River of Gods (original 2004; edition 2006)

Excellent book - big, sprawling, large cast of characters, plenty of action and good SF. Tiptree longlist 2004 ( )

I can see the appeal this has for some people, but it's not grabbing me.

There's little doubt in my mind that McDonald is going to go down as one of the big names in science fiction of this era: his ideas are exciting, his settings are fresh and new, the writing is generally excellent. This is the second of his books that I've read and, while I rank this one behind The Dervish House, I didn't feel that way through 90% of the story.

This book starts deceptively slowly. The plot—told in a round-robin format by eight characters who are initially unrelated—has a lot of surface area to get moving. I don't recommend that you start this book if your reading is limited to small chunks of time here and there; there is simply too much to keep track of. Slowly, however, does not mean boringly. Right from the start we have several threads that intrigue and capture the imagination. And that's not even counting the exotic setting of mid-21st century India, the software capital of the planet, to keep you entertained.

By the middle of the book, the separate rivulets of plot have started to merge and the excitement rises. Even guessing some of the plot hooks made no difference; I still found the book hard to put aside.

The ending was the weakest part of the story. I'm not saying it's bad; I still recommend this book. However, without going into spoilers, some of the major characters in the book were just a little too absent. I'd like to have seen more of them. As for the eight major characters plus a semi-major one (who didn't get her own chapters), there was some sense that the puppet strings just got cut without a proper wind down. I particularly objected to what seemed an unwarranted death among them. It was much the same feeling as I had at the end of Collins' Mockingjay: a sense that the author said, "Hmmm, I guess it's not realistic that nobody important dies, so…" rather than death that means something to the story.

Still, small quibbles. Good book. I will read more of his work. ( )

So many aspects of River of Gods are so excellent; the setting in Varanasi, India, vividly rendered; the characters, more than adequate for this kind of book, the plot, complicated but not impossible to make sense of. The thematic content - the question of what we will do about our ever more clever machines when they achieve consciousness, sentience is a common one, but as far as I'm concerned it can't be explored enough, as this seems a more likely possibility than being invaded by aliens. There's a conundrum here - We, frail humans, may create something infinitely more intelligent and long-lived than ourselves; we may become Gods of a sort who turn around horrified and even terrified by what we have created. Knowing ourselves, will we assume that they will fear us, want to destroy us? My only quibble with it is that I think one too many characters gets offed in the end. If and when you read it you will know who I mean. It was a gratuitous death, not necessary to anything at all. This is a 'fashion' these days on TV and elsewhere, to kill someone just because you can. And to make sure no one gets the idea you might be the least bit mushy. But I think 600 pages can absorb a smallish amount of mush. **** ( )

Rating: 5* of five

The 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 and cultures—one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.

My Review: Ian McDonald. This is a name to conjure with, boys and girls. This is one fearless Irishman. This is a major major talent doing major major things. How dare he, how dare I, warble his praises when he, a white guy from the colonial oppressor state, has the temerity to write a science fiction novel about INDIA?!? There are scads of Indian writers and it's their country! Let *them* write their stories!

Codswallop.

Read the book. Then come and tell me it should have remained unwritten because of some nonsensical national pride hoo-hah.

It's got every damn thing a reader could want: A new gender, the nutes, pronoun “yt;” a wholly new form of energy harvested from other universes; a political scandal-ridden politician who falls for our main nute character, despite his long marriage, and pursues yt desperately; a civil war a-brewin' over water rights in the now fragmented subcontinental political world; aeais (artificial intelligences) that are forbidden by law to exceed the Turing Test that establishes whether an entity is human or human-passable; and, as with any law, the lawbreakers who inevitably arise are hunted by a new breed of law enforcement officers, here called “Krishna cops.” Krishna being the Original God, Supreme Being, One Source in many parts of India, there is some justice to that, one supposes.

Recapitulating the plot is pointless. This is a sprawling story, one that takes nine (!) main characters to tell. I felt there were two too many, and would entirely prune Lisa, the American physicist, and Ajmer, the spooky girl who sees the future, because those story lines were pretty much just muddying the waters for me. I thought the physicist on a quest, who then makes a giant discovery, which leads her back to the inventor of the aeais, could easily have been a novel all on its own, one that would fit in this universe that McDonald has summoned into being. I simply didn't care for or about Ajmer.

The aeais' parent, Thomas Lull, is hidden away from the world in a dinky South Indian village. Yeah, right! Like the gummints of the world would let that happen! I know why McDonald did this, plot-wise, but it's just not credible to me. He could be demoted from player to bit part and simplify the vastness of the reader's task thereby.

