This is an interesting book about the women related to the Mughal emperors. I wound up disenchanted with it and think that its reception so far has been perhaps a bit too glowing, but I did learn some interesting things from it.

Essentially, this is a history of a little over 200 years of the Mughal empire in India, from just before their arrival at the beginning of the 16th century, to just after the death of Aurangzeb at the beginning of the 18th. The focus is on the women of the dynasty, who played far more powerful and active roles than western stereotypes would have it. Also, the “harem” (the correct term for the women’s quarters is a zenana) wasn’t exactly teeming with wives and concubines of the emperor; any woman related to him or to his loyal retainers could show up to live there and many did, along with their own entourages and servants.

Particularly in the early years, these women were hardly in purdah: they accompanied the emperor as he traveled around, even to war or on daring escapes across mountains from pursuing armies (this sometimes resulted in wives and children being captured or killed); they traveled from city to city at their own whim; they went on hajj. Even later on, once the zenana became more separate, the women there still wielded considerable power, as they often had independent fortunes, owned trading ships, commissioned monumental buildings, and weighed in with the emperor on issues of public policy. Maham Anaga was essentially regent of part of India for awhile, while Noor Jahan coined her own money and had the authority to issue edicts under her name and with her own seal.

All of which is fascinating, and I’m glad to have learned about these women, but the execution let me down a bit. First, the author covers more than 200 years and a ton of women in just 246 pages of text, which means it’s rushed and often doesn’t get much past generalities. Second, the first third is definitely the best because Mukhoty can rely on the memoirs of Gulbadan, daughter of Babur and relative of the later emperors, which bring a lovely personal touch to the story. In the later portions we don’t have that and so it becomes more distant. It might also be that the earlier women are just more interesting, as many of them led quite dramatic lives while the later ones seem to have mostly stayed behind walls amassing wealth and commissioning buildings in their names.

Third, the author seems to glorify the Mughals overmuch, in a way that comes across as colonialist. We may not think of the Mughals as colonizers because they weren’t European and, unlike the British, at least they kept India’s wealth in the country and acculturated themselves to the place. But still, they rode in from Afghanistan and killed a ton of people to conquer territory for their own power and glory, and continued to do so throughout the existence of the empire. Mukhoty mostly elides the fact that their wars consisted of naked land grabs, and there’s a weird “oh, those Hindus and their barbaric customs” vibe that comes close to suggesting the Hindus needed the Mughals to save them from themselves.

Finally, the book just doesn’t come across as very historically rigorous. Mukhoty’s decision to write the entire history in the present tense is weird and distracting. There’s also a tendency to use the same evocative generalities over and over again; the author is always talking about someone’s glittering, blistering, blinding, incandescent, etc., etc., ambition, which is a fancy way of saying the Mughals loved conquering people and imposing architecture. There are endnotes (though frustratingly, no index) and the author seems to have used at least some primary sources. She also doesn’t run rampant speculating on thoughts and feelings (lack of source material is perhaps why the book covers so many people in so few pages). But I would have appreciated more facts and less editorializing.

In the end, interesting book that opened my eyes to a part of history I didn’t know much about. Could be worthwhile reading if you’re interested in the subject, but ultimately it was frustrating for me because it could have been better.

I do not think I can adequately express my feelings for this book.  So I will just say that I find Egypt fascinating and love to learn anything I can about its history.  I also love women and stories of empowerment and the fight for that power.  This encapsulates both.  It was well researched, well written and the author did the narration herself and while it wasn't spectacular it was what I expected for something so academic.

Title: Beauty Queens

Author: Libby Bray

Publish Date: May 24, 2011

Publisher: Scholastic, Inc

Format: Audiobook

Length: 14 hours, 8 minutes

Source: Sunflower OverDrive Library 

Date Read: April 25-26, 2020

Review

A fun romp in the jungle that tackles a lot of patriarchial claptrap that teen girls have to deal with on a daily basis. You wouldn't think it would be as funny and biting if you just read the premise of the book, but it is a witty and yet searing look at societal standards. I just want to take this moment and say I STAN the one, the only, Taylor Renee Crystal Hawkins, Miss Texas with every fiber of my being. 

