I couldn’t even finish The Dervish House. I got about 40 pages in (a full ten percent) and dropped it. A ton of characters were introduced, but not a single one succeeded in getting my attention or sympathy. I liked the setting (Istanbul), but got very, very tired of the would-be poetic description. The author went on for pages – in flowery present tense – about everything. Fireworks took ten pages to go off, and internal monologues lasted for three or four pages in the middle of dialogue. All i...

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)(This is being published today for the first time in honor of "Ian McDonald Week" at CCLaP. For an overview of all the content regarding McDonald being posted here this week, you can click here.)So what exactly are we talking about, anyway, when we talk about "cyberpunk," the subgenre in science-fiction t...

SO BORING!There, I wrote that. Even if you don't read the rest of the review, you would at least know my opinion. It was a very boring account of events nobody cares about. Seeing all of the five-star reviews on its page, I cannot help but think that this is one of those books that people claim to love because someone at some point said that it's genius and suddenly people like it so much. I was frustrated throughout the whole thing. The author, for unknown reasons, decides to write half the boo...

I didn't want to give this book five stars, but Ian McDonald hacked my brain. I had heard enough about The Dervish House—my first novel by McDonald, incidentally—to be fairly confident I would like it. Yet it is not the sort of novel that inspires love at first sight; rather, it tantalizes, flirts, and seduces its way into your heart. It accomplishes this through McDonald's style, the way he describes the city of Instanbul, invites us into its streets and its politics and the eponymous apartment...

An n-dimensional, immersive SF novel about the dervishes in 2027 Istanbul. It's a totally engrossing book that demands reader attention, not a casual book to go through on a quick read. Not to say that this is some scholarly tome weighty with its own self importance but rather Ian McDonald attempts to fill this with very accessible characters striving for very real dreams --- the options trader hopped up on nanodrugs to get the edge in the financial world, the antiquities dealer following arcane...

I received an electronic copy of this book in my Hugo voter packet. So I was reading it with an eye to seeing if it deserved an award, and I was holding it to a high standard. That may be why I was so disappointed. This book has some really good ideas: original, sf'nal, even hard. Unfortunately, the reader has to plow through 250 pages of lead-up to get to them. Up until that point, this could have been written as a mainstream novel, and the sf elements could have been eliminated in under a minu...

Wonderful! The book started out slow and I had to drag myself through the first hundred pages before I even understood who most of the characters were and why they mattered. If not for that, I would give it five stars. The slowness is partly due to the intricate and poetic writing style. Normally I read very quickly, but this book requires you to read every word, and rewards you for that effort with fascinating story. It is not light reading, but it has plenty of humor and joy. The setting is ne...

One of my favorite aspects of good science fiction is its ability to peer into its murky scrying bowl and divine absorbing pictures of possible futures based on current trends, cultural histories, and good old-fashioned chance happenings. Through such activities we are able to look at possible futures for ourselves and society and attempt to sway events accordingly. Unfortunately so much science fiction is written by white, comparatively affluent, straight men that this practice can lend itself

It's taken me quite a while to finish reading this novel. I came close to abandoning it a few times because I didn't see where it was going and - more particularly - I was having difficulty caring about the characters. However, it eventually started coming together. It even became a bit of a page turner and, surprisingly, I ended up caring about the characters more than I ever thought I could. Set in Istanbul in the near future, The Dervish House centres on a number of people who live or work in...

Book set in a sultry week in Istanbul in 2025, just after Turkey has joined the EU and with Arsenal playing Galatasaray in the CL SF. The book follows the stories of six characters living in a Dervish house. At times baffling, the books is however incredibly evocative of the current Istanbul and of a future world. The book is like much of Neal Stephenson futuristic books but like his historic books is firmly based around Economics as well as exhibiting huge amounts of historic research (even if

For me, this incredible book is as near to perfection as I am ever likely to see. This could be my template for a five-star book – a definite masterpiece. Having just read another classic that also pushed onto my all-time favorites list – Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita – I was struck by just how completely the great writers can take possession of your mind and your life. All they require is some of those too-brief periods when you can sit and really concentrate on their wondrous stories and...

