But, that said, the battles and leaders are not in the foreground of this book. It’s not giving very much away to say that much of the book takes place against the backdrop of a war between the two patriarchal societies that dominate the human population of Eden. But, as it turns out, events place Angie right in the centre of things. And for that reason, and perhaps other reasons too, she is not a very self-confident person and certainly not a natural leader in the way that John is in Dark Eden or Starlight is in Mother of Eden.

That is, she has what we on Earth would call a severe case of harelip and cleft palate. In Daughter of Eden, Angie has been discarded by the shadowspeaker, is married (or so we would call it on Earth) to a very uninspiring man, and, with three small children to care for, is eking out a precarious living in the forest near to the softly glowing sea that in Eden is known as Worldpool. Starlight is appalled that her old friend should have thrown in her lot with one of these spirit mediums/preachers who play so shamelessly on the gullibility of their listeners. Starlight abandons her to pursue her own adventures, and much later learns that Angie herself set out on a different adventure of her own, following a shadowspeaker called Mary across to Mainground. (She is also, incidentally, the novel’s sole narrator, in contrast to the other books which were told by a range of characters.)Īngie appears in Mother of Eden as Starlight’s childhood friend. One of the things that makes Daughter of Eden different and special to me is the character of its main protagonist, Angie Redlantern. It’s a good feeling when a new book finally makes it out into the world, and I’m really excited about Daughter of Eden, my third and final novel to be set on the sunless planet, Eden. Chris Beckett – the writer of simply beautiful fiction and the prize-winning author of the Arthur C Clarke award for Dark Eden, the first novel in his trilogy – speaks here about why Daughter of Eden, the story’s conclusion, published in October, means so much to him.

Chris beckett eden trilogy