James Nicoll Reviews

Vaishnavi Patel’s 2024 Goddess of the River is a stand-alone fantasy novel that draws on the Mahābhārata.

Once the goddess Ganga was free. In response to fearful human prayers, Shiva bound Ganga to the river that bears her name. Ganga remained a god, for all the good that would do her where pesky humans were concerned.

The eight Vasus, playful godlets, are Ganga’s precious friends. She would do anything in her power to protect them. As with so many benevolent motivations, the result is calamity.

Disaster arrives as a stolen cow.

The Vasus steal the holy cow Nandini as a jape. A furious sage pursues the Vasus and the filched bovine. When the sage threatens the Vasus with terrible punishment, Ganga tries to intervene. The sage simply includes Ganga in his Shiva-granted curse.

The Vasus will be born as mortals, live a mortal life, and die. Only then, reincarnated, will they return to their true nature. Ganga will become a mortal woman, and bear each of the Vasus in turn. Only then will she be able to become a god again.

No sooner has Ganga become mortal than she encounters Shantanu, Raja of Hastinapur. No sooner does Shantanu see Ganga than he resolves to marry this unknown woman. So urgent is his desire that the raja agrees to certain odd terms, the most important being that he never question his new wife.

Ganga endures eight pregnancies. Not wishing her friends to suffer through mortal life, she drowns seven of her children as soon as they are born. A furious Shantanu realizes what is going on in time to save the final child, Bhishma (also known as Devavrata). Ganga and Shantanu part on bitter terms.

While Shantanu retains custody of their son, Ganga and Bhishma have regular contact. Bhishma is inspired to embrace his semi-divine nature and to act properly in all things, even when the immediate consequences are inconvenient or even abhorrent to Bhishma.

This unwavering devotion to pure motivation and flawless action transforms the dynastic squabble between the Kaurava and Pandava cousins into a vast civil war that will bring Hastinapur and its empire to the brink of collapse.

~oOo~

I have not read the Mahābhārata. As it is an epic poem with a fifth of a million individual verse lines, totaling almost two million words, and as I don’t get on with poetry or extremely long works at present, it is unlikely I ever will.

One might wonder why a sage, even one to whom Shiva has granted a boon¹, would have the effrontery to curse a goddess. Part of the answer seems to be entrenched misogyny. Men enjoy unquestioned rule over women. At least as far as one sage is concerned, that means that mortal men are of higher status than goddesses. That sage would be well advised not try that with Hera or Morana.

● Many characters in this book are idealists. They aim at moral perfection. The result is catastrophic, both in immediate effect and long-term consequences.

● Other characters demonstrate an impressive talent for justifying superficially self-serving choices as serving a higher purpose. The result is catastrophic, both in immediate effect and long-term consequences.

● Still others just indulge greed and whim to the full extent status allows. The result is catastrophic, both in immediate effect and long-term consequences. 

To steal from an American sage, existence is a strange game, where ​“the only winning move is not to play.” 

Patel does a skillful job of conveying, through her viewpoint characters Ganga and Bhishma, why their actions seemed reasonable and desirable to them. Patel’s story is filled with calamitous developments driven by unfortunate decisions, yet somehow she doesn’t write mere depressing grim dark; she achieves tragedy.

I should add that her prose was engaging; I read avidly and was left wanting more.

I’m now quite motivated to read her debut novel Kaikey, which has been languishing in my TBR pile since 2022. Well there’s something to look forward to.

Goddess of the River is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: Judging by the results of Shiva’s boons, I feel that it would be prudent to assemble some sort of ethics committee to assess applicants.