In Artificial Reality, everything is permitted and nothing is forbidden--or so they say. Run a con game in AR, and the law does not prosecute; have sex with a virtual child persona, and the police do not interfere. But infringe on a powerful corporation's copyright and the law rushes in. And so Detective Lieutenant Doré Konstantin unhappily finds herself appointed Chief Officer of the TechnoCrime AR Division. Virtual crimes are almost impossible to solve, her two-person staff is usually assigned elsewhere, and she spends so much of her life pursuing
software pirates in AR that her sanity may be in danger. Things can't get any worse.
Then she is assigned to track a cyberstalker known as "Dervish," whose virtual persona is capable of manipulating AR in unprecedented ways. Konstantin reluctantly acknowledges Dervish's victim may be right: Dervish may have done the impossible. He may have traded places with an Artificial Intelligence, letting the AI take possession of his body as his mind escapes into the cyberverse of Artificial Reality, which he can manipulate as no software, even AI, ever could--impossible manipulations that include deleting all the exits from AR, and perhaps even killing the trapped investigator, Doré Konstantin.
Dervish Is Digital is the witty, sharp-edged, hardboiled sequel to the equally exciting and stylish SF mystery
Tea from an Empty Cup.
--Cynthia Ward
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Dervish Is Digital (Tea from an Empty Cup) (Hardcover)
In Pat Cadigan's previous novel, Tea from an Empty Cup, she introduced readers to Doré Konstantin, a homicide detective tracking down a murder leading to AR (Artificial Reality). In Dervish is Digital, Cadigan returns to the world of AR, where everything is a lie and must be accepted as such. Konstantin, too, is back, heading up the TechnoCrime division, a job that is more like purgatory than actual hell, but nevertheless not her life's dream. If Tea was cyberpunk mixed with Eastern mysticism, one must sum up Dervish as cyberpunk with a healthy dose of Lewis Carroll. This is not so much a mystery novel as a trip through the looking glass. As Konstantin chases her elusive white rabbit, the reader is not asked to understand what is going on, but to hang on and enjoy the ride. Unfortunately, the ride has little dimension to it, feeling flat and unimaginative. While I immensely enjoy Cadigan's writing, this book left me cold. The story did not have the grit that I have come to expect in Cadigan's worlds. (Maybe because I recently finished her excellent collection of short stories, Patterns.) This novel felt like an unfinished story in many ways. It is as if the characters and plot had been put into place, but without the scenery. Sure, there are weird moments aplenty in Dervish, but it is all the same kind of glitter that we saw in Tea. There is nothing here that suggests this story is taking us someplace new. If anything, the AR world becomes as monotonous to the reader as it has become to Konstantin. While Konstantin makes repeated metaphors of carnival rides, the book is anything but. A strange trip, to be sure, but never real. The story seems forced, and the situation seems hollow. Even the end of the novel leaves the reader feeling cheated somehow. If this is a reflection of Cadigan's own feelings about cyberpunk, perhaps she should move on to something that excites her before she (and the reader) dies of ennui. Pick up Synners again for a truly great cyberpunk story.
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