Teranesia

By: Greg Egan

Narrated by: Vince Canlas

Welcome to Teranesia, the island of butterflies, where evolution has stopped making sense. Prabir Suresh lives in paradise, a nine-year-old boy with an island all his own to name, to explore, and to populate with imaginary monsters stranger than any tropical wildlife. Teranesia is his kingdom, shared only with his biologist parents and baby sister Madhusree. The unexplained genetic mutation of the island's butterflies that brought his family to the remote South Moluccas barely touches Prabir; his own life revolves around the beaches, the jungle, and the schooling and friendships made possible by the net.

When civil war breaks out across Indonesia, this paradise comes to a violent end and his family is broken apart, leaving Prabir with nagging feelings of guilt and an overwhelming, almost irrational, sense of responsibility for his sister. The mystery of the butterflies remains unsolved, but nearly twenty years later reports begin to appear of strange new species of plants and animals appearing throughout the region - species separated from their known cousins by recent, dramatic mutations that seem far too efficient and functional to have arisen by chance from pollution, disease, or any other random catastrophe.

Madhusree is now a biology student; proud of her parents' unacknowledged work, and with no memories of the trauma of the war to discourage her, she decides to join a multinational expedition being mounted to investigate the new phenomenon. Unable to cast off his fears for her safety, Prabir reluctantly follows her. But travel between the scattered islands is difficult, and Madhusree's expedition is out of contact.

A scientific mystery, an adventure story, and a meditation on the origins of love, Teranesia is Greg Egan's most ambitious and accessible novel yet.

©2013 Greg Egan (P)2013 Audible Inc.

if you like biology

great story that talks about biology, human sexuality, and genes/evolution. interesting story and the voice actor did a great job.

Good news and bad news...

Well the good news is Adam Epstein did not narrate this book. For those Egan fans out there that feel the same way about Mr. Epstein's performances (though I'm sure he is a lovely person once you get to know him) will be ecstatic they do not need to muscle through another reading. Gave Canlas performance a 4 star only because a 3 star seemed low when compared to Epstein.

The bad news though is, in my humble opinion, this is Mr. Egan's least engaging work so far. Oh the irony we get a decent performance (still not an amazing narrator, this new guy) on a less than breathtaking story.

It's like the real meat of the story doesn't start until like 5 hours in. 3/4 of the book feel like a backstory for our main character and his sister leading up to an exciting adventure on the islands of misfit evolutionary anomalies. The "climax" happens with like 20 minutes left and wraps up in basically a couple of scenes. It really feels tacked on. It feels like someone else wrote this book then showed it to Egan, which Egan really liked, but thought the ending needed a bit more spice. So he wrote some science-y stuff to make an ending he came up with make sense.

Gave performance a 4 star only because a 3 star seemed low when compared to Epstein.