West of Eden

by Harry Harrison

Book Overview

About 65 million years ago, it is supposed that dinosaurs disappeared from Earth. But what if they had not been? This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553050656
• ISBN13: 9780553050653
• Release Date: July 1984
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Length: 483 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Best alternate history premise ever and a great adventure

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.

Does Eden Lay West?

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.

Far from Eden, near Hell.

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.

Unique idea + great storyline = awesome book.

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)

An outstanding alternative future with intelligent dinosaurs

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 languag