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Chaga #2
Kirinya
The end of the universe happened at around ten o'clock at night on 22 December 2032. It's just that humanity hasn't realized it yet. And the Chaga, the strange flora deposited from the stars, is still busy terraforming the tropics into someone else's terra.
Gaby McAslan was once a hungry news reporter who compromised her relationship with UNECTA researcher Dr. Shepard for the sake of her story; but Gaby is no longer a journalist and she doesn't want to be a full-time mother, even though her child Serena is her last link with Shepard. Gaby's fire has gone out; she's gone soft. But the massive political and military upheavals that are rocking the world are about to drag her back into the action.
Gaby McAslan was once a hungry news reporter who compromised her relationship with UNECTA researcher Dr. Shepard for the sake of her story; but Gaby is no longer a journalist and she doesn't want to be a full-time mother, even though her child Serena is her last link with Shepard. Gaby's fire has gone out; she's gone soft. But the massive political and military upheavals that are rocking the world are about to drag her back into the action.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
412 pages, Paperback
First published June 18, 1998
5 people are currently reading
166 people want to read
About the author
Ian McDonald
265 books1,264 followersIan Neil McDonald was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He used to live in a house built in the back garden of C. S. Lewis's childhood home but has since moved to central Belfast, where he now lives, exploring interests like cats, contemplative religion, bonsai, bicycles, and comic-book collecting. He debuted in 1982 with the short story "The Island of the Dead" in the short-lived British magazine Extro. His first novel, Desolation Road, was published in 1988. Other works include King of Morning, Queen of Day (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), River of Gods, The Dervish House (both of which won British Science Fiction Association Awards), the graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, and many more. His most recent publications are Planesrunner and Be My Enemy, books one and two of the Everness series for younger readers (though older readers will find them a ball of fun, as well). Ian worked in television development for sixteen years, but is glad to be back to writing full-time.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 10, 2021
All the things people on here have said that gave this book less-than favorable reviews are correct and none of them are true. The main 'problem' is that it proceeds at a pace that is both dizzying and ponderous, so dense with ideas and characters and the fantastic world(s) of change the Chaga brings that it seems a little breathless- THAT may be true. I myself am in awe of Ian as a writer as well as a creator of the fantastic, and the level he sustains here throughout is the very highest. For example, I often find myself skipping over entire parts of pages in other works where I recognize merely descriptive or plot continuity (and never miss a thing). There's no FILLER in this book- you could take a paragraph from any page within and use it to highlight the author's superb, pure, writing skills. His other novels have taken us to India and to Brazil (and to the moon) but here again the world of Kirinya is so deeply reflective of Africa herself that finishing it you almost feel as though it merits a stamp on your passport. AS Ian did with India, and Brazil, and now that I think of it Turkey as well. Perhaps that are other writers who are as immersive as he is, but I don't know who they are. I suppose the one complaint I'd agree with is that Kirinya leaves so many questions about the Chaga unanswered- there could be three or four more novels from the same 'world' and the well would never run dry. I can only add that the action/adventure is terrific as well, and heart-rending. An underrated book from one of our very few true geniuses...
November 24, 2014
Esta novela es la continuación de Chaga (Evolution's Shore en UK) y tiene como protagonista a Gaby McAslan, la reportera irlandesa de la primera novela.
En la obra anterior Gaby es inoculada con el material alienígena conocido como Chaga, el cual cambia su biología, también da a luz a una nina, a la cual llama Serena, quien tiene la capacidad de introducir su conciencia en la mente de otras personas.
Gaby y su hija son enviadas a la zona de tolerancia de personas infectadas, mientras que las naciones unidas envia un grupo de científicos a un objeto no identificado que órbita entre la tierra y la luna, llamado Big Dumb Object, el cual puede tener la clave de lo que representa este material alienígena.
Maravilloso libro de McDonald, estoy de acuerdo con el autor de que una civilización como la nuestra no soportaría el contacto con una civilización avanzada sin desmadejarse.
Una historia lleno de vida, muerte, sexo, violencia, amor, expiacion, lucha y cambio.
