Synopses & Reviews
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 Aj 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.
Review
"One of the best SF books I've read this year." Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist
Review
"A staggering achievement, brilliantly imagined and endlessly surprising...a brave, brilliant and wonderful novel." Christopher Priest, Guardian
Review
"I will read anything that man writes-he is the most under appreciated genius working in the field today." Cory Doctorow, author of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town; coeditor, boingboing.net
Review
"Hugely adventurous and entertaining, sumptuously inventive and full of heart...it is likely to rank as Ian McDonald's finest creative achievement." Nick Gevers, Locus
Review
"Combining real-life issues such as water shortages, runaway technology, and overpopulation with fantastical complications including a message from another world, McDonald's opus deservedly won the 2004 British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel." Library Journal
About the Author
Ian McDonald is the author of many science fiction novels, including Desolation Road, King of the Morning, Queen of the Day, Out on Deep Six, Changa, and Kirinya. He has won the Philip K. Dick Award and the BSFA Award, been nominated for a Hugo Award, and has several nominations for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.