So why am I giving this book a perfect score? Because. If you need explanations:

--The stories here are marvelously written.
“And you make me a target as well,” Bernard hisses. “You don't think. You run in and shout and expect everyone to cheer because you're the hero.”
“Bernard, I've always known the only ass you're ultimately interested in is your own, but that is a new low.” But the barb hits and hooks. She loves the action. She loves the dangerous seduction that it all looks like drama, like action movies. Delusion. Life is not drama. The climaxes and plot transitions are coincidence, or conspiracy. The hero can take a fall. The good guys can all die in the final reel. None of us can survive a life of screen drama. “I don't know where else to go,” she confesses weakly. He goes out shortly afterwards. The closing door sends a gust of hot air, stale with sweat and incense, through the rooms. The hanging nets and gauzes billow around the figure curled into a tight foetus. Najia chews at scaly skin on her thumb, wondering if she can do anything right. -- p388

Krishan barely feels the rain. More than anything he wants to take Parvati away from this dying garden, out the doors down on to the street and never look back. But he cannot accept what he is being given. He is a small suburban gardener working from a room in his parents' house with a little three-wheeler van and a box of tools, who one day took a call from a beautiful woman who lived in a tower to build her a garden in the sky. -- p477

Some of my favorite passages I can't put here, because they contain some of the many, many words and concepts that one needs—and I do mean needs—the glossary in the back of the book to fully appreciate.

--The concept of the book is breathtaking. Westerners don't usually see India as anything other than The Exotic Backdrop. McDonald sees the ethnic and religious tensions that India contains, barely, as we look at her half-century of independence ten years on (review written 2007) and contemplate the results of the Partition. He also sees the astounding and increasing vigor of the Indian economy, its complete willingness to embrace and employ any and all new ideas and techniques and leverage the staggeringly immense pool of talent the country possesses.

--McDonald also extrapolates the rather quiet but very real and strong trend towards India as a medical tourism destination: First-world trained doctors offering third-world priced medical care. This is the genesis of the nutes, people who voluntarily have all external gender indicators and all forms of gender identification surgically removed, their neural pathways rewired, and their social identities completely reinvented.

Think about that for a minute.

If your jaw isn't on the floor, if your imagination isn't completely boggled, then this book isn't for you and you should not even pick it up in the library to read the flap copy. If you're utterly astonished that an Irish dude from Belfast could winkle this kind of shit up from his depths, if you're so intrigued that you think it will cause you actual physical pain not to dive right in to this amazing book, you're my kind of people.

Welcome, soul sibling, India 2047 awaits. May our journey never end. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2012/01/river-of-gods-by-ian-mcdonald.html ( )

I had been looking forward to reading River of Gods for a long time; science-fiction set in a future India is certainly a novelty, but it also got rave reviews. I was really excited to get it for my birthday, and it jumped to the top of my reading queue.

The book is set in India of 2047, around the hundredth anniversary of India's independence from the British. India has split into a number of countries (I believe the term is "Balkanisation"), including Awadh, Bharat and Bangla. There has been a drought in all three countries for years, and they are ready to resort to desperate measures for water. We follow nine different viewpoints – a cop and his wife, a civil servant, a gangster, a set designer, two foreign scientists, a journalist and a stand up comedian. Their stories start off very differently (the first 100 pages or so are pretty confusing), but eventually converge in a story that decides the fate of India.

River of Gods is primarily two things – a science fiction story and a book set in India. I think it is a pretty amazing science fiction book, but the setting of India did not feel authentic to me – the details were all somewhat off-kilter. I'll address these two things separately.

First, the science fiction story: The plot was really well-developed and came together well. The AIs ("aeais") were fascinating, and reminded me a bit of the AIs in Neuromancer. I was really swept up in the quest to find out what was really going on and how all the characters and their lives fit together, and the conclusion was satisfying and packed an emotional punch. The world was well-realised and consistent. A lot of the fun came from not knowing what lay ahead, so I don't want to reveal any plot points.

Although the world felt real and believable, it did not seem like a future India. A lot of the words and concepts shown to be in everyday use already seem archaic to me. The caste system is already fading away in common parlance, and it is weird that it plays such a large role in Bharat 2047. It also seems a bit implausible that India would have split into Awadh, Bangla and Bharat – even if India were to split up, I don't think that's the configuration it would take. The slang, the choice of names, the way the people acted... it was almost right, but that made the lack of accuracy much more apparent. Although I would have liked the author to do more research, I think I would have even been okay with less research. The India of River of Gods was very unsettling.

I was also a bit disturbed by the portrayal of India as an extremely Hindu nation, where Muslims are hated and a fundamentalist Hindu party is such a giant threat. That doesn't match up with my experiences in India, although our politicians are always talking about being more Indian (renaming cities from their British names, for instance) and we do have a couple of very Hindu political parties, I don't think that they have that much influence.

Other nitpicks: the number of sex scenes in this book is totally unnecessary and gratuitous, and pulled me out of the book. Another annoying thing was the sheer number of Hindi words used in the book, a lot of them seemed also totally unnecessary. I am pretty familiar with Hindi, so I was okay, but I imagine it would be pretty annoying for people to have to look up terms in the glossary every couple of paragraphs. Hindi words are used in place of extremely ordinary words, like "alley", and a lot of English words are Hindi-ised.