Here's the deal - I read this book for my IRL book club; I borrowed the hardback version from the library before the lockdown happened. But I couldn't get through page one of chapter two; I just had a block where I couldn't get into the book or even in fiction. So it sat on my bedside table until the weekend before our monthly meeting. I decided to try the audio version so that I could get through the book before the meeting. I can't stress this enough - LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK! Seriously, there are a lot of characters and it helps with having different accents and the chapter break "ads". 

Other than Miss Texas, I really loved Miss California Ashanti, Miss Colorado Nicole, and Miss Michigan Jennifer were my favorites. The only girl I couldn't stand was Miss New Hampshire Adina - god, she was the most "woke Twitter" personality but she couldn't lead her own head out of a paper bag. Taylor was designed to be the ying to Adina's yang, but Taylor overshadowed Adina and Adina came out looking petty and sour. Then there are the pirates. Boy/young men pirates from a reality tv show. They were wonderful partners for the girls. 

It's ridiculous on paper, but the plot and characters come alive via smart written story and a great narrator (the author herself). The accent change from Miss California in one scene must have been hard to record. I will say that the villain's voice sounded an awful like Sarah Palin, which just added to my gleeful joy in listening to the story, especially when the villain gets her ending.

Highly recommend on audio for a fluffy, laughing good time on a weekend.

 This book was almost a four star book for me, the final few chapters were what changed my mind in the end. The premise of this book is nothing new. A rather ordinary female lead character who dreams of doing bigger things who crosses paths with the daring bad boy. Together they run off on an adventure and fall for each other along the way. It’s a tried and true formula in young adult. When done properly it makes for a very good read. But sometimes authors fall into a trap of feeling like they MUST make their story different and so they do things that don’t make sense. That is what happened with the end of this book I believe.

Shadow is a pretty good character. She has a more finely honed sense of self preservation than most female leads in fantasy novels, so I appreciated that. She was strong and looking for adventure, not afraid to leave her entire world behind to do it. The love story between her and Cal seemed very organic, which can be unusual in the genre. But she was also too stubborn for her own good and it made no sense. She defied Cal or opposed his opinion just because she could. There was no logical reason behind her belief that her idea was better than his, she just decided that her idea was better. Even though this whole adventure was Cal’s job, literally, and he was very good at it. It might have been better to defer to his expertise from time to time. It might have saved both of them some trouble along the way.

Cal was a fairly typical young adult love interest. At times he was dashing, brave, and witty. And at other he seemed like a set piece. I had no real objections to him, but I did not find him particularly compelling in his own right either. And I have no idea how this magical Blood Vow actually works either. Supposedly it binds Cal to the Queen, to do her bidding until he fulfills the vow. And if he tries to defy the vow he will be in horrendous, increasingly awful, pain the longer he tries to resist. But, he does resist the Queen’s orders, for most of the book and doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort. Because Shadow told him this was the Queen’s plan, so I guess his belief is a loophole? If he believes he is following the vow then he is? That makes no sense if it’s a magical thing. The story would have been just a good without this piece that wasn’t actually explained.

As for the plot and the plot twists, I expected most of them. Especially the big one, I knew it from very early on in the book. But I also didn’t really mind, the fact that I had figured it out was largely inconsequential to the other pieces of the puzzle. I may have discovered one piece, but the rest of the puzzle didn’t hinge on that one piece so it was still a surprise to me later. A few of the “twists” I didn’t really find that shocking or distressing. Cal seemed distressed over them and frankly I didn’t know why. Maybe it was because there was so little world building in this book that I didn’t have enough information to be as disturbed as other characters were. The only world building is an occasional chapter of an excerpt from some historical text. So, a few info dumps. And honestly, as a reader, I never remember information given to me in an info dump. They are boring and my mind skims them automatically. As a consequence, I know very little of the history of the world or how its magic works. That didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the story, but it might have impacted how I felt about certain plot reveals.

