My prior exposure to Kaikeyi was limited to the throwaway line near the beginning of each year's Rama's Journey school play where it would be explained that she set events in motion by exiling him so her son could rule instead. To my young brain, Kaikeyi fell into place neatly next to Cinderella and Snow White's evil stepmothers. This book was a welcome chance to have that turned on its head.

I cannot exactly say that I like Kaikeyi as a person but her tenacity and, quite frankly, her success rate definitely had me rooting for her. She is relentless but not often irrational, and it was interesting to follow her through the decades, seeing what parts of herself she kept, and what she evolved. Her dedication to societal progress and her family were great twin motivations because they so often conflicted with each other.

After determination, nuance and tragedy are the words I would use for this story. Patel almost never takes the easy route in letting someone be simply bad and unlovable so Kaikeyi can comfortably move against them. More often than not, the people in her way are the people she loves most, and you feel the schism of her soul with her, especially with her twin and four sons (including Rama). The inescapable tragedy of it all - that she is doomed not only to exile Rama, but to be wrong about it (at least insofar as disbelieving him when he asks her help to fight demons) - hurts the heart. She is not the evil stepmother fate wants her to be, but she is too dutiful to stand aside just because she loves her opponent.

The small reasons I knocked off some stars is because the pacing was a little too ponderous for my taste and because I couldn't follow the emotional journey of Ravana from this startlingly fun inventor and ally to the demon king of legend (especially since most of the change was off-page). These are forgivable, since the texture of the world makes the page count feel less than it is, and spinning a whole narrative from a side character who doesn't even witness the Ramayana's most famous events was always going to be a challenge.

Unfortunately less forgivable to me was the colossal missed opportunity to delve into the ethics of the Binding Plane (Kaikeyi's power to mentally tug on thread-like bonds between people only she can see in order to influence them). In the beginning, this ability had all the hallmarks of being Kaikeyi's fatal flaw - the silent callousness of shaping your closest relationships with a thousand tiny manipulations, the hubris of believing it was acceptable because you were working for the greater good! Delicious. My anticipation skyrocketed when she finds that Rama

performs similar, if more clumsy, manipulations, even on his closest brother, as Kaikeyi did for her twin. They are perfect mirrors; mother and son both so desperate to help people that resort to methods which compromise those peoples' free will.

A confrontation on that front was the ethical climax I was waiting for. The dominoes were lined up perfectly and now they can only gather dust. Many of the closing events of the book were expertly heart-wrenching, but I'm disappointed that it left this on the table.

PS - Shout out to having an ace woman being a loving mother, friend, and partner. Took me half the book to realise she was asexual, not just gay, but we got there in the end.

PPS - For anyone else with only a passing familiarity with Hindu mythology, I'd also recommend looking up what the various versions of the Ramayana say about Kaikeyi for comparison. I had unfairly assumed her warrior skills were invented for the sake of this book's feminist lean, but not so. (I've seen a couple Hindu reviewers object to some aspects of this portrayal of Rama and the gods so outside research is probably a good idea in general to get a more well-rounded perspective.)