In any case, despite all my quibbles about the setting, I think River of Gods is a great science-fiction book, and I would definitely recommend it on that strength.

Originally posted on my blog. ( )

In the ancient city of Varanasi in the country of Bharat in the former nation of India it is 2047, the Age of Kali, and gods are being hunted there.

Those gods are artificial intelligences, aeais, who hide in the networks of businesses, sundarbans where illegal software is written, and even in the computing infrastructure of Town and Country, the nation's wildly popular soap opera. American pressure and international treaties forbid all those aeais above a certain level of intelligence. Krishna Cops like Mr. Nandha hunt them down and perform a lethal "excommunication". But in the burned out remanents of one sundarban he finds subtle evidence of a new monster.

The war between the new and regulated, man and the creatures emerging from the cybersphere of his world, ultimately snares many characters beside Mr. Nandha. There are Shiv and Yogendra, two hoods with a serious debt problem after their organ legging business has dried up. Shaheen Badoor Khan advises the Prime Minister about a water war with Awadh, another state born of India's fragmentation, after it dams the Ganges. Vishram Ray's stand up comedy career is aborted when his father, founder of the country's premier energy company, Ray Power, pulls a King Lear and divides the company up between his three sons. Naji, the Afghan-born journalist, has ambition and bloodlust and the determination to make a name for herself whether it's interviewing one of the aeais who plays a character on Town and Country or leaking information in a political war between fundamentalist Hindi politician N. K Jivanjee and the Prime Minister.

Also playing their part in this war, this drama where aeais and humans are gods in each other's worlds, are two Americans generally in favor of advanced artificial intelligences. Lull has dropped out of academic life to hang out in India where he encounters Aj, a young woman with creepy knowledge of people's lives and a disturbing ability to control machines. And looking for Lull is one Lisa Darnau, proxy for the American government, who would like to know why her and her former colleague's picture are in an alien asteroid seven billion years old.

And there is Tal, a nute, a new gender born of extensive surgery, their lives precisely and deliberately scripted with hormones, their sexuality push button. Joining nutes and aeais are Brahmins. They are children of the rich, engineered to avoid the decrepitudes of old age even if it means their bodies - but not their minds - age half as fast as normal. The fears and hopes around those creations and the aeais form a major theme of this novel.

Artificial intelligences as gods, nutes, Brahmins, alien asteroids, water wars - none of these are original ideas to McDonald. What he has done is sampled these ideas and set them in a totally new context - a future India. McDonald has made something of a career picking novel settings, specifically Third World settings. Terminal Cafe (a future Mexico), the Chaga novels (a future Kenya), and Brasyl all remind us that people in those parts of the world will have their own futures affected by advancing technology or alien encounters.

That does not mean McDonald's novel is a tiresome attack on the West, a guilty paean to a culture not his own. His India has its problems. Muslims and Hindi, after years of peaceful co-existence, go suddenly murderous. More than one character calls India a "deformed society", and it is not just the presence of Brahmins, a new untouchable caste, that has deformed it. It is the practice of selective abortion which has deformed it, the shunting of educated and talented woman out of public life to the purdah. McDonald confronts India on its own terms and acknowledges its energy and contradictions.

And, yes, McDonald does actually use Hindu mythology in this story. Certain characters gradually come to be associated with certain Hindu gods though the correspondence between god and character is not as explicit as it would be in a Roger Zelazny novel. And the story, with its many betrayals being a major theme, seldom forsakes the gritty world on the banks of the Ganges for a virtual world or cyberspace.

There are some minor flaws. McDonald leaves the fate of one of his gods a bit unclear, and Tal seems less like a member of a new gender than a gay man. The scenes of violence sometimes seem, on the aeais' part, too slow and the combat seems a bit too much like mecha anima at times. Still, I admired this novel very much and will return to this fascinating universe with McDonald's anthology Cyberabad Days. ( )

Best hard science fiction I've read in years. Complex, multi-layered plot, set in a futuristic world which is realistically extrapolated from the world of today. The action can be raw and grim and bloody, and entirely fits into the world McDonald has created. Highly recommended. ( )

Even as a fan of the genre I can admit that River of Gods is one of those rare treasures - a well written science fiction novel. Perhaps this is the sort of thing that Margaret Atwood prefers to call "speculative fiction?"

However, McDonald's careful writing is ultimately, for me, the book's downfall. Writing that works well in the first half providing a careful, slow development of events turns during the second half of the novel into a sluggish, drawn out climax. The prose in Gibson's Neuromancer may have been ropey at times but it propelled the story along and gave the book a real sense of heightened energy. I felt that River of Gods cried out for some of that towards the end. McDonald lights the fuse but the big bang never occurs. Events in the story certainly build up towards their tipping point and then kick off but the author's precise prose left me feeling detached from the characters caught up in the chaos. Perhaps the book is just a little too long as well. There were characters whose storylines I thought could be removed at little loss to the overall plot, whilst helping to greatly speed up events.

