River of Gods

Giving this a one star since I gave up 150 pages in.

The author introduces a lot of characters' POVs very quickly and it felt a bit all over the place. The multiple sex scenes were just cringy to read too. The sci-fi concepts itself were cool but once the author started a sex scene with the woman “flipping back into a handstand” I was done.

Dense, detailed, a little convoluted. A little Salman Rushdie and a lot William Gibson. Solid SF.

Ok. I'm not going to lie. I had no idea why was going for a lot of this book. I couldn't even claim to know what it was really about until the last fifty pages or so. But I liked it. I liked it's grit and eroticism, I liked the characters, I liked the world McDonald developed and I liked that he dumps you into it with no exposition whatsoever, as frustrating as that could be at times. I also liked it's indulgences - mechs! - it kind of showed that McDonald wasn't so pretentious as such a complex story might suggest. I might have to read this book a couple more times, but I will be looking forward to it.