Bhagavati

Blood of the Goddess #3

by Kara Dalkey

A young English apothecary's apprentice, sent to collect rare herbs in Africa and India, is shipwrecked off a Portuguese colony and captured by forces of the Inquisition. He saves his life (temporarily, at least) by pretending to know the source of a mysterious powder that can restore life to the dead.

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Fiction

403 pages

First published June 1, 1998

About the author

Kara Mia Dalkey is an American author of young adult fiction and historical fantasy. She was born in Los Angeles and has lived in Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Colorado, and Seattle. Much of her fiction is set in the Heian period of Japan.

She was married to author John Barnes; they divorced in 2001. She is a member of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship and of the Scribblies. She is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing in Los Angeles.

She is also a musician and has gigged extensively on electric bass (which she plays left-handed) and harmony vocals, with such bands as Runestone, the Albany Free Traders, and Nate Bucklin and the Ensemble (in Minnesota) and Relic and Voodoo Blue (in Seattle.) At different times she has also played drums, banjo and acoustic guitar. She is a songwriter, but her total output is low, and consequently no CD or other album is presently in the works.

Reviews

[Kevin Rubin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally caught up with “Bhagavati” by Kara Dalkey. It’s the third book in the trilogy that begins with “Goa” and “Bijapur”, both of which I read in the 90’s before, coincidentally, moving to India. I just reread those the past couple of months before reading “Bhagavati” for the first time.

This book mainly follows the main character, Thomas Chinnery and the end of his journey in search of the “Rasa Mahadevi” or “The Blood of the Goddess”, a magical powder he previously encountered that is poison to the living, but has the power to restore life to the dead. Before this book he found out the source is a living goddess in the hidden city of Bhagavati, and encountered a few people who know the way there.

Also trying to get to the source of the Rasa Mahadevi are the Portuguese priest, Padre Gonscao, whose intention is to destroy it, and the commander of a small Mughal army, the Mirza Ali Akbarash, who’s been sent by his emperor to investigate and secure the source of it.

Of course, once in Bhagavati, the living goddess herself makes other plans for Thomas, plans he’s not interested in.

I enjoyed the book. It was a good adventure tale. Some parts of it seemed to drag on, and once all the characters arrived at the main location it got a bit chaotic keeping track of who was there and who came with who and who knew who else was there.

This one didn’t have any nice, sexy scenes like the previous book, which I was hoping for.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it, and feel I should look for some more Kara Dalkey books.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reasonably interesting for the historical/cultural knowledge; the author seems to have done her research, or anyway she says she did, and I don't know enough to know the difference. It starts out okay, but the dialogue clumsiness, heavy-handed (sometimes even brute-force) plotting, and unnecessary proliferation of viewpoints (and the proofing, even) get progressively worse as the series goes along, though there's an especially noticeable plunge between the first book and the second. The characters seem at first like they have a lot of potential to be interesting, but then that never really goes anywhere with most of them. (The epilogue is, at least, satisfyingly irritating.) Does interesting and halfway competent things with the multi-language stuff; while it's only halfway competent, and peters out as it goes on, halfway is far better than a lot of authors do. The herbary excerpts at the chapter beginnings got old real quick; I see the point, and it would be fine if I could just skip or skim them, but alas, I constitutionally can't. I really liked some of the things the author was doing with regard to religion (at least for YA) and really did not like some other things. The cultural-miredness of what seems like a reasonable religious belief is reasonably elegantly presented, as is the un-pin-down-able-ness of reality and truth. The bricolageishness of religion is also nicely pointed up, and I think the author does a reasonably decent job of staying this side of condescending, though it's a little annoying that when you scratch the surface of India you get Greece. (Also that she killed off all the pesky Muslims.)

(Accidentally read YA again... Sigh.)

[Carvas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read it too long ago.
Not a bad ending to the trilogy.

Mythological speaking is interesting. Nice idea

[Jeff Youngstrom]

(July 10, 1998)

[Alyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing read, and made a great finish to the series. Good detail, loved the story line, and the characters were great.