As for the book's more fantastical elements, I wasn't overly impressed. McDonald's India is very nicely considered but, for the most part, it doesn't seem all that different from today. There were elements of high-end, futuristic technology in places but down on the street it all seemed very ordinary. TBH, I don't imagine the world changing that much in the next 40 to 50 years, so the author is probably correct on that front... but did leave me a bit disappointed, as a genre fan, that the story wasn't set another 100 years in the future with a more radical outlook.

I've sounded harsh in this review but River of Gods is definitely a book I enjoyed and I'll definitely read the companion short stories in Cyberabad Days at some stage. Yet a very promising start did leave me slightly disappointed by the end. The story never quite took off and as a result the extended final section did have me tapping my feet slightly impatiently. Not bad by any means but only read if you're in the mood for some slightly more serious SF and not something pulpy that races along from start to finish. ( )

The "river" of this amazing work of science fiction is not merely Ganga Mata--the goddess who is the river Ganges--but also the flow of human life and experience on which the god-like artificial intelligences of the novel are borne. The human characters begin as separate tributaries, and their stories twist and merge with each other as they rush down into the watershed of an imagined history of the mid-21st-century. These characters inhabit niches throughout the spectrum from the absolute top to very nearly the bottom of Varanasi society, with a couple of American academics and an Afghani-Swedish journalist thrown in for good measure. Although the book takes place on the eve of the centennial of Indian Independence from Britain, its political situation describes a balkanized subcontinent in which independent Bharati and Awadhi states are on the brink of war for control of water resources. (It goes without McDonald's saying, that the epochal drought is a function of climate change and the exhaustion of Himalayan glaciers.)

The futurological scenario of this book doesn't feel at all dated, despite the fact that it was first published seven years ago--a long time at today's pace of cultural and technological change. The two tiny clinkers naturally relate to personal electronics: McDonald's "palmers" failed to anticipate that everyone's pocket computer would be subordinated to the concept of a phone, and his use of "the Tablet" to denote a unique piece of espionage data hardware falls a little flat in the wake of iPads and their competitors.

The novel's setting presupposes an assortment of post-human types, in addition to great masses of "ordinary" humans with virtual-reality headsets and nanotechnologically engineered pharmocopoeia. There are genetically enhanced "brahmins" who age at half the ordinary human rate, with immunity to many degenerative diseases. The oldest of these are in their early twenties, all with great influence, money, and native intelligence, but they look like ten-year-olds. There are "nutes," who have "stepped away" from masculine and feminine gender identification into a third sex, surgically created, with erogenous cues tied to subdermal buds on their forearms. And there are artificial intelligences ("aeais") beyond generation 2.5, the point where they are smart enough to pass a Turing Test, and to know when it is in their interest to fail one.

This is a big book: a 600-page doorstop, but it reads fast like a rushing river. Where the events of McDonald's lovely debut novel Desolation Road take place over three human generations, the course of River of Gods spans a mere three weeks. And into that it packs political intrigue, edge-of-the-envelope scientific speculation, love stories, violent deaths, profound disillusionment, and, gosh, other stuff besides. The plot is full of semi-surprises; McDonald is an artful stylist who provides enough information to sometimes create dramatic irony by giving the intelligent reader an edge on the characters, but often stuff just happens in ways that are jaw-dropping at the time, but seem inevitable in retrospect.

Anyone who can enjoy thoughtful science fiction should love this book.

If ever there was such a thing as the definitive science fiction novel on India then this is it.
The amount of research that Ian McDonald has done is incredible(either that or he has lived in India for quite a lot of time). He captures India with all its contradictions and uncertainties. A nation which is god fearing, steeped in traditions and rituals and at the same time at the forefront of knowledge.
He also manages to write a damn good science fiction novel in the process. The story takes place in 2047, 100 years after India has obtained freedom from the British raj only its not India anymore. Its split up into 12 semi independent states. It hasn't rained in a while so there is a water crisis. The title itself refers to Ganga around which much of the action takes place.
The story is written against this backdrop from the point of view of a number of characters who are all well realized. Of course the character arcs intersect by the end to bring the novel to a satisfying close. There are a couple of characters who aren't really worth it but that's a minor gripe.
The prose is fantastic and peppered with insights into how technology and science would affect life in modern India.
Its a dense read however. The first few pages where Ian McDonald introduces terms might need revisting to understand what is really going on. Consequently the middle which is usually the boring part of a book is where River of Gods really comes into its own. Also this will take a westerner a significant amount of time to read and really flow with the words.(but the journey is well worth it).
http://blog.kaipakartik.com/2011/06/river-of-gods-by-ian-mcdonald.html ( )

Huge, rich and vibrant. Ian Mcdonald takes the idea of India and twists it and throws it into the future. Rogue AIs (or aeai), water wars and extreme genetic engineering rub up against the caste system, Hinduism and bollywood. It's fun and energetic, packed with a multitude of Indian words (yes there's a glossary) that immerse you very quickly into the world. The story is split between multiple characters, each seemingly unrelated at first before they are dragged into the large, frenetic plot. This technique is artfully used to keep the tension and interest going - watching the characters intersect, wondering on the multiple endings. In fact I only felt the pace slacken once (good in a 600 page book).

