By Thalassa AliRated: ★½ & ★★★★★
First let me start with why I added on the five stars to the above rating. As a straight historical novel about India and Afghanistan chronicalling the events that led up to the First Afghan War (1839-1842) this is a marvelous book. The author's descriptions of Islamic culture with wonderful and skillfully drawn secondary characters is at times breathtaking. Ali hits the perfect notes to bring you all the rich sights, sounds and smells of the Punjab of the 1830's. At a time when the West is struggling for an accurate understanding of Muslims, wondering, "What do they really think, anyway? And how do they really feel?," this novel, set far away and long ago, is absolutely brilliant.
Now, here is what I disliked about this book. Never have I read a novel that cried out for a co-author as much as this one did. The main story, the one about the young English woman, who arrives straight from the English countryside where she was raised as the daughter of a clergyman strains my credibility to the breaking point. She arrives in India and instantly loves it and everyone in it. She is headstrong to the point of idiocy and lurches from one social disaster to another without ever catching on that she is stupid. She attracts the love of a young British artillery officer which taking into account the constraints of Victorian society with a little effort I could have swallowed . But her marriage to an Indian bureaucrat of good family was arranged on the flimsiest of reasons and then afterward he apparently falls in love with her. But what attracts him to her was beyond my ability to imagine.
Had this author teamed up with someone who could write a decent plot and then added her fabulous descriptions of India and the events surrounding Mariana this book could have rivaled M.M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions. Sadly it falls far short.
