Karna, the Soul Warrior has a followed his duty for centuries – but he never imagined he would have a new duty pressed upon him: raising and training the 5 children of his brothers. And, surprise of all, his own child.
And, contrary to what the gods implied, they are all female. He never anticipated having to raise and train 6 women. And not while an ancient enemy is rising and his newly found daughter seems to be intimately connected to the upcoming battle.
That’s aside from her fraught relationship with the mother of those women.
I find myself on very uncertain ground while reading this book. This book is based extremely heavily on the Mahabharata, all the characters are drawn from the Mahabharata, the history is from the Mahabharata and most of the world setting, legends et al are from the Mahabharata.
By the prologue and explanatory notes make it very clear that the author has done a lot of research and study into the Mahabharata and is clearly very very very familiar with this story, its characters and its legend. I get an overwhelming sense that the author loves this story and this story and legend is immensely important and vital to her – and you can feel that in the book. This is a book by someone who has loved this epic and wanted it to continue, wanted to follow it further, not wanted it to end and wanted it to go on for far more awesomeness. The preamble also makes it clear that liberties have been taken with the original text and also that there are many different theories and takes on the original epic and which ones the author has chosen to follow.
While I, I am not immersed in or knowledgeable of the Mahabharata. I’ve read some of it though I have no idea how good or true those translations are. I am not even remotely qualified to say how true these characters are to the original epic, whether the author has done an excellent job of preserving the style or the feel of the original. I’m not going to try, I will only say there is a strong sense of effort, research and familiarity in this book.