If it falls down in anyway it was with the characters themselves, not because they were horrible people, or too unrealistic but they all just felt flat. A few felt undeveloped and sometimes overused. Shiv, for example, never went beyond stereotype, although to be honest this wasn't as much of a problem as the one of not caring or siding with any of them at all. And I know I am being unfair but since its set in a deeply sexist world a few more strong female characters would have been nice, you know more than say two main characters filling the roles of plucky scientist and fiery journalist.

However after all that moaning I must repeat that I did really enjoy it, I love the setting and the aeai's were just a lot of fun. I am definitely going to try Brasyl. ( )

I've re-read this a number of times now, and it has never failed to please. McDonald does two things with this book that are both very difficult to do (particularly in a genre dominated by the derivative) -
1) He writes a really good science-fiction story that is genuinely gripping and challenging, with interesting and imaginative characters.
2) He writes a well informed book about India.
If you've never been to India then this (and the follow up stories "Cyberabad days") may seem the bizarre and fantastic creations of a gifted sci-fi author, but anyone who has stood on the Dasaswamedh Ghat in Varanasi, or walked through the old streets of Kashi will know exactly how much of this book comes from a genuine appreciation (and a deep love, I suspect) of India. Unlike other authors in the Genre (and I'm thinking here of Dan Simmon's utterly ghastly "Dance of Kali"), McDonald manages to write a future for India that emerges from a profound understanding of where India is now; and that a genuine and balanced one. Neither the uncomprehending critique of a profoundly alien culture, nor the glassy eyed acceptance of the "spiritual paradise of the mystic east", but an understanding of the deep mystery of contemporary India, where so many of the characters and attitudes from this book draw their inspiration.
It is a master-work for both of those reasons - but to combine the two in one novel lifts it to a sublime height. ( )

Good on ye, McDonald! Richly imagined, tautly woven. ( )

Welcome to the Indian subcontinent, circa 2047. In the midst of a disastrous drought (no monsoon in over three years), the 1.5 billion inhabitants of what was formerly India have split into several combative states. Much of the story revolves around issues surrounding Indian religion, culture and political subdivision. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and computer generated avatars also play prominent roles.

This is not an especially easy science fiction novel. In addition to what are somewhat complicated and confusing story lines, there is a significant volume of unfamiliar cultural and linguistic material which requires reference to a glossary in the back of the book. There is enough of this to detract from the overall reading experience. The technological innovation and complex physics in some threads can also be somewhat intimidating.

All in all, however, the disparate threads and story lines come together nicely in an excellent climax which satisfactorily answer many of the questions raised in the novel. Again, not recommended for those looking for a quick, easy sci-fi reading experience. In that respect, it is more akin to much of Philip Dick’s and Frank Herbert’s later work. It definitely requires some effort to stay abreast of the story. ( )

(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 '40s; the Modernist-influenced "Silver Age" of the '50s and '60s; the countercultural "New Age" of the '60s and '70s; and the angsty, postmodern "Dark Age" of the '80s and '90s); I myself have mostly been calling this new post-9/11 period the "Accelerated Age" (after the Charles Stross novel) and also sometimes the "Diamond Age" (after the Neal Stephenson one), although of course the fan community as a whole hasn't yet collectively agreed on a term, and probably won't until the age itself is over. And in the best historical tradition, this age is mostly defined in opposition to the period that came right before it; unlike the Dark Age, for example, Accelerated-Age tales tend to be overly optimistic about the future, many times bypassing our current political messes altogether to instead picture how our society might work hundreds or even thousands of years from now, with a whole series of scientific conceits that tend to pop up in book after book, thus defining it as a unified "age" to begin with -- sentient computers; the effortless mixing of the biological and mechanical (otherwise known as the Singularity); a "post-scarcity" society where food is artificially created and money no longer exists; practical immortality through a combination of inexpensive cloning and "brain backups" to infinitely powerful hard drives; and a lot more.

And also like the eras that came before it, the Accelerated Age is mostly being defined through a loose handful of authors who all seem to sorta know each other, or at the very least always seem to be mentioned together in conversations on the topic -- people like the aforementioned Stross and Stephenson, Cory Doctorow, Justina Robson, John Scalzi, Robert J Sawyer, Jeff Vandermeer and more (although to be fair, Mr. Vandermeer has criticized me publicly in the past for lumping all these people together, which I suppose marks the main difference between him as an actual practitioner and me as simply a fan); but out of all these post-9/11 SF authors, it seems sometimes that the one who gets the most consistent amount of praise of them all is Ian McDonald, an Englishman by birth who's lived most of his life in Northern Ireland, part of the much ballyhooed "British Invasion" of the early 2000s which is yet another big calling-card of the Accelerated Age.

