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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
woo hoo, woo hoo hoo, 20 Aug 2004
Three years after the so-so Ares Express, but it's been worth the wait. This is a big steam-roller of a book --you don't so much read it as experience it; it's a shock to the system in almost every way. There's so much going on it it's almost impossible to adequately describe --Mysterious Artefacts in space, artificial intelligences, a completely computer generated soap opera (it's only a question of time really)weater wars, political intrigue, third-sex 'nutes', genetically engineered 'Brahmins': this is wide-screen SF. More than that, it has the feel of John Brunner's classics: Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, --it's a lived in future, not just a wam-bam story. And it's India! This is a world as alien as any you'll read in a wide-angle space-opera...
Great characters, who generate the story, rather than get pushed around by it, and a cosmic-scale denoument that is perfectly set up, but I for one didn't see coming.
Not the easiest book I ever read, but you come out of it with your head reeling and our world seems dull and pale by comparison.
Oh, and there's cricket too!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
River of Gods, 19 July 2005
River of Gods marks a return to form for Ian McDonald, after the dissapointing Ares Express. It's set in a near-future India, splintered into smaller states. The book takes awhile to get going as there are several protagonists and we are introduced to each in turn, as the plot starts up. This takes time, but is rewarding as we see a multi-faceted view of the society that Indida has become in the near future, and the changes to the human condition that have come with biotechnology and climate change.The plot is layered and keeps us guessing to the very end. I can't discuss it much here whithout giving too much away, but it's as satisfying and twisty-turny with the same mythic ties as the original Desolation Road, only the mythos here is Indian, not African, and a great deal more interesting. There are occasional passages where he holds up a latter-day mirror to the current-day West, but it's done stubly and doesn't interfere with a read as tightly plotted as a thriller. In short, a very rewarding read.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and expansive, dissapointing ending though...., 3 Nov 2004
A roller coaster ride with superlative character development and prose that really paints a picture of the difference in culture between east/west and the rigid societal and religious issues in India. Also greatresearch went into this book as it is authentic in its intepretation of Indian culture. Great SF elements to the story, although feel some of the ideas have been copied from other books (but thats inevitable....I liked this book alot and after spending most of the year reading mediocre old hash, this was refreshing. Good material for a film, maybe Bollywood can come up with something....BUT and its a rather large BUT.....after all the great writing, ideas and the pictures in your head he paints, the ending is something of a damp squib....should have been a bit more grandiose i feel to match the earlier parts of the book. Altogether though worth every penny and ill read it again....
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