"It's a very effective way of compressing a virtual reality experience, I'll give it that. All this for 1.4 megs? It's just so non-interactive...". "But it is different for everyone who reads it."

So there we have a theme for this review and for this book.

It's a very effective virtual reality experience. And so it is; you're plunged straight into a future India, where the monsoon has failed, where the Ganges has been dammed, where selective abortion has led to a pampered class of rare, highly-educated, non-working wives. A world with genetic engineering, surgical neutering, and outlawed artificial intelligences far in advance of human intellect.

India is divided; the action largely occurs in the state of Bharat, about to go to war over that illegal dam. You see Bharat (and a few other places) from the eyes of nine different characters; the plot flits around between them, and you slowly piece together what's going on. It's ambitious and faintly exhausting; at times this book feels as if it was written specifically to appear on the Clarke Award shortlist. We see a younger son with an unexpected inheritance, a professor who's got away from it all, a journalist who's on the trail of the elusive Leader of the Opposition, a private secretary with exotic tastes, and many more. With such multiple narration it's inevitable that some of the stories will engage more than others; but none of the plotlines is dull.

The multitude of ensemble characters means that there is not much time for each of them, and not much time for each of the many science fictional tropes. The stories do gradually come together - in fact, you can spot that the book is reaching its climax at the point where this happens. But the overall effect is that of a particularly delicious thali, with lots of unfamiliar and tasty dishes to sample. I may not be quite the most careful reader; but I didn't quite manage to mentally tie all the characters down by the end of the book.