And this is ironic, because the majority of McDonald's work does not fit the typical Accelerated-Age mold whatsoever; in fact, what McDonald is mostly known for among fans is being the so-called "heir to cyberpunk," the subgenre from the '80s that mostly defined the Dark Age before him. And that's because McDonald is a master of taking day-after-tomorrow concepts and marrying them to the dirty, sweaty here-and-now, which is exactly what such classic cyberpunk authors as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling did in the '80s to become famous in the first place, itself a rebellious response to the shiny, clean visions of such Silver-Age authors as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov; but unlike this first wave of cyberpunk authors, McDonald does this uniting not among the smoky back alleys of America and western Europe, but rather in the trash-filled slums of such emerging regions as Africa and South America (see for example my review last year of his latest novel, Brasyl), delivering an entire series of third-world fever-dreams that could've never even been imagined by the trenchcoated fans of '80s science-fiction.

And it's all this that finally leads us to what's arguably McDonald's most famous book, River of Gods, originally published in the UK in 2004 and then a few years later in the US by our friends over at Pyr, considered by a whole lot of people to be the single best SF novel on the planet in the last ten years; and I'm happy to report that I just finished the book myself, after recently receiving the brand-new related book of short stories Cyberabad Days, and essentially begging the good folks at Pyr* for a copy of the original so that I could catch up, an incredibly slow yet pleasurable reading experience that took me six weeks altogether, hampered in my case by first having a bad bicycle accident right after starting, then being on a whole series of powerful narcotics the rest of the time, which one could argue made the reading experience even better than normal, but unfortunately also dropped my concentration level to nearly zero, which is why it took me so freaking long to get through these two books in the first place. Whew!

And after finishing it myself, I have to confess that the hype is mostly warranted; if this isn't maybe the single best SF novel of the entire Accelerated Age so far, it's at least in the top five, an infinitely rewarding experience that made me almost immediately want to start all over again on page one after initially finishing. And a big part of this, frankly, is just in its setting alone; because for those who don't know, this is one of the first English-language books in SF history to be set in India, a part of the world that in just the last few years has suddenly become a red-hot topic among an ever-growing amount of Americans and Europeans. And that's because we're in the middle of watching one of the most fascinating moments in that region's entire history, the moment when the population of India is pulling itself kicking and screaming out of third-world status and into the first world; and yes, I know, this is an inherently insulting term to even begin with, a classification dreamt up by rich white males in the middle of the Industrial Age mostly as a way to differentiate themselves from non-whites, which of course is part of what makes it so fascinating, to see whether terms like these are even applicable anymore in this multicultural age of ours.

You see, for Westerners who don't know, India in the 21st century is a giant mass of contradictions, a big reason why it's suddenly becoming of such interest to so many in the West in the first place: it's the world's largest secular democracy, for example, yet with a sizable minority (and growing every day) who believes the country should instead be run under a Hindu-based theocracy, much like how the Muslim nations around them are fundamentally based on Islamic law; it's been a politically unified whole since 1947 now, yet for thousands of years before that was actually a series of constantly warring mini-kingdoms, part of what allowed the British to so easily take over the entire region in the 1700s; and speaking of which, it's a country with infinitely complicated thoughts about its past as a British colony, proud of its Victorian heritage and widespread knowledge of English, even while rightly ashamed of the various indignities it suffered under the so-called "Raj" of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It's a nation which desperately wishes to be the next great international hub for education and technology, yet a nation where tens of millions still go without electricity, without indoor plumbing; a nation virtually ruled by its explosively growing middle class, yet experiencing all the same bourgeois-based problems as the British did two centuries ago when its own middle class first exploded, a nation where Jane Austen storylines are literally played out in real life every day.

McDonald perfectly understands the drama inherent in such a situation, and puts all these issues to great use in River of Gods, although be warned from the start that you Westerners will need to do a bit of homework to fully appreciate it; as mentioned, for example, you will need to know a little about the longstanding conflict there between Hindus and Muslims (and a little about the Hindu religion in the first place), a little about India's ancient caste system, a little about its former history as a series of warring mini-states, a little about the growing gap between traditional Indian life (think housewives in saris and cows roaming the streets) and modern Indian life (think two-earner families in business suits and clutching iPhones). And that's because this is a major theme of River of Gods as well, the growing divide between old third-world India and the gleaming first-world vision it wants to become, with the entire novel set in the year 2047, the 100th anniversary of the area becoming a unified independent nation in the first place.