Now, my one and only SPOILER WARNING for this review:

I figured out very early on that Shadow was really the Princess. All I needed was to know that the Princess was secreted away somewhere as a commoner, and that Shadow’s mother worked in the palace and I knew. It wasn’t difficult. But, Shadow’s chapters are narrated in the first person. So the reader is quite literally inside her head. She never actually revealed that she knew she was the Princess in her narrative. So, as a result, I figured that she did not know. That everyone had kept it a secret for her own protection or something,

But then in the last few chapters she literally thinks, “My mother is the Queen of Renovia. I have known this for my entire life. And I have been in denial about this truth my entire life. For my own safety, I do not speak of it, let along think about it.” (Chapter 49, page 350). So, wait, you don’t even think about it? I recognize that this is an attempt at giving the author a good “out” for why Shadow was narrating in first person but didn’t let on that she was the Princess. But, our brains are messy things. Human thinking is a messy thing. Thoughts come in and out of our minds like clouds, entirely without our bidding. It doesn’t make any sense that at no point she didn’t randomly think “Cal would be so horrified if he knew who I was.” or “I feel so bad for deceiving him about my identity.” I was very confused about that. Our brains are tricky things that often think things that we don’t intend to think.  This was the most annoying factor in the entire book. Why not just narrate Shadow in the third person? Cal is narrated in third person, it wouldn’t have been out of place.

So that’s the book. I liked it a lot. I think I will tune in to the 2nd book in the series to see where it goes. Some bits were a little frustrating, it certainly isn’t perfect but it was a fun use of my time.

Mark Lawrence macht vieles anders als andere Autor_innen. Er plant nicht. Er plottet nicht. Er pflegt keine feste Schreibroutine. Wann immer es seine begrenzte Zeit zulässt, setzt er sich einfach hin und schreibt. Dementsprechend traf er die Entscheidung, seine populäre Grimdark-Trilogie „The Broken Empire“ aus der Ich-Perspektive zu schildern, nicht vorsätzlich, sondern intuitiv. Obwohl diese Erzählweise für die epische Fantasy ungewöhnlich ist, sieht Lawrence darin eindeutige Vorteile. Die Konzentration auf eine einzige Figur schafft Nähe, Unmittelbarkeit und befreit ihn von der Notwendigkeit, zahlreiche Handlungslinien zu organisieren. Er glaubt, dass die starken emotionalen Reaktionen seines Publikums eng damit zusammenhängen, dass er Ereignisse ohne abstrakte Distanz beschreibt. Es ist ein Unterschied, ob eine Figur aus auktorialer Perspektive erdolcht wird oder ob man direkt erlebt, wie die Hand des Protagonisten die Waffe führt. Deshalb behielt er diese Erzählperspektive in seiner zweiten Trilogie „The Red Queen’s War“ bei, deren erster Band „Prince of Fools“ einen ganz neuen Helden vorstellt.

Prinz Jalan Kendeth musste schon oft mit Unannehmlichkeiten fertigwerden. Bisher konnte er allen betrogenen Ehemännern, wütenden Spielpartnern und grimmigen Schuldeneintreibern entwischen, ohne seiner Großmutter, der gefürchteten Roten Königin, allzu viel Schande zu bereiten. An zehnter Stelle der Thronfolge erwartet ohnehin niemand von ihm, sich wirklich um Politik zu scheren. Lieber lässt er seinen Geschwistern den Vortritt und widmet sich seinen privaten Vergnügungen. Doch als er einen heimtückischen magischen Anschlag überlebt, wird Jalan unerwartet in den Krieg des Zersplitterten Reiches gegen den Toten König hineingezogen. Um die magische Wunde zu heilen, die ihn brandmarkt, muss er in den hohen Norden reisen – begleitet von Snorri ver Snagason, der ebenso sein Freund wie sein Untergang werden könnte. Wird Jalan die Fassade des oberflächlichen Taugenichts ablegen, um der Mann zu werden, den das Zersplitterte Reich braucht?