En la obra anterior Gaby es inoculada con el material alienígena conocido como Chaga, el cual cambia su biología, también da a luz a una nina, a la cual llama Serena, quien tiene la capacidad de introducir su conciencia en la mente de otras personas.
Gaby y su hija son enviadas a la zona de tolerancia de personas infectadas, mientras que las naciones unidas envia un grupo de científicos a un objeto no identificado que órbita entre la tierra y la luna, llamado Big Dumb Object, el cual puede tener la clave de lo que representa este material alienígena.
Maravilloso libro de McDonald, estoy de acuerdo con el autor de que una civilización como la nuestra no soportaría el contacto con una civilización avanzada sin desmadejarse.
Una historia lleno de vida, muerte, sexo, violencia, amor, expiacion, lucha y cambio.
June 4, 2021
This 8-grimace novel (including 2 on one page) would probably have gotten five stars from me if I'd: a) read it when it was new, and b) read it all in the same month.
I kept being distracted by other reading priorities, so though I started it in November there were several periods where I didn't touch it for weeks. It was memorable enough that I didn't lose too much continuity, but I did lose some. As to the other issue: I read the first Chaga book long ago, and greatly enjoyed the book and the idea. But there have been several Chaga-derivative books and movies since, which have taken some of the magic away from the premise.
[Definition: The Chaga is a growing territory, starting in East Africa, where some sort of von Neumann machine has come to earth and begun "terraforming" (or would that be alienforming?) the territory. The result is a largely unrecognizable landscape, in which the rules are quite different.]
Despite the familiarity of the premise, this book is imaginative, and vast in implications. The Chaga is a singularity in human history, and we could see that in the earlier book, but it's in this book that we really get to see it playing out. Much of the book is set inside the Chaga, which has taken over much of the Southern Hemisphere. It is altering the wildlife, altering the planet, and it's altering the people who step inside.
A plus for me is that the main POV characters are all women, all trying to do something important. A couple of them are thrill-driven, to some degree. They also have a variety of personalities, and some specific flaws. Gaby strikes me as a sort of Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir, being both an attractive and strong-willed woman who can't stop betraying the people she loves. This makes her a difficult person to root for as a character, much of the time. We also get a female military pilot out of Siberia, and some actual women warriors, and that makes for a nice change from the steady diet of boys-having-adventures in SF.
The story is complex, because those who live inside the Chaga are acquiring strange powers, and are being taken care of by the environment, to a degree; but the world outside is feeling economically threatened. (The metaphor seems to be Communism-plus-immortality versus imperial capitalism.) So there's a war. There are lesser wars within the Chaga, too, as tribes decide that they need to gain power. The situation is ugly, changing, and spinning out of control. There is also a huge alien artifact in Earth orbit (called the BDO, for Big Dumb Object), and a competition to both explore and control it.
One trick that I admired was in a near-the-climax battle scene, where he switched from past tense to present tense, to give a thriller-style feeling of immediacy. I only noticed the tense switch when he came back out of it, so it worked its magic.
I kept being distracted by other reading priorities, so though I started it in November there were several periods where I didn't touch it for weeks. It was memorable enough that I didn't lose too much continuity, but I did lose some. As to the other issue: I read the first Chaga book long ago, and greatly enjoyed the book and the idea. But there have been several Chaga-derivative books and movies since, which have taken some of the magic away from the premise.
[Definition: The Chaga is a growing territory, starting in East Africa, where some sort of von Neumann machine has come to earth and begun "terraforming" (or would that be alienforming?) the territory. The result is a largely unrecognizable landscape, in which the rules are quite different.]
Despite the familiarity of the premise, this book is imaginative, and vast in implications. The Chaga is a singularity in human history, and we could see that in the earlier book, but it's in this book that we really get to see it playing out. Much of the book is set inside the Chaga, which has taken over much of the Southern Hemisphere. It is altering the wildlife, altering the planet, and it's altering the people who step inside.
