible alternative world. Harrison is a master storyteller and the concept of dinosaurs not going extinct, and making slaves of humans, is mind-boggling. Like other readers, I wish the series were longer.

Happily, I have found another series that is remarkably similar: the Dinosaur Wars series byThomas Hopp. Written recently, they have one advantage over the Eden books. The intelligent human-sized dinosaurs are feathered and bird-like. This is more realistic according to modern science, but Harrison couldn't have known what would later be discovered in China while he was writing of scaly, almost amphibian dinosaurs in these books. Ah, well, everything evolves, including our view of what an intelligent dinosaur might be like. Also, Hopp writes of dinosaurs returning to the present-day world we live in, not an alternative. So there are some cool tank battles and cruise missile counterattacks. Again, an evolution of Harrison's concept.

Hooray for both authors. Long live the subgenre!

As one would expect from Harrison, Winter in Eden is well-written, and attention-riveting. Its biggest failing is that it follows West of Eden - an incredible novel in all respects. Winter in Eden, while worth reading, seems undeveloped, less focused. Perhaps it is the absence of the Vainte/Kerrick dynamic. Perhaps it is that the Yilane are now familiar and no longer wonderous strange. Or perhaps it is simply that perfection is seldom captured twice.

This is truly first rate sci fi, with grand conceptions and epic sweep, fascinating characters, and a sense of wonder. All this is deepened in this volume, but it is less fun than the first, as sequels usually go. It also depends on a bluff that I found disingenuous.