レビュー要約

• 豊かなイメージと異種間の恋愛設定を評価する読みがある一方、物語の手応えを物足りなく感じる反応もある。華やかな表面の下に、関係の非対称性が残る点が議論を呼ぶ。

レビュー

• Mirabilie Dictu!

  The stories within these pages dazzle, sadden, uplift, and fascinate me. McDonald writes about 21st century India is a way that presages all thaty is possibly good, horrific, or intriguing to fans of science fiction and history.

• Brilliant from beginning to end.

  Top quality cyberpunk that superbly captures the sights, sounds and smells of India and Nepal. I've been to some of the places where these stories are set and this book creates a stunningly believable future for these places. Like all good future science fiction, it's actually about now; this very week I've read news reports about nanobots and about the gender imbalance in India because of selective abortion of girls. The writer clearly has a finger on the pulse of developments in Sub Continental culture and technology. His characters are believable and very human. The book I'd read just before this one, The Devish House, was also from this author and I thought it was the best science fiction I'd encountered in years. This one is arguably better!

• Four Stars

  Excellent contents, just slightly disappointed that this second hand book was ex-library and not stated as such

• More Insight into River of Gods

  This was a great collection of stories set in the same future India as McDonald's River of Gods, which I also really liked. My personal favorite was "The Little Goddess" which was about a schizophrenic Nepalese girl that is exiled to India after injuring herself and thereby disqualifying herself from being a goddess. To survive in India, she has to become a very unique smuggler. I don't want to say anymore for fear of spoiling a creative, well-told story. I think McDonald's strong point is creating a believable, living and breathing world and then analyzing all sorts of cool technologies and ideas within that world. He's a little weaker on actual story telling. Most of the stories in this book don't have much of a plot. In fact, the final story is basically a retelling of the entire future "history" of India through the eyes of "Brahmin," and definitely should NOT be read before you read River of Gods. Some of the phrases McDonald uses (like Brahmin, for example) are borrowed from Indian and/or middle-eastern culture and applied to the new technologies and genetic mutations he's invented for his future. This occasionally was a problem for me as I read the stories, trying to remember what different terms meant. For example, was a Djinn a ghost or was it the physical manifestation of an advanced AI personality? River of Gods had a glossary at the end to help you keep those terms straight. Cyberabad Days definitely could have also benefited from a glossary, especially for readers like me, who read River of Gods a couple years ago.

• Just wonderful

  I am puzzled that some SF-loving folk just don't seem to get Ian McDonald. That's their loss. River of Gods was an out-and-out masterpiece. As an adjunct to that, this series of splintered visions of future India is an essential purchase. I have lived for many years in Asia, and McDonalds' research and depth of undestanding of this culture constantly amazes.

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