A plus for me is that the main POV characters are all women, all trying to do something important. A couple of them are thrill-driven, to some degree. They also have a variety of personalities, and some specific flaws. Gaby strikes me as a sort of Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir, being both an attractive and strong-willed woman who can't stop betraying the people she loves. This makes her a difficult person to root for as a character, much of the time. We also get a female military pilot out of Siberia, and some actual women warriors, and that makes for a nice change from the steady diet of boys-having-adventures in SF.
The story is complex, because those who live inside the Chaga are acquiring strange powers, and are being taken care of by the environment, to a degree; but the world outside is feeling economically threatened. (The metaphor seems to be Communism-plus-immortality versus imperial capitalism.) So there's a war. There are lesser wars within the Chaga, too, as tribes decide that they need to gain power. The situation is ugly, changing, and spinning out of control. There is also a huge alien artifact in Earth orbit (called the BDO, for Big Dumb Object), and a competition to both explore and control it.
One trick that I admired was in a near-the-climax battle scene, where he switched from past tense to present tense, to give a thriller-style feeling of immediacy. I only noticed the tense switch when he came back out of it, so it worked its magic.
April 15, 2021
A rapidly-paced, often engaging & sometimes perturbing sequel to Evolution's Shore (or Chaga). Evolution's Shore was a tightly plotted sci-fi mystery, with journalist Gaby McAslan uncovering a government conspiracy related to a strange alien plant-like arrival spreading in central Africa. Kirinya - set almost 20 years later when the Chaga has spread to encompass the entire southern hemisphere of the Earth - is far more sprawling and fragmented, envisaging a deeply weird, violent new world beset by domestic strife and international armed conflict.
The Chaga appears to have no aggressive designs (unlike the straightforwardly colonial plant invaders of John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids or the genocidal alien biological weapon of Tade Thompson's Rosewater trilogy). But it does cause irrevocable alterations to other lifeforms, including human beings. One of the new types of powerfully augmented humans is Gaby McAslan's daughter Serena/Ren, who plays a major role in the novel. The baffling, multi-chambered Big Dumb Object (reminiscent of Greg Bear's Eon or Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama) that has appeared in the Earth's orbit might offer some answers.
Sometimes difficult and slightly jarring, this novel doesn't quite reach the same heights of McDonald's best novels (such as River of Gods, The Dervish House, the Luna trilogy) but there is still a lot to admire. Reading Evolution's Shore first is a must though.
The Chaga appears to have no aggressive designs (unlike the straightforwardly colonial plant invaders of John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids or the genocidal alien biological weapon of Tade Thompson's Rosewater trilogy). But it does cause irrevocable alterations to other lifeforms, including human beings. One of the new types of powerfully augmented humans is Gaby McAslan's daughter Serena/Ren, who plays a major role in the novel. The baffling, multi-chambered Big Dumb Object (reminiscent of Greg Bear's Eon or Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama) that has appeared in the Earth's orbit might offer some answers.
Sometimes difficult and slightly jarring, this novel doesn't quite reach the same heights of McDonald's best novels (such as River of Gods, The Dervish House, the Luna trilogy) but there is still a lot to admire. Reading Evolution's Shore first is a must though.
August 27, 2019
This does well on expanding in a big way on what lies behind the events in Chaga. However it unsurprisingly doesn’t answer all the questions (I imagine that Ian McD himself may not have fully decided on those answers yet and may never do) and it adds some more big questions. The biggest question I have however relates to a particular point when an awful lot of very interesting lifeforms must surely and certainly snuff it when something rather major happens. Did the Chaga makers really intend that happen? – in which case I think the Northern humans in the story might perhaps have a point…or was that the result of interfering humans moving things faster than they should?
October 6, 2018
I liked this one even better than Evolutions Shore. This sounds weird, but I wish McDonald was more of a scientist and less of a novelist. My interests lie in hard science and world-building. I’m interested in how nations and communities act, less in how individuals deal with anger at the mother or unrequited love!
Again, my main frustration with the book was I wanted MORE! Which is not a bad thing!
Again, my main frustration with the book was I wanted MORE! Which is not a bad thing!
