This is book one in the " Hand of Kali" series, and I am not a series person for multiple reasons - mainly because series tend to be so badly done and so tedious. In this case, I think the title was badly chosen. Do you have any idea how many frigging novels are out there which employ this title exactly or in part? About fifty too many. It's ridiculous.
The author ought to have re-thought that, especially since a title like that carries a certain dissuasive pretention about it, but that issue aside, this novel promised to be different in that it was an author of Asian ancestry writing about the rich Hndu mythology of India. The problem was that the story was set in the USA because you know there's no way in hell any story not set in the USA can be remotely interesting, right? That and the fact that the bulk of the insular US readership is incredibly limited and provincial, and won't read stuff not set in the USA - at least that's what Big Publishing™ wants us to believe. Yawn.
All writers have to bow to that irritating fact of life unfortunately. That aside though, there were some really bad writing issues with this novel that essentially turned out to be a clone of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except that this was Maya the Demon Slayer. The first of these issues is: why was it set in the USA? This doesn't feature native American mythology, but Indian mythology! Okay, fine, you bow to pressure and set it on safe turf, but you then it's really incumbent upon you to offer some sort of explanation as to why these Hindu gods and demons have transplanted themselves to the US, and this author offers nothing - at least not in the portion of this that I read, which was about 25%.
So it's your trope cookie-cutter story of the ingénue raised in ignorance of her powers, who despite her disbelief is a super-strong wielder of whatever power it is she has. In this case hers is the power to immolate demons - apparently without leaving a significant trace - as we shall get to shortly. Maya Rao is an outcast in her rich kids high-school of course, and she has a clichéd creepy kid who is always around, keeping an eye on her. His name is Nik and he's also an empowered guy who happens to be hot and know more about Maya than she does about herself, but nether he nor Maya's parents, who also know about her powers, have the kindness or decency to bother educating Maya, not even indirectly, not even remotely.
In order to prevent her juvenile scorching of things, her parents bound her powers magically, and she conveniently forgot about all those burned toys and the scorched furniture. Now she doesn't believe in a single thing about Hindu mythology despite going to church every week. Yawn. I guess even the god she serves doesn't give a shit about poor Maya! Barf. But she gets an invitation to the rich kids party, and like an idiot she goes and gets a drugged drink, and rich jock Bryon (barf!) leads her to a boathouse bathroom here he beats her up, but this beating together with the alcohol and the drug allow her to unleash her power and she burns Byron to death with such intense heat that all that's left is ashes and a scorch mark or two.
That amount of heat (and nowhere does the author say it was magical heat as opposed to regular everyday burning) would have to be hot enough to melt at least some bathroom fixtures, but apparently virtually no evidence is left, because when Nik - who's been stalking Maya at the party without once having the consideration to warn her that there are humans possessed by demons present - shows up and enables her getaway from the party, there are zero consequences for Maya's actions.
I'm talking zero consequences. Never (at least not in the portion I read), do police show up at Maya's house asking her about Byron - with whom she was last seen! There's no outcry, no news reports of a missing rich white kid. Maya was so badly-beaten that she had a punctured lung, yet despite her being hospitalized, nowhere does the hospital file a report about a minor being admitted after having been beaten so badly. That together with Byron's disappearance ought to have triggered some alarms, but Maya's charmed life goes on totally uninterrupted as she trains to fight and evaporate more demons.
This is a serious writing problem - when an author is dedicatedly following her tunnel vision without paying any attention at all to the possibility that the real world might just intrude on the story here and there. When I quit reading though, was when I read this: "A small part of her saw how sexy he happened to look even when he smudged soot on his cheek as he dusted himself off." Seriously?
In learning how to use fire, Maya almost kills him (he's fortunately protected by his own god) and instead of her being horrified and disturbed by what she did, all she can do is think how sexy he looks in his scorched clothes?! Again the author is so obsessed with her neat little love package that she completely forgets that this story is purportedly taking place in the real world and that there are real world consequences, feelings, and issues to address. It was ridiculous and this story, having threatened this several times, finally became undeniably too stupid to continue reading.
The book could have used a literate editor, too. I read things like: "Maya tread water in the sea of her ignorance." Ignorance is right, because the past tense of 'tread' is 'trod'. "She didn't even believe Rakshasa's existed in the first place" The plural of Rakshasa is Rakshasas, not the possessive case! I also read,
"You have the same eyes, you know?" "Same as whom?" Maya asked
Nobody, especially not a high school kid, says 'whom'! It's a big writing mistake. The author is so focused on how it technically 'ought' to be written that she forgets she's (supposedly) writing about real people saying real things in a real world. 'Whom' stands out like a sore thumb.
Even some of the descriptive writing was too impenetrable to make sense. In describing a traditional fighting weapon known as a madu, the author wrote: "Really a pair of shield, with twin antelope horns melded together to form a natural double-ended piercing weapon." That's a really bad description!
This weapon is essentially a buckler (from the French buclier). A buckler is a small round shield, which can be up to half a meter in diameter and which can be used offensively as well as defensively. In this case it also has two antelope horns, each protruding horizontally at opposite sides of the buckler, pointy ends out, fixed to the shield. Why Maya would train with this antiquated device rather than learn to shoot a gun is another writing problem - again this choice of weapon isn't even discussed.
So this story was larded with cliché and trope, had nothing new to offer since it was essentially a Buffy clone with demons substituted for vampires and so on, but otherwise exactly the same story, and badly-written to boot. So what's new? Nothing! So why read it? The plotting was poor, the quality of the writing awful, and I sure as hell am not about to read a series like this!
