I was excited
about reviewing this book, a fantasy based on a culture American readers rarely
see. Unfortunately,
it didn’t prove to be as absorbing as I’d hoped it would be. While many things about it are
superbly done, the way others were handled made this a very difficult book—at
least for me—to get
into. I’ll share the positives first and then discuss the problems I had, which
may not be as much
of a problem for others as they were for me.
One aspect of
the book that struck me immediately was the author’s excellent crafting of descriptions. As
Meneka returns to Amaravati, the god Indra’s celestial city, this is what we
see
(p. 7):
The city hums
under my feet as I walk. . . . The rock-paved pathways glisten under the golden light. Somewhere
a bird sings sweetly, holding a single warbling note that strums through my heart. Laughter
echoes here and there though I see no one. The citizens are hidden within glorious
buildings, ensconced in fragrant night gardens. The same gentle breeze that
brought me back home
rustles though the city, this time with scents of lightning and storm, scents
that belong to Lord Indra.
His magic spirals lazily through the city, tiny sparks that flicker and flash.
In this
paragraph, we not only see what Meneka sees but understand what she feels at
this homecoming. The
description helps lay the groundwork for scenes of her anxiety over the city’s fate if Kaushika
draws people from their worship of Indra.
The supporting
characters, for the most part, have depth that keeps them from being cardboard background
figures, Rhamba, Meneka’s mentor, is loyal to Indra but also concerned about Meneka’s doubts
as she prepares for her mission to seduce Kaushika. His students aren’t given as much in the
way of layering, but the three most important, his two closest friends and Meneka’s close
friend are sketched with enough detail to set them apart from the others. Students at
Kaushika’s hermitage study magic. The ways they learn it, the difficulty Meneka
has demonstrating
some magic without revealing her celestial nature, and the mystery of what
drives Kaushika are
interesting.
I don’t bring
much knowledge of Hindu mythology to the table, but I found the depictions of
the gods and their
relationships believable. I could appreciate the differences among them as
shown in the story.
Kaushika’s
desire to worship Shiva and his dislike for Indra, coupled with his attention
to his students, came
across as likeable from the outset. Only later does the reader learn there is a darker, but
still understandable, purpose behind what he’s doing.
On the downside,
I wasn’t able to root for Meneka until about halfway into the story. When we meet her, she’s
engaged in seducing a queen who must be punished for turning her people away from worshipping
Indra. Meneka’s job is to make the woman so enthralled with her that she won’t be able to
function effectively after Meneka leaves. Punishing someone for not worshipping
one’s god isn’t a goal I can get behind.
Meneka is
uncomfortable with using her sexuality this way and wants this to be her last
mission. Her concern,
though, is that she not perform these missions. She has no issues with someone
else doing so.
Later in the
story, we learn that Indra supposedly depends on people’s prayers to empower
him so that he can
help them, which might be a better reason for wanting them back in the fold if
it were
consistently the case, but Meneka isn’t trying to turn this queen—and doesn’t
intend to turn Kaushika—back to
worshipping Indra. She intends only to punish them.
Only as Meneka
begins to have doubts about Indra does she become more sympathetic for me. Her
philosophical discussions with other students, which she intends to seed doubts
about Kaushika’s view
of asceticism and his devotion to Shiva, twist around on her and seed doubts about Indra. Rao
creates these twists very effectively.
Another problem
I had with the book is that, although this is sold as a romantasy, Meneka and Kaushika spend
almost no time together until about page 100. Once they did, their
philosophical jousting and
their attraction to each other made them an intriguing pair.
My biggest
problem with the book, though, is that it abounds with unfamiliar words, only
some of which are in
the glossary at the front. These words are rarely explained in context. We
don’t get references
to “gandharvras, Indra’s celestial musicians,” in the story. We get gandharvras doing something
with no explanation of what they are.
Every time I
have to stop reading and look something up in the glossary in the front, it
pulls me out of the
story. So I would look up a word, go back to the story, run into another
unfamiliar word, go to the
glossary and discover it isn’t there, which is extremely frustrating, and so
on. By the time I’ve
run across three of four more unfamiliar words, I’ve forgotten what the first
word I looked up means
and have to stop and look it up again the next time it appears.
If I don’t know
what a word means, I don’t have a complete picture of what’s happening in the story. Of what
choices mean. Of what things look like. This yanks me out of the story every single time.
There may be
readers who just skip over unfamiliar words and don’t worry about them. That’s fine. To each
her own. But I need to know what I’m looking at and what it means. When the author says a
character’s “dhoti flapped in the wind,” I need to know what a dhoti is (are?).
So I don’t know
what’s happening and am yanked out of the story wondering about it.
By about chapter
eleven, when Kaushika and Meneka are spending more time together, I had finally absorbed
the meanings of the words that appeared most often and so was able to stay immersed in the
story. Their relationship had become interesting, and her character’s conflict
as she tried to
decide what was true and right and trying to reconcile these new idea with her
old beliefs had me
really engaged.
We learn that
Kaushika’s dispute with the other sages isn’t entirely due to their
intransigence. While his
motives and goal make sense, his actions could have dire consequences. Meneka
finds herself caught
between conflicting loyalties and, in resolving them, gains priceless insight
into her own motives
and actions.
In summary, I
found the first third of the book hard to read, partly because I didn’t like
Meneka and partly
because unfamiliar words kept yanking me out of the story. I would give that
part of the book one
star. The second two thirds or so, however, drew me into the building,
push/pull romance and
Meneka’s inner conflicts. The action was superb, and so was the character development.
That part of the story is a five. So I averaged them and came up with three.
Readers should
be aware that the romantic storyline resolves but the external plot does not,
at least not fully.
The story presumably will continue in the next book.
Recommended.
3 Stars
~Nancy
Do unfamiliar words pull you out of a book?
How do you handle that? Do you stop to look up the word or just skip over them?
One person who posts a comment before 11:00 PM, February 20 will receive a hard copy of The Legend of Meneka.
*U.S. only
*Must be 18
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