Ah, but see, there's trouble in paradise in McDonald's world, which is why it's so important to have a basic understanding of all these cultural issues; just to mention one important example, in River of Gods India isn't even a unified country anymore by 2047, after global warming led to a period of severe drought there in the early 21st century, leading to a breakdown into regional states again and a series of bloody civil-war skirmishes over the dwindling water supply. We then mostly follow the fate of one of these states -- "Bharat," comprising the northeast corner of the former nation, with the religious mecca of Varanasi its new capital...or "Varanasi 2.0" if you will, a head-spinning mix of the ancient and the cutting-edge, with thousand-year-old ghats along the Ganges River now sitting in the shadows of mountainside skyscrapers and maglev trains.

The actual storyline of River of Gods is best left as secret as possible, which is why I'm going to largely skip over it today; but I will say that in the best cyberpunk tradition, it's actually made up of a half-dozen smaller storylines that each stand on their own, almost impossible at first to determine how they fit together until getting closer and closer to the end, and as the lives of the hundred or so major and minor characters on display start interweaving more and more. And I can also mention that the story here is a dense-enough one and laden with enough local issues and terms to make one think that McDonald must be an expat who has spent a substantial amount of time in India himself (and don't forget, by the way, that there's a glossary of terms at the end of the book); and this is in fact one of the other things McDonald is known for, because the fact of the matter (as he has confirmed many times in past interviews) is that the vast majority of his books' details come merely from page-based academic research, along with just a minimum amount of actual traveling through the region in question, almost all of it simply tourist-based traveling instead of pseudo-native backpacker-style. How he manages to turn in novel after novel of such depth using only traditional book-based research is a mystery that sometimes borders on the magical; and it's precisely this that makes McDonald so intensely loved by certain types of literary fans out there, and is precisely one of the reasons so many consider River of Gods the best SF novel written in the last decade.

And then as far as this book's companion piece, Cyberabad Days, the main reason I was sent the pair of volumes in the first place, it's pretty much what you expect -- a collection of standalone short stories all set in the same world as River of Gods, that McDonald has written for various magazines over the last five years, published together here as a whole for the very first time, with all the traditional good and bad things that come with such minor story collections. Surprisingly, though, instead of needing to first read River of Gods for this companion volume to make sense (as is usually the case in these situations), Cyberabad Days actually exists as a great primer to get yourself ready for the bigger main novel; because also in good cyberpunk tradition, in River of Gods McDonald simply drops you right in the middle of things at first, not bothering to explain any of the details of the situation itself but instead letting the reader slowly pick them up here and there over the first 200 pages of that 600-page tome, something that diehard SF fans love but that can drive others a little batty. That of course is one of the biggest benefits of the short-story format in general, is that authors are simply forced to explain things in a much shorter period of time; for those of you who like getting your backstory out of the way quickly, you may actually benefit from tackling the companion book first before even trying the main novel in question.

I have to admit, out of all the books I could've gotten stuck with during a long convalescence from a major accident, I could've done a lot worse than these two; and now after taking my sweet time with them both, I can very easily see why people continue to go so nuts over McDonald's vision of a future India, even half a decade after he first started laying this vision out. It's one of the great pleasures of being a science-fiction book critic in the early 2000s, in my opinion -- a chance to be reading and reviewing this literature right when it's first being written and published, that is -- and after taking in now a pretty fair amount of ultra-contemporary SF, I have to confess that I too have become a pretty slavish fanboy of McDonald. If you're looking for stories that elevate themselves above the usual tropes of the genre, you can't really go wrong by picking up this groundbreaking saga; here's hoping that McDonald has lots more of them in store for us down the road.

*And by the way, all kidding aside, I do want to thank the hardworking PR staff at Pyr once again for all their help; over the last year I've probably requested at least a dozen old backtitles from their catalog, and in every case they've sent them along with a smile and nary a complaint, not to mention of course all the new titles they're actively seeking publicity for, a huge difference in attitude from some other SF publishers who shall remain nameless. It's a common trait among a lot of publishing companies these days, to treat litbloggers like sh-t, so I always appreciate it when coming across companies like Pyr who take bloggers as seriously as any other book reviewers out there. ( )

River of Gods has just about everything you can possibly expect in a good science fiction novel. There’s a plausible but above all fascinating future history, there’s great characters, interesting technology and a good plot. It is easily one of the best books I have read this year. It is also one of the more challenging reads, there is almost too much put into this novel to take it all in...

Full Random Comments review ( )

Nominated for the 2005 Hugo Award for best novel (losing to Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell), River of Gods is an ambitious look at 2047 India by Ian McDonald.

As India approaches its 100th birthday, it has balkanized into a number of semi independent nations. Technology runs high here, higher than in some parts of the world. Artificial Intelligences reach for above-human sentience even as "Krishna cops" try and prevent them from doing so. The lack of a monsoon for years has caused two of the nations to go to the brink of armed conflict. And in space, the Americans have discovered an asteroid is actually an alien artifact, seven billion years old, which inexplicably has a tie to several of the characters...