„Prince of Fools“ setzt die Lektüre der ersten Trilogie „The Broken Empire“ nicht voraus. Man kann die Abenteuer des Protagonisten Jalan durchaus genießen, ohne die drei vorausgegangenen Bände gelesen zu haben. Ich kann allerdings nicht leugnen, dass es den Spaßfaktor gewaltig erhöht. Der Auftakt von „The Red Queen’s War“ spielt chronologisch parallel zu „Prince of Thorns“ und fokussiert somit denselben Konflikt des Zersplitterten Reiches mit dem mysteriösen Toten König, dessen verderbte Magie die Nationen zu kompromittieren droht. In „Prince of Fools“ zeigt Mark Lawrence ein neues Schlachtfeld dieses Krieges und korrigierte meine Wahrnehmung desselbigen, den ich bisher als Jorgs persönlichen Feldzug betrachtete. Durch die Lektüre wurde mir bewusst, wie sehr ich mich damals von Jorg vereinnahmen ließ, was zwar für Lawrences brillante Konstruktion seiner Figur spricht, meine Einschätzung der Reichweite des Krieges jedoch fehlleitete. Der Vormarsch des Toten Königs gefährdet alle Staaten des Zersplitterten Reiches, nicht nur Jorgs Domäne. Außerdem begriff ich, dass die vielzitierte Düsternis der ersten Trilogie primär von ihrem feindlichen Protagonisten verursacht wird. Im direkten Vergleich gestaltet sich „The Red Queen’s War“ bisher wesentlich weniger grimmig, denn Jalan ist eine völlig andere Persönlichkeit und ermöglichte mir durch seine lockere Ausstrahlung eine entspanntere, zugänglichere Leseerfahrung. Er ist nahbarer, umgänglicher und offener, wodurch ich „Prince of Fools“ als leichter zu lesen empfand. Nichtsdestotrotz ist er eine faszinierende, komplexe Figur. Auf den ersten Blick erscheint er als egoistischer, opportunistischer Lügner, Spieler und Feigling. Meiner Meinung nach handelt es sich dabei jedoch um eine irreführende Maske, die Jalan kultivierte, um sich nicht mit den Konsequenzen auseinandersetzen zu müssen, würde er sich eingestehen, dass er das Zeug zum Helden hat. Er ist eine Zwiebel; im Verlauf der Ereignisse schält sich der wahre Kern seines Wesens langsam heraus. Seine authentische Entwicklung wird nicht von einer unrealistischen Epiphanie ausgelöst, sondern ist das Resultat einer spannenden Umkehr des klassischen Motivs des Erwachens in der Fantasy: statt Jalan mit seiner dunklen Seite zu konfrontieren, zwingt Mark Lawrence ihn, das Licht in seiner Seele zu akzeptieren und anzuerkennen, dass er eben nicht nur ein Lump ist. Sein Reisegefährte Snorri hat daran großen Anteil, denn der prototypische Nordmann glaubt an das Gute in Jalan und behandelt ihn von Anfang an wie den Mann, der er sein könnte und nicht wie den Mann, den er oberflächlich verkörpert. Er dringt zu ihm durch, obwohl Jalan sich sehr anstrengt, ihn auf Distanz zu halten. Es bleibt abzuwarten, ob Jalan die Lektion, die Snorri ihn über sich selbst lehrt, in den Folgebänden tatsächlich anwenden kann oder in alte Verhaltensmuster zurückfällt.

Ich hatte viel Freude mit „Prince of Fools“. Es hat mir gefallen, zu erleben, dass es Mark Lawrence gelingt, eine völlig andere Herangehensweise an eine Geschichte zu nutzen, ohne ihr Spannungspotential zu beeinträchtigen. Er beweist, dass „The Broken Empire“ nicht die Grenze seines Talents darstellt. Sein neuer Protagonist Jalan hat wenig mit Jorg gemeinsam und vermittelt die Handlung spielerischer, humoristischer und beschwingter. Dennoch würde ich nicht zögern, „The Red Queen’s War“ ebenfalls als Grimdark einzustufen, weil das Zersplitterte Reich ein unnachgiebiges Setting ist, das Menschen zu grenzwertigen Entscheidungen zwingt. Es wird sicher aufregend, herauszufinden, welche Entscheidungen Jalan zukünftig abverlangt werden und inwiefern diese von den Plänen der Roten Königin beeinflusst sind, die Andeutungen zufolge nicht ganz unschuldig an seinen Erlebnissen in „Prince of Fools“ ist. Ich freue mich auf die Folgebände.