This book is much like the country it takes place in. You get off the plane, go through immigration where notions of standing or cuing in line are meaningless. People always cut in front of you or that family of 20 is holding place for the other 20 that are coming. You get your luggage and have to fight the man who is trying to help you,meaning he is going to grab your suitcases, put them on a cart and try to take you to his taxi,hotel or whatever other service he may be in cahoots with. It is n...

When you pick this up and hold the hard cover in your hands, its heft is a little intimidating. When you put it down 597 pages later, you’ll wonder how he managed to keep it so focused, how he kept it from wandering all over the place. Not that it doesn’t have a tremendous scope (borders on “epic” but I feel I must reserve that adjective for a space opera review) but McDonald keeps it moving at an aggressive pace. Every back alley detour and out-of-town foray is very deliberate and very much par...

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)As I've mentioned here several times before, there are many of us science-fiction fans who believe that the industry has entered a whole new "age" in the last ten years, one major enough to be compared to the four eras that came before it (to be specific, the historic "Golden Age" of the 1930s and '4...

6.0 stars. A staggering, literary achievement. McDonald is a superb author and this may be his best book ever. I was absolutely blown away by the original, well-thought ideas crammed into this book. Nominee: Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Novel (2005) Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2005)Nominee: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2005)Winner: British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel (2005)

The one set in a near-future India, where a non-natural object is found in the asteroid belt which is older than the solar system and contains pictures of three humans currently alive. Leadership and scientific struggles at the nation's largest power company; a religious revolt; a Muslim government minister brought down by his passion for an artificial third gender called nutes; AIs thousands of times more intelligent than humans, outlawed and hunted down by a police branch called Krishna Cops.I...

A kitchen sink novel of catastrophe, salacious sex, and gritty businessisms buoyed together amidst a well-executed cohesion of theme, culture, and linguistic rhythms. McDonald throws it all in: AI, multiverse theory, Urban Combat Robots, media obsession, third gender and does it with style and purpose. A world where gods and data collide.

Plenty of bang for the buck, but it takes some bucks of effort to keep up with all the balls being juggled here. The nut theory of art applies here: that getting more out of a creation takes more effort. So despite having to set it aside for several months, I still give a top rating.The time is 2047 (40 years from the book’s writing in 2007), and the setting is Varanasi, an ancient and holy city on the Ganges in north-central India. The intertwining voices of eleven main characters weave the tal...

I respect what Ian was trying to do with this novel, I really do, but his ambition, I think, exceeded the execution to the point of muddling ambiguity. Mr. MacDonald's a wordsmith, there's not doubt about it, and some of his descriptions are small morsels of pure prose desert. He is truly a master of the language and plays with it beautifully. The issue, however, is that one will read pages, perhaps a chapter, and realize how very little actually occurred in the scene and how little it contribut...

Full disclosure, I'm a fan of this author. However, I’m not a slavish fan. Some of his books really shine, and others don’t. For example, I really liked New Moon (Luna #1) (my review) , but did not finish Desolation Road. This book is somewhere in the middle. It’s well written and richly detailed. The story had an old fashioned cyberpunk feel to it. It also feeds into my current fetish for stories of the historical British Raj. The near-future world building was exceptionally good. Frankly, it

I read about this book in a study of postcolonial science fiction, and was motivated to want to read it. It's vast and sprawling in a way that enables it to do justice to its subject. The setting is Bharat, a portion of what once was India, in 2047; Bharat is at war with one of the other former-Indian countries, sectarian violence continues, there is a long-term drought emergency, and meanwhile a flourishing entertainment industry. Most importantly are the aeai, the sentient artificial intellige...

Rating: 5* of fiveThe Publisher Says: As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about their business—a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout. And so is—the waif, the mind reader, the prophet—when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden.In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation.River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples

Aahh. It doesn't get much better than this. The bad news is that the novel is over. The good news is that I still have a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe, "Cyberabad Days".

A unique science fiction tale of India at its centenary told through the inter-locking tales of nine extremely different characters. There is Mr. Nandha,the Krishna cop tasked with exterminating artificial intelligences (or aeais as the book terms them) who break beyond their programming restrictions to a higher threshold of intelligence. There is Shiv, a gangster fallen on hard times forced to work for genetically-engineered titans. There is Tal, a nute (or neutral-gendered person) drawn into i...

You know you're probably not going to write a rave when you find yourself skimming hundreds of pages at a time to reach parts of the book that matter to the plot.Four things really bothered me about River of Gods, Ian MacDonald's latest about how humans will react when they create beings greater than themselves (i.e., AIs). In no particular order:1. I'm not a Puritan - sex? profanity? violence? I can deal with it if it's part of the plot or character but outside of romance novels or explicitly p...

I liked this more than Necroville which I liked a lot and which served as measuring stick for this book since old McDonald's writing style makes it hard to compare it to anything else.Like in Necroville we again have near future setting, far enough to fully implement lot of new technology and near enough not to let go of old ways yet. India is atypical setting for sci-fi and with McDonald's unusual brand of writing creates experience with strong and unusual flavor.It's colorful setting where tra...

Drawing on 60’s New Wave SF(especially Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar), Cyberpunk, and the mainstream novel, McDonald pulls off this incredibly ambitious novel. A near future India broken into different countries and three sexes(a new pronoun is used) which the reader gets immersed in through nine intertwining character lines. This is a future that lives and breathes and is incredibly convincing, and even though the technology is quite interesting(including a frightening look at cybernetic warfare

Has the Ivan seal of approval!!! So I shall try it!:)

on reading the synopsis i really wanted this to be something akin to The Windup Girl but what i got was more of an anthropological study mixed with a dull political intrigue thriller. the science fiction aspect was minimal but the major plus is the realistic depiction of a near future society, one that could quite easily happen within the timeframe set out.i wanted something excellent and i got something simply ok that was actually a chore to finish. i'm left with a disappointment in a novel for...

(Friends, I may be rewriting this because I am not satisfied that I have effectively conveyed my thoughts and reactions to this book.)This book is being touted as science fiction because McDonald has put his stories in the future, 2047, when the modern state of India has been in existence for 100 years. But the science is, in many ways, less the focus than the ways it affects the characters and hovers behind their actions.Yes, there are significant changes to the world and to the subcontinent in...

I have been wanting to read this book for so long mainly because it was a futuristic SF set in India in 2047 and there has been some highly positive reviews around. So, I have managed to get my hands around it finally and here are my thoughts.Most of my reactions and feelings are mixed. I loved some aspects of the story while some of the things I didn't like very much. First I will talk about the things that I really liked. The setting is one of the most unique that I have ever read. I am sure t...