As I said, its an ambitious novel, with a large cast and a large canvas upon which McDonald draws. In an almost Bollywood like fashion, all of the plotlines and characters, disparate at first, eventually have their stories draw together.

McDonald pulls no punches and immerses the reader immediately in unfamiliar culture, terms, customs and societies. It takes a lot of work to keep up in this novel, but once the basics are down, the novel starts to sing. (This is definitely not a novel to give to a first time reader of science fiction). In point of fact, with its numerous characters at all sorts of social strata, its social commentary, and its vision of the future, the novel feels to me like McDonald's attempt to re-write Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (but without the New Wave experimental narrative and textual techniques).

I don't think the novel quite lives up to its ambitions, and a few of the characters did not much appeal to me as much as the main plot did. However, the vision of India's future is wall-to-wall, engrossing and interesting. Throw in some snazzy technology, and even a bit of humor (I dare you not to laugh when you discover the fate of Bill Gates in this timeline)

Mcdonald has a collection of stories set in this world (Cyberdad Days) which, on the strength of this, and my enjoyment of it, I fully intend to buy and read.

Recommended. ( )

This book is huge, the cast of characters is extensive, and there are several plot lines on the go. Even so, Ian McDonald's brisk pacing and remarkable ability to immerse the reader in his rich and textured future India make "River of Gods" read like a much shorter novel. I was unable to put it down, and felt immensely satisfied and rewarded at the end. Highly recommended. ( )

This book is certainly as imaginative as the back cover reviews say, but if felt disconnected to me. There were so many characters that it took me a few pages into each chapter to remember who I was reading about now. Even at the end of the book, I still didn't understand how some of the characters fit in -- they just seemed superfluous.

River of Gods is an exciting and imaginative read, but I think it lacks the big picture needed to make it a _great_ book. ( )

'What is going on here?'Mr Nandha demands as he walks through the scrum of police, Ministry warrant card held high.
'Sir, one of the factory workers panicked and ran out into the alley, straight under,' says a police sergeant. 'He was shouting about a djinn; how the djinn was in the factory and was going to get all of them.'
You call it djinn, Mr Nandha thinks, scanning the site. I call it meme. Non-material replicators; jokes, rumours, customs, nursery rhymes. Mind-viruses. Gods demons, djinns, superstitions. The thing inside the factory is no supernatural creature, no spirit of flame, but it is certainly a non-material replicator.

Set in 2047 in an India that has fragmented to separate states just 100 years after gaining independence, this story is told from the point of view of about a dozen very different people. But who or what is manipulating them all? Could it be N.K. Jivanjee, leader of a Hindu fundamentalist group that threatens to destabilise the state of Bharat? Or perhaps a mysterious company called Odeco, which has fingers in a lot of very interesting pies?

The way that Mr Nandhu's security programs are displayed as avatars of the Hindu Gods really reminded me of David Brin's novel "Earth", as did the multiple viewpoints and the environmental theme, with water-shortages in some of the Indian states caused by the damming of the River Ganges upstream, and Bengal's plan to change the climate by towing an iceberg all the way from the Arctic.

I wonder why they didn't bring the iceberg from the Antarctic. Surely it would have been a shorter and more direct journey than towing it from Arctic Canada, all the way down the Atlantic, round Africa and across the Indian Ocean (or round South America and across the Pacific if they went the other way). I can only think that they would have been hampered by unfavourable winds and currents. ( )

Probably the only mainstream science fiction out there which has a plot based entirely in India.

Ian McDonald shows a remarkable understanding of modern India and extrapolates it brilliantly to come up with a storyline which is entertaining as well as gripping. ( )

Absolutely loved this book. It's set in India 100 years after independence, and follows a number of intertwining characters and stories through a very atmospheric India. ( )

as for the book, i definitely loved it and would be reading more mcdonalds soon. i loved the hindu gods there (i have a soft spot for them) and i loved mcdonalds way of looking at gods/god, loved his future and what might/can be, loved the way the story flowed and the characters were shown bit by bit and how they grew. that said i must admit that it was not 5 stars for me and that's i think was because of the ending. compared to the rest of the story and it's lovely flow i thought that it just ended too abruptly, the charactes grew dim in the last part, the last part was mostly all action and also there was an answer there (admiting that i didn't really understand it) and yet i didn't like the idea of an answer to a question like "the meaning of life" or maybe i really, really like an answer or actually like to "know" BUT i don't want some else's answer, i wouldn't mind to know what they think, but only what they think (though what mcdonald proposed was very interesting) and then they can leave me and let me decide. what i thought was that the story was too lovely and too perfect to end with everything answered and solved! so it's not 5 stars but definitely a big 4, cause in all the other ways i thought it was absolutely perfect and i loved every minute of reading it. ( )