Ian McDonald – River of Gods
In River of Gods (UK/US), Ian McDonald (author’s blog) weaves a story of our near future in a divided India, on the 100th anniversary of the independence from the British Empire, in 2047. The world is on the brink of the so feared technological singularity, with the majority of world aligning with the US in banning advanced artificial inteligence systems. Centered around nine central characters, and around the holy river Ganges, it follows a plot that will slide each character into their role for the story, always going back to the city of Varanasi.
I might be getting slightly blasé, but I felt the grand finale didn’t live up to the journey that the book is – perhaps because the story itself is so rich in its settings. Even if you already know something about India, this book will totally immerse you in a very believable atmosphere – there’s a helpful glossary of Indian terms in the end of the book, but it doesn’t cover anywhere near all the terms encountered in the book – having access to the internet while reading the book for some clarifications will make the story more understandable in its intricacies.
The book felt perhaps a bit too long – some characters are just there to make the setting more understandable as a whole, or to explain the motivations of other characters. Perhaps a few glimpses of the thought processes of the aeais (AIs – Artificial Intelligences) without breaking the main secrets of the story would make it more interesting – using some kind of unreliable narrator device, it might even add to the beautiful complexity of the book.
I enjoyed it as an experience, and I felt that I might have learned some things about what makes India what it is, and what it might eventually be in the future. It’s a book to be read with concentration, as it demands attention from the reader/traveler. Perhaps like India itself.
