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Chaga
 
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Chaga (Paperback)

by Ian Mcdonald (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (10 Jun 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1857988752
  • ISBN-13: 978-1857988758
  • Product Dimensions: 18 x 11 x 2.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 795,386 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #20 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > M > McDonald, Ian

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Product Description

Product Description

On the trail of the mystery of Saturn's disappearing moons, network journalist Gaby McAslan find herself in Aftrica researching the Kilimanjaro Event: a meteor which landed in Kenya causing the striking African landscape to give way to something equally beautiful - and indescribably alien. Dubbed the Chaga, the alien flora destroys all man-made materials, and moulds human flesh, bone and spirit to its own designs. And when Gaby McAsland finds the first man to survive the Chaga's changes, she realizes it has its own plans for humankind.


About the Author

SALES POINTS * First volume in a trilogy by the author of Necroville. * Chosen by Locus magazine as one of the SF novels of 1995. * McDonald has won the Philip K. Dick Award and been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. * 'One of the finest writers of his generation, who choses to write science fiction because that is how he can best illuminate the world' New Statesman

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Unique (well, apart from the sequel...), 16 May 2001
By A Customer
One of the most moving pieces of sci-fi I've read for a while- restored my faith in a genre that I thought I'd left for dead. McDonald's work is political, but with a rare subtlety: he's got a real grasp of global cultural conflict, and how it might be affected by some unusual, external event (what Iain M Banks might call an 'Outside Context Problem!). Stylisctically, McDonald has found the perfect balance between the overripe poetics of 'Hearts, Hands and Voices', and the over-slangy, occasionally derivative cyberbanter of 'Out on Blue Six'. He delivers generous, sympathetic characterisation, even to the UN bad-hats, but especially (and, for SF, unusually) to the female charcaters. Gaby McAslan is more than an off-the-peg feisty journalist, and Oksana, the Russian pilot, is as life-affirming a character as you'ld ever hope to meet. The Chaga itself is described with an old-fashioned sense-of-wonder often missing from more cynical near-future novels, and yet remains oddly plausible. At the same time, the prose easily scales back down to football matches and love affairs, the day-to-day life of humans amongst a wondrous event that has politicized their world. The sequel, Kiriniya, ties up loose ends and expands the scope of the story hugely, but hasn't quite the impact. Nonetheless, it's also recommended.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Lush, intelligent and hopeful, 30 Jul 1999
By A Customer
This is one of the most intelligent novels about alien contact I have read. Novels about 'the alien' can tend to be so mundane - the aliens are basically humans with a few changes, or easily recognisable as based on other earth species. McDonald avoids these pitfalls. His 'Chaga', named after the Kenyan tribe who first discover it, is a bizarre, self-replicating, absorbing, learning, mutating substance, being and process all at once. The UN (dominated ny the Americans) treat it like a threat, a disease to be stopped at all costs. This of course becomes another cover for racism against the Africans, but it is the Africans who realise that adpation is the key. By the end of the book this appears to bee shifting the world balance of power to Africa, a trend which continues in the equally wonderful sequel, Kirinya. McDonald's lush descriptive skill and eye for the cultural and natural landscape of Kenya form the base of this book, but his characterisation and plot structuring are equally impressive. Gaby, Faraway, Tembo, Shepherd, Oksana and many others are characters who breathe and demand your attention. The plot is tight, taut and packed with incident, humour, brutality, love - in short, all the things that make us human; nothing is out of place, nothing superfluous. Overall, one of the most human, hopeful and intelligent novels of the near future I have read.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Often Interesting, Sometimes Challenging, Rarely Entertainin, 15 Sep 2001
By A Customer
My first book by Ian Mcdonald, which I picked up on with great anticipation, after reading one of his short stories in an anthology. The premise would have made a good short story or even novella, but has been expanded into far too long a novel. The author's furiously held political opinions permeate everything and make it all far too predictable. The parts about the Chaga (An alien environment forcibly imposed on the earth for the 'evolutionary benefit' of mankind) are excellent, though Mcdonald seems incapable of viewing this as an act of the grossest 'pseudo-colonialism' and speciesism (pity the rest of the life on earth), the rest is very variable in quality, and often frankly tedious. The choice of a female protagonist stretches Mcdonalds powers of characterisation past breaking point "These guys had a lot to learn about feminism" she thinks - oh p-lease.
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