When my copy of Tim Lebbon’s Eden wrapped in fake vines, I knew I was in for an immersive experience.

With global warming soaring and the environment changing constantly, areas known as the Virgin Zones have been established to help swing the balance away from unrepairable disaster.

A team of extreme sports enthusiasts have set their sets on one of the zones, known as Eden, but is completing this challenge their only agenda?

Tim Lebbon’s latest novel is very much an eco-horror, if you will, where nature fights back against man’s dominance.

There is a slow burn quality here, where the moments of tension are built up slowly and subtly until Eden is ready to show our protagonists what it is all about.

The structure of ‘Eden’ makes it a fast-paced, easy read with short chapters, mixing up POV chapters with some exposition when required.

The core of the story lies in the father-daughter relationship between Dylan and Jenn, who leads our team of explorers but also yearn to find Dylan’s ex-wife Kat who may have disappeared in Eden some time ago.

Eden itself and all its surprises are very much on the periphery of this story, with the human characters taking centre stage, making the story a much more relatable read.

Although you can draw parallels to Annihilation from Jeff VanderMeer, Eden is very much its own beast.

Lebbon is well-known as the writer of Netflix’s The Silence but if there is an opportunity to put Eden on the big or small screen in the future, he could have another calling card.

Eden by Tim Lebbon is released in Paperback on 25th May 2020 and is available on Amazon Kindle now.