Eden by Keary Taylor

     Eden by Keary Taylor
          Kindle Edition: $3.99
          Paperback Edition: $13.00 (new)
          Length: 422 pages
          Reading Level: YA
          Eden on Amazon (opens in a new window)

Before I delve into the land of synopsis and review, take a moment to look at that cover. LOOK AT IT. Isn't it terrible and beautiful, like Galadriel when she goes all bonkers when she was offered the Ring? (Yes, yes it is.) This is really exceptional cover art for an "indie" book, I must say.

The world has ended. Or, it might as well have. When a cure for pretty much everything goes horribly awry, humans are transformed into the Cybernetic fallen with nothing more than a single touch. In Eden, 30-some survivors live in fear of the fallen. Eve is one of these survivors-found when she was a young teen, naked, bloody, but unharmed. Now she is one of the main guardians of the group. Eve has always felt a little distanced from everyone else, but she's always attributed it to her lack of memories from before the Fall. Post apocalyptic life is all she's ever known. But things start to change when refugees make their way to Eden.


Eden is Keary Taylor's first book (to the best of my knowledge) outside her Fall of Angels series, which I will be reviewing at a later date. It's pretty firmly YA, with the more adult elements coming from violence rather than sensuality, though there is a major romance plot/subplot. When I bought this book, I was on a huge dystopia kick, and it did not disappoint.

Have you ever re-read a book and had a completely different experience with it? Noticing new things, altered feelings about events, etc? This book is a great example of that for me. When I finished it the first time, for example, I thought Eve made the wrong decision regarding the Epic Love Triangle (to be discussed later). This time around, I actually saw and cataloged all the hints to why she made the decision she did, and I was happier for it. I love it when books have a high re-readability. And great quotes. There are certainly some good ones in this story, and yay for Kindle, because it pre-highlights the popular ones!

So, the Epic Love Triangle. Holy crap, you guys. Edward and Jacob have NOTHING on West and Avian. Gun to my head, I wouldn't know who to pick. Considering the refugees show up relatively early in the book, the Epic Love Triangle develops slowly but steadily. Even, dare I say it, naturally. Each man has his perks and drawbacks, and Eve feels something for both of them, but the feelings are different. Which, let's face it, is totally true to life. Some reviewers on Amazon feel that the Epic Love Triangle is a little overblown. Or a lot overblown. Now, while I see where they are coming from, I have to disagree. The reasoning becomes clearer at the end of the book, when all things are said and done. Or, at least, the reasoning makes more sense after the Big Reveal. (Trust me, these capital letters are completely necessary.) And hey, most YA stories have a love triangle (epic or not) because if there's a romance element, it's generally more interesting to have complications of some sort.

Eve starts off kind of obnoxious, I'll admit. I mean, she's not whiny like some other female protagonists, like one whose book I've already mentioned in a roundabout way, but she's just... different. Again, this makes sense after the Big Reveal, but for the first portion of the book, at least until the refugees show up if not longer, she's really hard to relate to. Like I said before, she's distanced from humanity, and you can really feel the disparity in the early parts of the book. But oh, God, is she a dynamic character.(Quick English Lit lesson- dynamic characters develop, change somehow. Static characters are constant, never changing. Usually it's secondary characters that are static, but not always [i.e., the aforementioned not-mentioned book]) The Eve from the beginning of the novel is so vastly different from the Eve in the final moments, they're hardly recognizable as the same person. The other major characters, and Epic Love Triangle members, West and Avian, are also dynamic, though the transformation isn't quite as noticeable than Eve's. There are some great secondary characters, too, like Sarah, who isn't there enough for my taste. I liked her a lot, for how little she was there.

When I first told my fiancee about this book, he completely dismissed it because of the premise. Viral pandemic? Sure, no problem. Cybernetic infection? No way. But here's the thing- it's fiction. Taylor wasn't trying to get to science-y with it, throwing facts in left and right to later disregard them (a la Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Write in the comments if you'd like an explanation). She wanted to give a new twist on an old, familiar theme. Never mind the fact that a timeline isn't fully established, so we, as readers, have no way of knowing exactly how far in the future these events are. So, yeah. It's a little far fetched that after a single touch people become homicidal robots. It's very Borg-esque. But it's not the how, or even the why of the infection that matters. It's how the people deal with the aftermath. It's not the cybernetic condition that is compelling, it's the human one.

As far as the mechanics of the story goes... Except for one chapter near the end, the entire novel is from Eve's perspective. Which is kind of great, after the Big Reveal. (There's so much more I could say about so many of these topics, but I don't want to spoil anything. Maybe if I get readers here, I could do a book club or Q&A or something. I dunno.) The chapter that isn't Eve is from an omniscient third person, and gives interesting insights into other characters. I would like to read a version of this book from those perspectives, too.

The grammar and formatting is solid, only a handful of errors throughout the manuscript. Most of them seemed to come at the end, which is probably in part from Taylor's excitement to finish the novel. I imagine I'll have the same problem when I get to that point in mine.

I'm a huge fan of this book. The characters and the plot are interesting, and it's nice to read something with no supernatural influence. I won't call this a quick read, though it isn't complicated. 422 pages is, after all, nothing to sneeze at. But if you get as immersed in stories as I do, it will feel much quicker than it is. I'm hoping that it's only a matter of time until this story gets picked up by a major publisher, like HarperCollins or an equivalent. I truly feel this book is worthy of widespread reading.

So, please, read this book. I hope you love it. I really do. I hope it makes you think, makes you wonder, "What would I do? How would I survive? Could I be anything like Eve?" If it does, I'm glad. If not, I'd like to hear your opinion. I'm always eager to debate.

It's only 4 bucks, so really, you have no excuse.

Read, and enjoy.

-Kayla