Ratings9
Average rating3.6
August 15th, 2047. Happy Hundredth Birthday, India ... On the eve of Mother India's hundredth birthday, ten people are doing ten very different things. In the next few weeks, all these people will be swept together to decide the fate of the nation. From gangsters to government advisors, from superstitious street-boys to scientists to computer-generated soap stars, River of Gods shows a civilization in flux - a river of gods. RIVER OF GODS is an epic SF novel as sprawling, vibrant and colourful as the sub-continent it describes. This is an SF novel that blew apart the narrow anglo and US-centric concerns of the genre and ushered in a new global consciousness for the genre.
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Ok. I'm not going to lie. I had no idea why was going for a lot of this book. I couldn't even claim to know what it was really about until the last fifty pages or so. But I liked it. I liked it's grit and eroticism, I liked the characters, I liked the world McDonald developed and I liked that he dumps you into it with no exposition whatsoever, as frustrating as that could be at times. I also liked it's indulgences - mechs! - it kind of showed that McDonald wasn't so pretentious as such a complex story might suggest. I might have to read this book a couple more times, but I will be looking forward to it.
Giving this a one star since I gave up 150 pages in.
The author introduces a lot of characters' POVs very quickly and it felt a bit all over the place. The multiple sex scenes were just cringy to read too. The sci-fi concepts itself were cool but once the author started a sex scene with the woman “flipping back into a handstand” I was done.
Featured Series
2 primary booksIndia 2047 is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2004 with contributions by Ian McDonald.