Tuesday, April 19, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

 

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 26, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Kaikeyi, the debut novel by Indian-American author Vaishnavi Patel, is a feminist retelling of part of the Ramayana, one of the most famous Indian/Hindu epics.  It is not the first such retelling I've read this past year (Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's "The Forest of Enchantments" was the other) and is almost certainly one of many such retellings out there - think of how many retellings there are of classic American stories published here.  Still, this book is a bit different than Divakaruni's adaptation - in the vein of say a "Circe" by Madeline Miller, this book retells parts of the story, and the  myths, from the perspective of Kaikeyi, the jealous/villainous Queen who in the classic story manipulates the King to have the hero Rama exiled and her own biological son crowned in his stead.  

The result is a pretty good feminist retelling which goes a lot farther than Divakaruni's tale, with the story reframed as one of Kaikeyi struggling against a society ordained by sages and gods to be chauvinist at its core - with women like Kaikeyi supposed to be subservient, silent, and invisible in the backdrop of great and common men.  Instead, Kaikeyi uses her privilege, her courage and determination, and a bit of magic to try and fight for women everywhere to have their own freedoms and choices, only to be resisted by those Sages and Gods who are determined to keep up the status quo.  The result is a pretty strong story even as it doesn't change the big events of the epic, although at times it can be a bit repetitively bleak as Kaikeyi struggles against fate over and over for something better.  

Note: Although this is a retelling of the Ramayana, no prior knowledge is needed to enjoy this book - but you will enjoy it more if you have some familiarity with the story in the end to realize what has and hasn't changed.  My familiarity with the source material is solely through Wikipedia and from Divakaruni's retelling, but that was enough to very much enjoy this book.  

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
The stories say Kaikeyi was a villain, a greedy woman who attempted to steal the kingdom from its rightful ruler.  The stories blame her actions on her father, or her maidservant, and say she killed her husband the King through her actions.  

The stories are wrong - or at least, missing context.  For Kaikeyi was a girl who grew up forsaken by the gods, despite having done nothing wrong; a girl whose father was absent from her childhood until he decided to take away her choice of destiny and give her away; a woman who wanted freedom for herself and, when she saw other women forced to hide in the shadows, freedom for other women; a woman who wanted to change the world to be better for everyone. 

She was not the stuck up warrior queen that people thought she was and she suffered for the actions she had to take for others.  And while the Gods may have intended for her to only serve as a starting point on their beloved Rama's destiny, Kaikeyi would make sure that she would make her mark and change the world beyond the lives of heroes and legends.....
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Kaikeyi is a type of story that is very much in vogue these days, as seen in Madeline Miller's Circe, to which the marketing compares this book - except that rather than dealing with Greek Mythology, this story deals with Kaikeyi, a character portrayed villainously in the Ramayana, one of the two most famous Indian/Hindu epics.  As with other stories of this type, it attempts to take the same story elements as in the original and add changes to the context, such that the heroes and villains are not the same, and the story takes a bit more of a Feminist bent - as well as taking a bend towards free will vs destiny.  The story sometimes feels like it's trying too hard when it's trying to make these twists, particularly in some early chapters, which feature Kaikeyi narrating the story and referencing events to come in the future before returning to the story's present.  These moments just feel like the story trying to yell at the reader "Hey you know what's coming next if you know the Ramayana" and it really isn't necessary and is a bit offputting.  

Still, this retelling works quite well, and it does so in large part due to the voice of Kaikeyi as she experiences the world and reacts to what she finds.  Even in the original Kaikeyi was portrayed as a warrior woman - but here that comes about not due to Kaikeyi being drawn towards battle, but because she wanted to try her hand at the lessons and activities taught to her brothers but were denied to her.  In fact here, when Kaikeyi experiences war, and has her moment of martial greatness, she is horrified by the death and destruction and becomes desperate to avoid that outcome ever again.  And so when she goes to her new land, her strangeness with her sister Queens/Wives isn't due to being rude, but because she's basically a girl who is out of place and unfamiliar.  Similarly, when she sees the Elders and Sages trying to teach that women should be submissive, or sees women in the market who know better forced to remain in the shadows - or hears the Gods declaring that her actions are against the natural order, she becomes more and more determined to fight against it for the better of all.  

And so you have a very different kind of epic than the original - and of ancient epics in general.  Here is a story where war is not glorified by the narrative, but is instead something that is a horror.  Here is a story where the Gods can be wrong and cruel and uncaring towards mortals - and where a protagonist forsaken by them can be right in trying to change their ways which don't actually benefit all - especially not the women and common people - and just promote the gods' own interests.  And so in this version of the story, Kaikeyi is a woman who loves her family, even Rama - the son who is a god, who is supposedly righteous, but who Kaikeyi rightfully sees as not ready for rule and corrupted by the teachings of a Sage who is misogynist and cruel into only caring about his own self worth and the self-worth of men above women.  

And that's demonstrated the most with the magic that both Kaikeyi and Rama possess in this book - the magical ability to see and manipulate emotional bonds between people.  For Kaikeyi she absolutely is willing and does manipulate people with those bonds on a small scale, but she is terrified of breaking those bonds entirely by pushing too strong, and traumatized by incidents when she does it.  For Rama, he unknowingly does manipulate those bonds for control and dominance without a care, believing in his justice above all else.  And so the book shows how caring for others and not focusing entirely on control, but instead making sure to preserve free will, and to allow everyone to be free to have their own destinies - whether they be man or woman - is the better way.  

It's a story that is probably one that would be considered blasphemous in some Indian/Hindu circles for how it shows little regards for the righteousness of Rama and the Gods at times.  But it's one that's undoubtedly relevant and one of our time and worth reading. 

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