Customer Reviews

THE DERVISH HOUSE (GOLLANCZ)

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

When I gave Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven its perfect score a few weeks back, I was persuaded that no other speculative fiction work could possibly even come close to it in terms of quality. And yet, I knew full well that the ARC for Ian McDonald's The Dervish House was sitting on my desk, practically begging me to read it. And still I believed that Kay's latest would reign supreme as the best SFF book of 2010 -- at least in this house. The more fool me, I know. . .

Considering how much I loved River of Gods, Brasyl, and Cyberabad Days, I'm aware that I should have waited a bit longer before granting Under Heaven its crown. After all, every McDonald title I've read since the creation of the Hotlist ended up in my top reads of that year. Call it Canadian patriotism or whatever you like, but I really wanted Guy Gavriel Kay to finish in pole position at the end of 2010. Unfortunately, Ian McDonald had another think coming for me.

The Dervish House is without a doubt his best and most accessible science fiction novel to date. And to put it simply, it just blew my mind. Believe me, I did try to find some shortcomings and facets that left a little to be desired. All to no avail, of course. The Dervish House is about as good as it gets, folks. McDonald's past novels had already set the bar rather high, no question. But this one, at least for me, is as close to perfection as a book can get.

Here's the blurb:

It begins with an explosion. Another day, another bus bomb. Everyone it seems is after a piece of Turkey. But the shock waves from this random act of twenty-first-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.

Previous novels by McDonald took some time to get into, as the author used the early part of each of his work to build the groundwork for what was to come. Uncharacteristically, in The Dervish House McDonald's tale grabs hold of you from the get-go and won't let go till you reach the very end. I wasn't expecting the novel to make such a powerful impression right from the very first pages. But as soon as that woman detonates herself inside Tram 157 near Necatibey Cadessi, any hope I had of ever being able to put down this book evaporated immediately.

Seemingly effortlessly (don't know how he manages to do it, but McDonald's always makes this look easy), the author captured the essence of 21st century Turkey on countless levels. His evocative prose brings Istanbul to life in vivid fashion. His undeniable eye for details creates an imagery and an atmosphere that will delight and impress readers in myriad ways. As is the author's wont, the worldbuilding is superb. His depiction of a futuristic Turkey now part of the EU is even more memorable than his thrilling depictions of India and Brazil were. Whether its the country's political and social psyche, or mundane details such as what people are having for breakfast, McDonald's narrative makes you feel as though you're part of the action.

The Dervish House is not split into usual chapters. Instead, the story takes place during seven days, beginning with that fateful terrorist bus bombing. The tale unfolds through the eyes of six disparate characters, with the dervish house connecting these various plotlines together. I felt at first that the contrasting personalities would perhaps create a somewhat discordant whole, but Ian McDonald makes them all come together in a surprising manner. As was the case with River of Gods, when the multilayered storylines converge, the author's genius and his gift for well-crafted characterization shine through.

Though every character has his or her part to play in the overall story arc, Necdet, who was staring at the woman on the tram when she blew herself up, could be what one might consider the central character. Yet that's not entirely true, as the rest of the cast, even if they do so sometimes indirectly, plays as important a role in the greater scheme of things. The boy Can Durukan is particularly well-realized, and his relationship with Georgios Ferentinou showed that the author possesses a deft human touch. Still, Ayse Erkoç was, for me, probably the most interesting of the bunch. Another great aspect of The Dervish House is that every single character has a backstory, making them all three-dimensional protagonists. Hence, although the novel is a thought-provoking work of science fiction, it is nevertheless a character-driven read.

The pace, even though it is never a factor, is not always crisp. The narrative slows down considerably in the POV portions of both Adnan Sarioglu and Leyla Gültasli. And yet, when McDonald's reveals the true importance of each plotline and how it's connected to the overall story arc, that's when things get really interesting!

Perhaps because fundamentalist islamic terrorists and the emergence of Turkey and its possible accession to the European Union have made the news quite often these last few years, many of the themes found within the pages of The Dervish House feel more actual and better known and understood than those of McDonald's previous novels. Which is why I feel that The Dervish House, while showcasing Ian McDonald at his very best in terms of thought-provoking storytelling skills, just might be his most accessible work to date.