Fascinating whirlwind of a future Istanbul, the oh so famed Constantinople thrown into a world of swarmbots, gray ooze of nanotechnology terror threats, and AI assisted economic hijinks.The one thing I love most about Mr. Mcdonald's books are the levels of depth and exploration of the world he has created. I place the tech ideas and the wonderfully odd legends like the man of honey on a second tier of coolness, followed by wonderfully non-traditional heroes and anti-heroes that wouldn't normally...

Necdet, a troubled young man, is witness to what looks like a botched suicide bombing on a crowded city tram; afterwards, he starts seeing djinn and other supernatural creatures. Can, a nine year old boy with an amazing robotic toy — and a heart condition that confines him to a silent world — accidentally becomes involved in the intrigue. Ayse, a gallery owner, is contracted to find a mysterious and elusive relic, while her boyfriend Adnan, a successful trader, works on his own scheme to become

This wonderful book felt played like a symphony of multiple themes spun out by six key characters that slowly converge on a common narrative. The novel is so embedded in the cultures of Istanbul that Istanbul itself becomes a key character itself. Set in the year 2027, the scene is just around the corner, and the story often doesn’t appear to be science fiction. Yet McDonald projects some disturbing progressions for the science of nanotechnology, and the crises faced by most of the key character...

Although a geek girl at heart, I’ve never really read a great deal of Science Fiction. Some Bradbury, a dash of Heinlein, a little Gibson, fair bit of LeGuin, but not enough. Of what I read of Bradbury, I loved Dandelion Wine the best – a glass of nostalgic strawberry lemonade – sweet as childhood memory, with a metallic tang of old-school horror. Heinlein seemed to really, really like porn (and his mom, apparently?), and I can respect that, but I can’t say I enjoyed his work. Gibson caught my e...

July 2010Oh, my. That's a beautiful cover. I think I'll have to read this.I know, I know, judging books by covers is a bad thing and I shouldn’t do it. This is why I haven’t read "...And Ladies of the Club", Helen Hooven Santmyer’s epic noviel about a reading group. Sure, it sounds like it might be interesting, but it also looks like a cheap romance novel, so no deal. I’ll wait a few years for the vampire/zombie/monster mash-up, hopefully titled "...And Ladies of the Stake." But Ian McDonald has...

I am going to go out of my way and say that this is not a bad book at all. It's actually quite well-written, and the atmosphere the author creates is engaging and vivacious. The science-fiction elements are quite well-done, the cyberpunk feel is very much in place, the city of Istanbul is interesting...Sadly, there were a couple places where the novel really fell flat for me; and these flat places completely ruined my experience, to the point where I found myself skimming more than I was reading...

This is the last of the Hugo-nominated novels for this year, and wow did I save the best for last. The Dervish House is everything I always hope for when I open a William Gibson novel, and was so pleased to find here. Cyberpunk, sure, but in this incredibly vibrant setting (Turkey right after it has joined the EU) with a lot of sub-plots (Mellified Man, Nano Terrorism, ancient artifacts, insider trading, kind of, a clever boy and his bots).One thing I love is McDonald's writing. Here's an exampl...

I nearly didn't read this book. The sample failed to interest me. In fact it seemed so over-written and dense that I wasn't sure what the book was about after the better part of the first chapter. However, in-part because the book was Hugo nominated and in-part because it was the io9.com book club read for the month I persevered and bought the book.Rereading the first chapter made a lot more sense the second time around, and almost the very next page after the sample had ended the book came aliv...

A twisting dance as six stories entwine in the heart of near future Istanbul. The old world and the ultra new, the ancient and the nascent future whirl together around the old Dervish House in Adem Dede Square. Heat struck Istanbul, at once archaic and enigmatic then industrial and grimy, but also thrusting and modern, the palpitating heart of new European future Turkey, the crossroads of East and West, makes a fascinating and atmospheric setting as the stories spiral ever faster around each oth...