Review: The Dervish House - Ian McDonald

Genre: Sci-fi/fiction
Pages: 576, PB
Published: July 14th 2011 Golllancz

It begins with an explosion. Another day, another bus bomb. Everyone it seems is after a piece of Turkey. But the shockwaves from this random act of 21st century pandemic terrorism will ripple further and resonate louder than just Enginsoy Square. Welcome to the world of The Dervish House; the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. The year is 2027 and Turkey is about to celebrate the fifth anniversary of its accession to the European Union; a Europe that now runs from the Arran Islands to Ararat. Population pushing one hundred million, Istanbul swollen to fifteen million; Turkey is the largest, most populous and most diverse nation in the EU, but also one of the poorest and most socially divided. It's a boom economy, the sweatshop of Europe, the bazaar of central Asia, the key to the immense gas wealth of Russia and Central Asia. The Dervish House is seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core--the eponymous dervish house, a character in itself--that pins all these players together in a weave of intrigue, conflict, drama and a ticking clock of a thriller.

My thoughts:

I do not know how to review this book because it was so well-written, and the imagination of it all, and the knowledge of the city showed that he really had aspired to learn as much as much as he could. And even if I liked it, it was still too confusing for me to really get lost in it.

There is so much going on, and there are a lot of characters.  Adnan is a trader with a get rich scheme with his buddies. His wife Ayse owns a gallery and buys religious art. She is hired to find the mellified man, a man who became honey after his death (do not get me started, it has to do with how he lived on honey and became mummified.) Georgios, an old Greek who is a professor in Economics, Can who is nine and who with his robots uncovers a terrorist plot and won't let go. Leyla who wants a job in marketing and later has to hunt something down for her new job. Necdet who after being caught in a suicide bombing starts seeing djinn.

The thing is that it would all have worked for me if it had not jumped so much. I was reading about Adnan and turned the page and suddenly I was reading about Can. For me it was just too jumpy and I got confused. I did not know who was who and what they were doing. It took a really long time for me to get into the book and understand what was going on. Even then I have no idea what Adnan was up too. But then his plot was just too complicated.

This book has a lot going on. Hidden relics, trying to find terrorists before they strike again, people not wanting to be a part of the EU. A hot summer where gas is wanted. People who see djinn and other things that should not exist. And it is interesting.

The best part is the new world he has built up. Where nanos are inserted into our bloodstream to make us concentrate better, and everything you could imagine. Where we can see what is happening on our retina, like a computer. It is a new world but at the same time an old world, and the changes are not big, instead they are believable.

It is a book to read slowly. That is my advice.

Conclusion: 

Even if the book was not for me I was impressed by the science fiction parts and how these lives came together like a puzzle.

Rating:

Not for me. But maybe for you.

Cover: 

meh