Book info

• Title News from Gardenia
• Author Robert Llewellyn
• Year 2012
• Genre Science Fiction

When Gavin Meckler's light aircraft encounters a mysterious cloud and crashes to earth, he discovers that the eerily quiet landscape in which he has landed is 200 years older than the one from which he took off. In this gentle, peaceful, sustainable new world, it is possible to travel from one side of the globe to the other in a matter of minutes without burning fuel, and everyone is a gardener because that's how they can be sure to eat.

Thoughts

Wasn’t too sure where this book was going to start with but I was soon captivated, as I travelled along with Gavin to Gardenia. It’s so unusual to have a utopian fiction novel rather than the more disturbing dystopian premises that actually, in its own way, it was still rather creepy.

Very interesting ideas in here though, about what life would be like if energy consumption wasn’t an issue - about how society would function if left to their own devices. Would we all just get on or would it become a rioting mess?

I really loved the ideas about harnessing solar power and particularly the space travel, but hey, I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll just say that I now desperately need to read the second book of the trilogy.

Rating: 4 / 5