February 5, 2021
A middling and unfocused sequel, spending an awful lot of time not getting to the point, adding little to the previous narrative, except to render its protagonist in a thoroughly unsympathetic light, and setting up an entire storyline which it then completely ignores, pending a yet-to-appear sequel.
October 28, 2014
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature. We review SFF, horror, and comics for adults and kids, in print and audio daily. http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
After recently enjoying Ian McDonald’s Evolution’s Shore, the first book in his CHAGA series, I was eager to proceed with book two, Kirinya. I wanted to know where McDonald was going with the fascinating ideas he presented in that first novel. What is the goal of the Chaga, the alien evolution machine that has landed on Earth in the form of a ground-covering jungle that changes the landscape and its human inhabitants as it slowly progresses across equatorial regions? What is in the BDO (Big Dumb Object) that came from Saturn and hovers in Earth’s orbit? How will our world’s societies and cultures be affected by these otherworldly intrusions?
As Kirinya begins we learn that Gaby, the famous feisty Irish journalist, has had Shepherd’s baby. Because their daughter Serena was affected by the Chaga, Gaby and Serena are sent to live in the Chaga and not allowed out. People who live in the Northern Hemisphere don’t want to be infected by those who’ve been changed by the Chaga because of the weird genetic mutations it causes. Deprived of her career and her connection to Shepherd (who’s in the BDO), Gaby sinks into obscurity and lives, for many years, as a whore and a drug addict who neglects her daughter.
Eventually Oksana, the Siberian pilot, shows up and Serena leaves home and joins a terrorist group. After a tragedy strikes, Gaby is finally shaken up enough to decide to make some life changes. With some help from Faraway, a former lover, she gets back on her feet and becomes a spokesperson for a group that wants to put together a world peace summit to address the way the Northern countries are treating the Chaga-infested South. Meanwhile Serena is involved in a terrorist plot to wrest control of the BDO from the American military. Some of Serena’s action scenes are quite exciting and would make great movie scenes.
We learn very little about the things I wanted to learn about in Kirinya. We get only a few chapters from Shepherd’s point of view in the BDO. These consist of his diary entries and they only hint at the big picture. Fortunately, Shepherd talks a lot more like a poet than a scientist. (I know dozens of scientists and not one of them talks like Shepherd does.) Shepherd tells us about some of the intriguing findings in the BDO, but these updates stop just when they get interesting and we never learn more.
We also don’t see nearly as much of the Chaga-induced changes as I was hoping to see and most of what we do see is quite a bit different than I was expecting after reading Evolution’s Shore. It seemed like the Chaga was a benign influence that would provide people with their daily necessities and allow humans to live in peace and prosperity rather than conflict and competition. Or it might have been a vehicle for Africans to empower themselves, overthrow their oppressors, and transform their role in the global economy. But that is not what Gaby’s new world is like which, I suppose, may be Ian McDonald’s commentary on human nature and the way developed nations suppress undeveloped nations rather than an abandonment of his original ideas. The AIDS theme, which I found fascinating, seems to be completely dropped, though.
There are a few glimpses of how the Chaga has changed life in the South, such as the bus driver who has no legs and whose nerves connect directly from his spine to his bus’s electrical system. Or the immensely huge woman who remembers everything she experiences by storing the memories as fat. Or the way everyone who lives in the Chaga can tune their brain to receive radio signals. There was an interesting speculation about the development of human consciousness and a cool idea about whale song and computer language, but most of the story focused on Gaby’s depravity and Serena’s rebellion rather than the effects of a world being overrun by an unknown alien presence that’s trying to remake the human race.
I mentioned in my review for Evolution’s Shore that I didn’t like Gaby because she’s abrasive, immature, selfish and slutty. Well, she’s even worse in Kirinya. She’s more abrasive, immature, selfish and slutty than ever, and to top it all off with a cherry on top, she’s a really bad mom. There are far too many scenes which narrate the particular details of what Gaby calls her “filthy” sex life. We learn much more about what she does in bed (or wherever) than how she does her job (which is more important to the plot). Most of the characters seem obsessed with their (and everyone else’s) sex organs and bodily orifices and a lot of the dialogue is unnecessarily vulgar. I’m not a prude, but I was disappointed that this was more prominent in the plot than Gaby’s job or new information about the Chaga.
