Darwin's Paradox

Darwin's Paradox
Nina Munteanu
Dragon Moon Press



288 pages
November 2007

Darwin's Paradox is a book I managed to read quite a while before the end of last year, but (and to my shame), I didn't get around to a review. Only 84 days late (approximately), I have one ready...

I couldn't find a picture of just the cover art until after I'd found this cool one of the entire fantastic artwork. Besides, the indent shows you where the front cover is ;)

The title, Darwin's Paradox, is not some lame marketing ruse to draw in New Earth Creationists, Intelligent Design-ists, or basically just general evolution deniers (the few that are left), and indeed, Nina Munteanu's book is well grounded in science, though without venturing into hard sci-fi territory; Darwin's Paradox is the name of a strange -- intelligent -- virus which has conspired with a powerful and influential intelligent machine to do it's nasty stuff worldwide.

Seemingly, the only person who can stop it is Julie Crane, an outcast from the city from which she was so famous and popular -- now feared and despised. The only problem is that she started it all in the first place...

I've heard Darwin's Paradox referred to as an eco-thriller, which is, I think, quite a cool way of putting it. I enjoyed the way Munteanu created the backdrop for her story, and I thought it was actually one of the better parts of the story. A society where people wander around permanently attached (in some cases literally) to machines could be seen as an allegory for modern-day life, but this one is much more sinister, and well realised.

Though Julie Crane does have, obviously, a big part in the story, quite a lot of it is shown through the eyes of Angel, her daughter, and Daniel, Julie's husband. One the whole, this worked quite well. Although, and for a clever, sharp, girl, Angel was a bit too easily tricked, in my opinion.

I also had a problem towards the end of the book where a moderately important background character had a sudden change in his temperament and behaviour -- going from nasty and cruel to, well, nicer, very quickly. Also, with some charcters I wasn't quite sure what was actually going on with them -- an adventure like theirs would probably change most people, but their transitions in attitudes and opinions throughout the novel would often come in jumps and lurches rather than something more recognisable to what they'd been through.

Still, while I'm quite critical of some parts of Darwin's Paradox, I did whiz through the pages, which says a lot, and I really enjoyed the depiction of machine/human co-evolution, which was definitely food for thought. 7/10. This was a difficult book to review, but a fun one to read.

For more information:

Amazon US

--Previous review--