Special Circumstances

Child of the River by Paul J. McAuley

Not many science-fiction authors can spin off a great first chapter which is gives you a disquieting, grim gradual revelation of being in a completely alien environment. Paul McAuley pulls this off. However later chapters are more sloppy and less inventive (at some point one of the characters mentions the word `democracy' which should be a meaningless word in McAuley's constructed universe). The ending resolves many of the issues raised in this book but mostly serves as a setup for the next book in a trilogy. Reading this book did not impel me to pick up the remaining installments.

The setting and the plot is not particularly original involving the ubiquitous `Chosen One' plotline, but the hard-sf details and the comfortable fantasy atmosphere can conspire to make it quite a enjoyable read for a lazy summers day.

Paul McAuley walks a thin line between fantasy and hard-sf. Occasionally reading this book reminds you of Gene Wolfe, and then in the space of a few pages you get some hard-sf scientific speculation.

One minor point: the setting for this novel, Confluence, has a rigid caste system, the learned class resemble the Brahmins and there are other hints that the dominant religion is some mutated form of Hinduism. However, the name of the protagonist is Yama, the name of Death personified in Hinduism. The etymology in the book is that Yama is short for Yamamanama which means `Child of the River'. From what sources I could access, the real Sanskrit etymology of the word Yama is from the verbal root `yam': to subdue, control. This is not particularly egregious, except that unimaginative fantasy or sf writers usually pick up some classical works to simply use the unusual names. I hope that McAuley's intentions were not as shallow and it is unclear whether we should attribute these and many other discrepancies to a higher purpose or to the author's ineptitude.

%T Child of the River
%T :the first book of Confluence
%A Paul J. McAuley
%I Avon Books
%D 1997 
%G ISBN: 0380975157
%P 306
%K science-fiction

Review written: 1999/08/17