I didn’t get what I wanted out of Kirinya, but I still admire Ian McDonald’s style and I look forward to reading more of his work. The audio version of Kirinya was produced by Audible Studios and is 17.5 hours long. Narrator Melanie McHugh is superb. Her voices for each of the characters are distinct and fitting.
After recently enjoying Ian McDonald’s Evolution’s Shore, the first book in his CHAGA series, I was eager to proceed with book two, Kirinya. I wanted to know where McDonald was going with the fascinating ideas he presented in that first novel. What is the goal of the Chaga, the alien evolution machine that has landed on Earth in the form of a ground-covering jungle that changes the landscape and its human inhabitants as it slowly progresses across equatorial regions? What is in the BDO (Big Dumb Object) that came from Saturn and hovers in Earth’s orbit? How will our world’s societies and cultures be affected by these otherworldly intrusions?
As Kirinya begins we learn that Gaby, the famous feisty Irish journalist, has had Shepherd’s baby. Because their daughter Serena was affected by the Chaga, Gaby and Serena are sent to live in the Chaga and not allowed out. People who live in the Northern Hemisphere don’t want to be infected by those who’ve been changed by the Chaga because of the weird genetic mutations it causes. Deprived of her career and her connection to Shepherd (who’s in the BDO), Gaby sinks into obscurity and lives, for many years, as a whore and a drug addict who neglects her daughter.
Eventually Oksana, the Siberian pilot, shows up and Serena leaves home and joins a terrorist group. After a tragedy strikes, Gaby is finally shaken up enough to decide to make some life changes. With some help from Faraway, a former lover, she gets back on her feet and becomes a spokesperson for a group that wants to put together a world peace summit to address the way the Northern countries are treating the Chaga-infested South. Meanwhile Serena is involved in a terrorist plot to wrest control of the BDO from the American military. Some of Serena’s action scenes are quite exciting and would make great movie scenes.
We learn very little about the things I wanted to learn about in Kirinya. We get only a few chapters from Shepherd’s point of view in the BDO. These consist of his diary entries and they only hint at the big picture. Fortunately, Shepherd talks a lot more like a poet than a scientist. (I know dozens of scientists and not one of them talks like Shepherd does.) Shepherd tells us about some of the intriguing findings in the BDO, but these updates stop just when they get interesting and we never learn more.
We also don’t see nearly as much of the Chaga-induced changes as I was hoping to see and most of what we do see is quite a bit different than I was expecting after reading Evolution’s Shore. It seemed like the Chaga was a benign influence that would provide people with their daily necessities and allow humans to live in peace and prosperity rather than conflict and competition. Or it might have been a vehicle for Africans to empower themselves, overthrow their oppressors, and transform their role in the global economy. But that is not what Gaby’s new world is like which, I suppose, may be Ian McDonald’s commentary on human nature and the way developed nations suppress undeveloped nations rather than an abandonment of his original ideas. The AIDS theme, which I found fascinating, seems to be completely dropped, though.
There are a few glimpses of how the Chaga has changed life in the South, such as the bus driver who has no legs and whose nerves connect directly from his spine to his bus’s electrical system. Or the immensely huge woman who remembers everything she experiences by storing the memories as fat. Or the way everyone who lives in the Chaga can tune their brain to receive radio signals. There was an interesting speculation about the development of human consciousness and a cool idea about whale song and computer language, but most of the story focused on Gaby’s depravity and Serena’s rebellion rather than the effects of a world being overrun by an unknown alien presence that’s trying to remake the human race.
