Recent Reads

The Temple Dancer, by John Speed. This novel, like Kara Dalkey's Blood of the Goddess series discussed earlier, is set in India in the early 1600s, when the Portuguese colony at Goa, the Muslim Mughal rulers, and the native Hindus co-existed uneasily in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, religious squabbling, Machiavellian politics, and mercantile greed. Speed, a professional historian, provides plenty of historical detail and discussion of the ways in which the various castes of this class-ridden society interact with each other.

The story focuses on two women. Maya, a young Hindu woman, is an extraordinarily talented and beautiful ritual dancer, or "nautch girl". According to Speed, the socially-approved duties of her position include sexually servicing the priests or holy men of the temple, as well as some secular patrons of the temple. (Note: Your correspondent does not know whether this is accurate or not.) As the story begins, she has been sold to a group of Portuguese who have, in turn, traded her to a political ruler in Bijapur as part of a trade pact.

Also in the caravan which is transporting Maya to Bijapur is Lucinda, a young Goanese heiress with an unfortunately complicated family history. Also along for the ride are her wastrel, mercenary cousin; a noble native-born soldier; a sly and secretive eunuch; and an aging Portuguese "settlement man", or debt-collection thug, who has begun to wonder what he will do with the aging years that he never expected to reach. Along the way they will meet people of myriad different cultures: a blind, eccentric Sultana; lowborn Hindus trying to elevate themselves by adopting a foreign religion; pitiable "untouchables"; arrogant Mughal aristocrats; vicious bandits; scheming Portuguege merchants. Some of these will have sinister plans for our innocent young heiress and her not-so-innocent travelling companion.

Can you see where this is going? Well, of course you can. The back cover copy tells you, right off: "A sweeping page-turner filled with sex, violence, and adventure". It's a potboiler, the kind of story that in the 1920s would have been made into a Cecille B. DeMille extravaganza with Rudolf Valentino, or Douglas Fairbanks Jr., or maybe Errol Flynn leaping from tables to tapestries with sword in hand. But its an above-average potboiler with exciting conflicts, sympathetic characters, and more than the usual amount of attention to historical detail. The eunuchs, in particular, are granted more attention here than in most historical fiction. Rather than serving merely as exotic props or convenient go-betweens, they are here portrayed as a kind of sinister secret society, in which conventional sexual and generational longings are twisted into an all-encompassing lust for the kind of political power that comes from knowing secrets and whispering them into receptive ears at opportune moments.

The Temple Dancer is reportedly the first of a trilogy. I don't know whether I will actively seek out the future volumes, but it was a reasonably enjoyable read.