The Dervish House deserves the highest possible recommendation. If you only have money to buy a single scifi novel this year, this has to be it.

In this one book there's a hunt for a mummy, a dodgy gas deal, terrorists hoping to employ nano-technology, soccer, and a child detective. And a real-estate deal. And... There's a lot going on, all of it draped over the luscious stage that is Istanbul.

I really don't want to give it all away, so I'll say little more. Suffice it that all these threads get woven together to tell a really great story.

If you've been to Istanbul, that's a bonus, as you'll be able to picture the streets and neighborhoods. Also, you'll fully grok how it's perfectly possible for Istanbul to have an underground world that's barely known, and in which historical artifacts just get lost. You may even find yourself wanting to buy an antique Istanbul house, just so you can clear it to its original beautiful architecture.

Dear Lord, the more I think of it, what a great book. He's got the history of a place like Istanbul down pat, and can project forward to a new generation of "Young Turks". This is just brilliantly well done. The more I reflect on it, the more I love this book. I'll be re-reading it for years. So, thanks, Ian McDonald. Actually, more like "Go raibh maith agat".

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The weather is an actor in this book, just as in Kurosawa's "Stray Dog".

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This is the second book I've read by the author ("Brasyl", previously). The man knows his "Gaeilge" (Irish), and he's obviously been to Rio de Janeiro and Istanbul - two of my favorite cities. I feel like we're living parallel lives, but while I'm only taking pictures, he's writing great books.

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Something else that occurs: I think the EU's rejection of Turkey, along with growing Islamist sentiment in Turkey itself, is likely to keep this book mostly a work of fiction, Apart from ongoing ethnic cleansing (see <[...]), the rise of neighborhood shaykhs and more neighborhood shariat law, I suppose. Pity that.

The Dervish House
Ian McDonald
PYR, Jul 27 2010, $26.00
ISBN: 9781616142049

In 2027 in Istanbul, Turkey Necdet rides the jammed tram to work, but though he is not a creep he cannot stop staring at the young woman with the red highlights and silver curls. Thus he sees first hand when she touches a jewel at her throat and detonates her head. The exploding skull panics everybody.

The nanotechnological Swarmbots gizmos investigate what seems like a loner suicide bomber. Necdet knows he must elude the Swarmbots because they have ways of knowing everything; he must not reveal that he is moving into the Dervish House for fear he will destroy his brother's plan to use the home as a sanctuary for an underground Islamic group. The timing for the move is bad especially as the country celebrates its fifth decade as a member of the EU, which means terrorists will blow themselves and others up for some obscure inane cause in God's name and law enforcement will sweep anyone regardless of criminality.

This is a complicated gloomy science fiction novel that extrapolates current trends in politics, economics, religion, science, technology and social terrorism into a strong entthralling thriller. The cast is solid starting with Necdet and the Swarmbots while the story line is fast-paced and extremely dark. Readers will appreciate Ian McDonald's ominous near future as 1984 comes to full throttle in his vision of 2027.

Harriet Klausner

"The Dervish House" is a book about many things. It is a book about technology and the way that it can change a society. It is about religious belief. But more than anything, it is a book about Istanbul, and the deep connection that its inhabitants share with it.

The book follows several different characters along several different plotlines. In the beginning, the only thing they have in common is the setting: an old building, the titular Dervish House, where most of the characters work or live. The connection between these different plotlines is almost nonexistent until 3/4 of the way through the book, but it never feels as if the novel is unfocused. The characters are sufficiently engaging that their stories are a pleasure to read, even if the reader spends a long time wondering the reason these characters are important.

The science fiction elements of the story are well written and thought provoking. The future Istanbul that the author has concocted for this novel is fleshed-out, and the science fictional elements are presented realistically. New forms of technology are presented, yes, but the real-life implications of their implementation are just as important as their scientific justification, something many author fail to see, and in this sense the author does not disappoint. The Istanbul of "The Dervish House" feels feasible and real because the way the future affects Istanbul is specific to that city.