I mentioned in my review for Evolution’s Shore that I didn’t like Gaby because she’s abrasive, immature, selfish and slutty. Well, she’s even worse in Kirinya. She’s more abrasive, immature, selfish and slutty than ever, and to top it all off with a cherry on top, she’s a really bad mom. There are far too many scenes which narrate the particular details of what Gaby calls her “filthy” sex life. We learn much more about what she does in bed (or wherever) than how she does her job (which is more important to the plot). Most of the characters seem obsessed with their (and everyone else’s) sex organs and bodily orifices and a lot of the dialogue is unnecessarily vulgar. I’m not a prude, but I was disappointed that this was more prominent in the plot than Gaby’s job or new information about the Chaga.
I didn’t get what I wanted out of Kirinya, but I still admire Ian McDonald’s style and I look forward to reading more of his work. The audio version of Kirinya was produced by Audible Studios and is 17.5 hours long. Narrator Melanie McHugh is superb. Her voices for each of the characters are distinct and fitting.
October 15, 2018
I really like Evolution's Shore (also called Chaga).
Kirinya, on the other hand, is kind of depressing in its ending. Makes it feel kind of pointless.
I've read Chaga many times. Kirinya I've read only once. Doesn't seem to be a point to re-reading it.
Kirinya, on the other hand, is kind of depressing in its ending. Makes it feel kind of pointless.
I've read Chaga many times. Kirinya I've read only once. Doesn't seem to be a point to re-reading it.
November 11, 2022
Super disappointing tbh - I read (and re-read) Chaga (the first book) many many times as a teenager, and was excited to learn of a sequel I had somehow missed, but this second book is muddled and just unnecessarily cruel.
October 21, 2014
After recently enjoying Ian McDonald’s Evolution’s Shore, the first book in his CHAGA series, I was eager to proceed with book two, Kirinya. I wanted to know where McDonald was going with the fascinating ideas he presented in that first novel. What is the goal of the Chaga, the alien evolution machine that has landed on Earth in the form of a ground-covering jungle that changes the landscape and its human inhabitants as it slowly progresses across equatorial regions? What is in the BDO (Big Dumb Object) that came from Saturn and hovers in Earth’s orbit? How will our world’s societies and cultures be affected by these otherworldly intrusions?
As Kirinya begins we learn that Gaby, the famous feisty Irish journalist, has had Shepherd’s baby. Because their daughter Serena was affected by the Chaga, Gaby and ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
As Kirinya begins we learn that Gaby, the famous feisty Irish journalist, has had Shepherd’s baby. Because their daughter Serena was affected by the Chaga, Gaby and ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
May 28, 2021
This is a pretty good sequel, even though sometimes it gets a bit boring and it could be shorter. The other thing is that I would really like Mcdonald to explore the possibilities of Chaga creations more.
Rearead it 7 years later, my opinion did not change significantly but I do appreciate more certain narratives and also can understand the post colonial dynamics much better. The book could still be a tad bit shorter and explore the Chaga more, but overall this is a great read with interesting subplots including both personal and political struggles.
Rearead it 7 years later, my opinion did not change significantly but I do appreciate more certain narratives and also can understand the post colonial dynamics much better. The book could still be a tad bit shorter and explore the Chaga more, but overall this is a great read with interesting subplots including both personal and political struggles.
May 22, 2016
I read this one through Audible. I wanted to find out what happened in the series. The plot was ok. There's quite a bit of bad language and a really bad rape part that made me angry when I read it. You'd have to read it in context to know what I'm talking about. I probably should have skipped that part. Overall, I've read better material.
Read
July 6, 2024Missing tall of years
dark all the horizon
that rebirth
that unconfrtable child
diseses have forgener life
dark still havnt forgifness
its murdered time
rain come down
what a shadow have here
sey
fear
agony
care
dark paint the horizon
dark all the horizon
that rebirth
that unconfrtable child
diseses have forgener life
dark still havnt forgifness
its murdered time
rain come down
what a shadow have here
sey
fear
agony
care
dark paint the horizon
October 30, 2014
Stopped reading Kirinya half way through. While I loved the concepts in Chaga, I did not enjoy the sequel at all.
February 27, 2015
Slow start but the story picked up eventually. Interesting premise with the alien contact but I Felt the book did not realise its potential. Too many loose ends for the conclusion to be satisfying.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews