[2] The entry for Slonczewski in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction states that The Wall Around Eden includes alien keeps and hive minds, but central to the story is an "unassuming but deeply felt concern with Ecology as interwoven with human Religion".

"[5] In a review in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Searles wrote, "It's a relief to get a post-holocaust, occupied-Earth story that isn't all violence and anarchy.

[7] British science fiction author Ian Sales wrote in Locus magazine that The Wall Around Eden has a "well-drawn cast" with a "smart, engaging heroine".

[8] Reviewing the novel in The Washington Post, American science fiction author Richard Grant stated that The Wall Around Eden "reads like a post-holocaust bedtime story for young scientists".

[10] She found it "sad and vexing" that Slonczewski "has reduced her promising material to the level of a solemn and passionless parable by choosing to tell the story … by weaving into it the rough and clumsy skein of extra-terrestrial intervention and control.

"[10] Alderman cited several "failures of author sensibility", including how her Pylon, that "strange and other-worldly device" with "respectable mythic and classical antecedents", performs Earthly tasks like delivering the Sydney Herald from Australia to Gwynwood, Pennsylvania.

[10] Alderman stated that, for her, the book's only memorable scene was the stacks of bones from people and animals drawn to the warmth of the Gwynwood eden, but were unable to penetrate the wall surrounding it.