Ian McDonald’s last several masterpieces (RIVER OF GODS and BRASYL) set an incredibly high bar for any author with aspirations of becoming better with every book that he writes. But though both of those novels were works of genius, they weren’t books I could convince my friends who aren’t well-versed in science fiction to read.
They’re dense, demand a lot of faith in the story and the author, and require some hardcore intellectual gymnastics for readers to internalize the masterful cultural prognostications that McDonald makes with his future India and time-muddled Brazil. But McDonald’s somehow managed to outdo himself with THE DERVISH HOUSE.
It’s still got the future travelogue aspects, the wonderful futurism and the dense understanding of a culture that is definitely not Western, but it also manages to be wonderfully accessible without sacrificing any of the aspects of McDonald’s writing that makes it so enthralling.
The setting this time is Turkey, and the characters are the people living and working in the vicinity of the titular dervish house. Of course, they are eclectic: There’s a boy whose medical condition isolates him from the sounds of the world and lives vicariously as an intrepid detective; a young college graduate trying to make her way out of the grasp of her family and into the business world; a disgraced scholar who whiles away his time reminiscing on regrets; an antiquities dealer who takes on an impossible quest; her husband,with a daring plan to become a master of the financial universe; a street preacher who aims to change the world one small problem at a time; and his brother, who kicks everything off by happening to be present at ground zero of a suspiciously non-lethal suicide bombing and subsequently sees a world filled with djinns, angels, elementals and saints.
These protagonists’ lives intersect and intertwine, and the amazing twists and turns of their respective capers bring out the tiny details of the country in which they live. The Turkey that McDonald creates is evoked masterfully by Stephan Martieniere’s cover art — oversaturated colors and the thrum of power, information and the lived-in humanity of the world.
Like RIVER OF GODS and BRASYL, McDonald’s use of setting as an essential character works its magic throughout the plot, portraying a nation caught both geographically and culturally between the West, the East and the Middle East. Everyone’s got fancy smartphones, but they also go to street judges for the remediation of everyday disputes, deal with hellish commutes to work in cars that share roads with much less-evolved forms of transportation, work on revolutionary nanotech in dusty bazaars, and chase half-forgotten legendary relics across a city that’s known many regimes and was once the seat of an empire.
THE DERVISH HOUSE is one of those books for which there needn’t be a blurb on the inside jacket inadequately describing the plot in a couple of paragraphs. Read it on trust — McDonald knows what he’s doing. Anyone who gives THE DERVISH HOUSE half a chance will take up residence in a mindspace that compares only with those created in his other works. There had better be more where this came from. —Ryun Patterson
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BRASYL by Ian McDonald
• CYBERABAD DAYS by Ian McDonald
• RIVER OF GODS by Ian McDonald
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Good to know. Years ago I read and really liked his short cyberpunk-zen novel SCISSORS CUT PAPER WRAP STONE, but EVOLUTION’S SHORE was good only in fits and starts and I couldn’t even wade through the denseness of TERMINAL CAFE. Still, RIVER OF GODS has been on my to-read list for years now.