Phillip Mann is a fellow New Zealand-based writer, and author of the prior The Gardener and A Land Fit For Heroes series.

The Disestablishment Of Paradise is his first new novel since 1996 and reads, from the back cover, as what I would call “biological” or “ecological” science fiction. But it is definitely science fiction, with the synopsis focusing on human settlement of space.

Here’s what the back cover synopsis says, in full:

“Something has gone wrong on the planet of Paradise.

The human settlers – farmers and scientists – are finding that their crops won’t grow and their lives are becoming more and more dangerous. The indigenous plant life – never entirely safe – is changing in unpredictable ways, and the imported plantings wither and die. And so the order is given – Paradise will be abandoned. All personnel will be removed and reassigned. And all human presence on the planet will be disestablished.

Not all agree with the decision. There are some who believe that Paradise has more to offer the human race. That the planet is not finished with the intruders, and that the risks of staying are outweighed by the possible rewards. And so the leader of the research team and one of the demolition workers set off on a journey across the planet. Along the way they will encounter the last of the near-mythical Dendron, the vicious Reapers and the deadly Tattersall Weeds as they embark on an adventure which will bring them closer to nature, to each other and, eventually, to Paradise.”

The covering information does indeed describe this as “an ecological SF thriller…with elements of Avatar and Silent Running’“—and in terms of my own reading I instantly thought of CJ Cherryh’s Thirty Thousand in Gehenna, Nicola Griffiths’ more recent Ammonite, and Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go.

You can read an interview with Phillip Mann on the Gollancz website, and I hope that I will be able to bring you a review here soonish.