However, inspired though the science fiction may be, the most important part of this novel is the way it recalls the Istanbul of the past. Istanbul is an old city, and it pulses with ancient wisdom and culture. The author has dutifully (and marvelously) captured the essence of this city in his novel. The citizens of Istanbul don't just live there; they are deeply connected to its every nook and cranny. One of the characters states that she would evaporate outside of Istanbul, and this can be taken as the mantra of most of the characters in the book. They need Istanbul almost as much as Istanbul needs them. The city is alive, and the characters are alive for being there. They ache for Istanbul, and by the end of the book, the reader does to.

In fact, this feeling of yearning is so pervasive that at some points, the science fiction elements disappear altogether, or at least fade into the background. The author could remove them and still have a great, robust story to tell. This isn't to say that the sci-fi elements are bad (they're not), but this serves as a testament to the fact that the novel's setting, a character in and of itself, is well put together.

This book is highly recommended, even to people who normally don't read Science Fiction. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to start looking up flights to Turkey,,,

This may be the worst novel of the last year or the best of the last century but I couldn't tell you due to the way this was digitized. Letters with accent marks were added as extremely pixelated images rather than text characters. These characters do not scale with the font size that you have selected and only line up at the largest size. If you are reading at a non-octogenarian sized font it is extremely jarring to have a letter in the middle of a word twice as large as the rest of the word. Others may not be as irritated by this but it was annoying enough for me to stop reading after the first chapter.

Ian McDonald has long been a part of my Pile of Shame - the books and authors I've always thought I should read, but somehow never gotten around to. In his case, I tried tackling Desolation Road a few months back, but for some reason I just lost interest halfway through, even though I enjoyed it quite a lot until that point. The Dervish House, then, was to be the novel to acquaint me with McDonald. It is his third "ethno" work after River of the Gods and Brazil, and it has generated an avalanche of on-line praise, so the timing was perfect.

Istanbul, in the year 2027. Twenty million people live there, and it is still the Queen of Cities, a crossroads of worlds and religions, a maze of ordered chaos and quiet cacophonies, of petty dramas and grand designs. A city where the old and the new, the mystical and the futuristic embrace in prayer around its many mosques. Turkey has become part of the European Union, and a major player in the nanotechnology field.

A suicidal bomber in a tram heralds the beginning of life-changing events for six people. A rogue trader prepares himself for the scam of the century. His wife, an owner of an art gallery, sets on a mission to discover a legendary treasure hidden somewhere in the great city. A young marketing graduate is hired by a family business that could change the world, but she has only five days to save it. A nine-year old boy with a heart condition that forces him to wear ear-plugs, thus stealing all sound from his world, becomes the accidental witness to the beginnings of a conspiracy, and turns into the Boy Detective. His friend, a retired Greek economist, is hired into a military think-tank, but he has to battle old demons before he could face new ones. And a good-for-nothing slacker caught in the tram accident starts seeing jinn, and becomes a new man. All those lives intertwine as Istanbul plunges into a five-day heat-wave, to weave a tale of dirty deals, nanotechnology and a whole new kind of terrorism.

Ok, so I want to come clean before I continue. It took tremendous effort on my part to finish The Dervish House, and in the end, it was sheer stubbornness and determination that prevented me from giving up on it. Not for a second did a sympathize with any of the characters, and the story started to actually go somewhere only in the last seventy pages.

Now, don't take me wrong. Ian McDonald is obviously a very talented writer, and even if the present tense he uses in the novel is a bit tiring at times, his style is beautiful - rich and vivid, playing with rhythm and phrase in a multitude of ways. Alas, I could never feel his Istanbul. Not in any real sense, even though it is evident that he has put a lot of effort and knowledge into building the atmosphere of the city. And his work seems to have payed off, as many on-line reviewers point mid-twenty first century Istanbul as one of the strongest aspects of the book. To me, it remained just a random place that nothing was happening in for three hundred pages.

