Flowerdust

The Last Days of Ranaganar #2

by Gwyneth Jones

A companion novel to DIVINE ENDURANCE, Gwyneth Jones' FLOWERDUST follows the charismatic rebel leader Derveet.In a futuristic Malaysia, the matriarchy is being threatened by foreign technologies on great offshore ships. A political rebel, Derveet watches as a powerful drug known as Flowerdust spreads through the country's refugee camps. It threatens to spark the revolution that Derveet wants, but far too early.As she works to stop the spread of the drug and calm tensions, Derveet finds herself uncovering the mysterious Rulers, and their secret machinations. They stretch far further than Derveet could ever have imagine...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction

278 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 1995

About the author

Gwyneth Jones is a writer and critic of genre fiction. She's won the Tiptree award, two World Fantasy awards, the Arthur C. Clarke award, the British Science Fiction Association short story award, the Dracula Society's Children of the Night award, the P.K.Dick award, and the SFRA Pilgrim award for lifetime achievement in sf criticism. She also writes for teenagers, usually as Ann Halam. She lives in Brighton, UK, with her husband and two cats called Ginger and Milo; curating assorted pondlife in season. She's a member of the Soil Association, the Sussex Wildlife Trust, Frack Free Sussex and the Green Party; and an Amnesty International volunteer.

Reviews

[Ry Herman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book throws you in the deep end of a future society and doesn't give you a lot of signposts to help you figure out exactly what's going on. At times I felt lost, and at other times I wondered how or if the story was going to come together. But this is also a book that rewards patience; by the end, the confusion becomes clear, the connections get made, and everything lines up in a way that makes sense. On the whole, I thought it was a worthwhile trip, even if it took its time getting where it was going.

[Sam Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought Flowerdust in hardback, having believed what it said on the flyleaf, to wit that this was '...not a sequel to Gwynneth Jones' earlier novel Divine Endurance.' Patently not true. As I was soon to discover.
With no helpful recap on what took place in Divine Endurance, I was thrown into the deep end and was expected to make sense of the relationship between the characters presented. Now I have read other series out of sequence and have managed to make a sort of sense, even if it was the wrong sense, but enough to allow the tale to carry me along.
In Flowerdust though we are presented with so many characters with so many names, titles and potted histories, their names changing at the turning of a page, diminutives used, aliases... so that I was forever going back to work out who was with who about to do what to who.
I readily accepted that so much of the book was hallucinatory and that places and events were not to be relied upon; and sub-plots did carry me along to about two thirds of the way through. But when one of the plethora of characters changed sex along with his/her name... I had no idea what was going on, had given up caring and lost the will to read.
© human author Sam Smith 11th February 2026

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second time I've read the second book of a series by Gwyneth Jones, the first being North Wind, without reading the first book. I liked both of these second entries very much, their peculiar density and vivid worlds. I tried to read White Queen after North Wind and couldn't engage. I feel the urge to read the book before this one and hesitate. Perhaps I will re-read The Wind-up Girl, which this book made me think of often.