The characters are given small segments of a couple of pages each, before McDonald moves on to the next one. That means we follow all of their stories pretty much simultaneously, but it also means that none of those stories actually move. The Dervish House is split into the five days of the heat-wave, and chapters plod ponderously over the hours, as little snippets of different lives are shown in painstaking detail, with all the atmospheric details that I would love, if the actually did it for me. Considering that I turned out to be immune to McDonald's atmosphere-building and character-developing skills however, all I was left with were six separate stories that seemed to go nowhere, lacked anything to make them even a little exciting, and when the final seventy pages finally kicked in, and the stories started to merge, I wished that we had arrived there a lot earlier. Plot-wise the book needs anywhere between a hundred and fifty, and two hundred pages less.

Honestly, I am somewhat saddened. I really wanted to like The Dervish House, and to become a fan of McDonald's writing. I still do, actually, and after some time has passed, I will most likely try and read others of his books. He seems to be exactly the type of writer that I respect ia like. Yet, even if nothing in The Dervish House touched me in any way, it is a good book, and I can appreciate that a tremendous amount of effort and thought has been put into it. Also, considering all the stellar reviews over the Internet, I suspect I am in the minority here, so my advice would be for you to try it out for yourself. What it didn't do for me, it might do for you.

7/10
[...]

In an effort to make this review as useful as possible, some background: I'm a fan of this type of book (near-future non-space scifi? gibsonian street-settings?) , and I'm ridiculously tolerant when it comes to sloppy attempts using this mold.

The Dervish House is disappointing because of its lack of confidence, both in itself and in the reader. It feels as though the author was constantly worried that we wouldn't "get it," that we would miss the carefully observed details and little touches that make this particular brand of science fiction so enjoyable. All the tropes are there: markets, systems made of of chaotic parts coalescing into a whole, psychogeography, but they are made too obvious. Many times, an intriguing idea is introduced only to be ruined by a type of description that felt like it should be a startup elevator pitch or a comment on hackernews--not the subtlety one comes to expect from good fiction.

An example: when explaining an organization of young islamic scholars who aim to introduce a local sharia legal system that administers justice only to those in the neighborhood who agree to be bound by its laws, in the middle of a good paragraph, we get "There are examples all over the world of community micro-credit schemes, why not community micro-justice?" It's your world, Mr. McDonald; if you'd like there to be "community micro-justice" in it, please just go ahead and write it in.

It seems that a great many of the flaws of this book could have been fixed by a careful editor. Besides obnoxious lines like the "community micro-justice" one above, there are a great deal of copy-editing misses. The author has decided to use parts of the Turkish character-set in this book (a debatable decision, kind of cool but also kind of distracting) but has failed to ensure that it was implemented uniformly, so we aren't sure whether the riverside mansions written about so fondly are "yal's" or "yalis."

There are many more examples of clumsily written nuggets in this book, including a few extremely painful fourth-wall breaking references, but I'll close with an exceptional one instead, the cute little detail near the beginning that set my expectations for this novel much higher than they should have been:

"Lefteres...is the resident lampoonist of Eskikoy. A pestering boyfriend, an uncrecovered debt, unwelcome loud music, or somebody fly-tipping in your dumpster: go to Lefteres at the Adem Dede cayhane. Pay him what he asks. It will not be cheap. Quality is never cheap. But the very next morning, Eskikoy will wake to find a single sheet of A4, always handwritten, thumbtacked to the offending door[...]. In the best Turkish verse and scansion and the highest of style, every vice is listed and shamed, every personal attribute ridiculed. Leftere's research is immaculate. It works without fail. The crowd at the door is an ancient and powerful sanction. Word of a new lampoon travels fast. People come from far beyond Eskikoy to read and marvel. There are international web sites dedicated to the lampoons of Lefteres the Confectioner of Eskikoy."

Like most people, I admire creativity and originality in books (and most other things). But McDonald has ramped up the enjoyment factor for THE DERVISH HOUSE to difficult heights. Although it is not as disjointed, fragment-laden or long as RIVER of GODS, it was a much more difficult read. Many undoubtedly admired the strange vocabulary and alphabet but it was a constant struggle attempting to remember all the rules. Does "c" sound like a "k", "s" or "j"? This umlaut over that? And that odd "er" letter? I went the extra mile and visited a site that voiced the Turkish alphabet.

But it was all so unnecessary. Why resort to a foreign script when a phonetic spelling would have worked just fine? Why introduce phrases that less than no one has any clue to the meaning? As for the story - great start, great ending, molasses-like interior. Especially irritating are the numerous unnecessary details that add nothing except a demonstration of the author's command of the subject, scene and culture.

Despite all the complaints above it was a mesmerizing read, a literary diamond in the rough. The mood was almost hallucinogenic is its evocation of both old and new Istanbul. The author effectively showed that despite fancy technology, human beings do not changed. That is, our motivations - love, greed, sex, power, ideology, faith - are still the prime movers. Characters were incredibly drawn and yet the book suffered slightly from the lack of a central character. Not a hero, but someone who could effectively bind the tales from above. My Grade - B-

While the core story of The Dervish House spans only a few days in the year 2027 the tale incorporates legend, myth, history, politics and religion spanning centuries, if not millennia. Its themes include unrequited love, betrayal, revolution, cultural sexism, terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, prejudice, fraudulent commodity trading, clashing cultures, the isolation of the individual, and the day-to-day reality facing people on the streets of Istanbul.

Ian McDonald tells his intricate story through the lives of six individuals who are linked in various ways to an ancient wooden tekke (a building designed specifically for gatherings of a Sufi brotherhood) located in Istanbul, the Dervish house of the title. This building has survived centuries and in 2027 contains several dwellings and an antique dealership.

The action starts on the third page with a suicide bomber detonating her explosive device on a tram. We are then treated to how this terrorist act affects each of the six characters; the teenager on the tram who survives the explosion but is traumatised by his experience; a young marketing graduate whose journey to her important job interview is disrupted by the ensuing traffic chaos; the nine-year-old boy, confined to his apartment and a world of silence by a rare heart condition; the retired Greek economist whose past has brought him into conflict with the authorities; a dealer in ancient artefacts who receives an offer she cannot refuse; the yuppie commodity dealer with plans for a killing that will set him up for life.

The Istanbul of McDonald's novel is in a Turkey that has become part of the European Union, and is experiencing an economic boom based on great advances in nanotechnology and its applications. Turkey's strategic location at the meeting point of Europe and Asia plays a big part in the economic success of the area, and also in the potential targeting of its ancient capital city by terrorist groups wishing to make their mark.

Does Ian McDonald succeed in producing a good book with so many diverse strands and elements?

In my opinion, yes, he does.

His characters are full and rounded. Their actions are rational and coherent in the context of the story and the situations in which they find themselves. Family backgrounds and personal experiences are presented and prove consistent with how the individuals are portrayed.

The Science Fiction elements in the story, nanotechnology and robotics, are critical to this near-future tale, but they have not been allowed to push character development or plot into the shade. This novel is an excellent political techno-thriller with some heart-touching romance, and is populated with characters who have everyday lives and real concerns. It deals with a wide range of issues pertinent to today's global reality, and deals with them in a historically accurate context.

I learned a lot about Turkey's history from this book, and have been prompted to read more about this fascinating and turbulent part of the world.

This was a book that I enjoyed immensely.

Forget about whether you like SF or not. This is a novel that goes beyond genre fiction to be acutely beautiful literature. McDonald's Istanbul itself is the main character, and he writes about it vividly. The prose is so luscious that sometimes I read a paragraph two or three times, once to advance the plot and then again and again just to admire the writing. His characters are so well-developed that they are fully human--you can not only see them in your mind, but you come to have the same complicated feelings about them that you would about a real person. And the plot itself, which weaves together terrorism, religion, a man mummified in honey, a broken Koran, and shapeshifting nanorobots, is both delicate and deft. Imagine Orhan Pamuk writing the future, and you'll get a sense of The Dervish House.

It's a brilliant book!