I firstly want to acknowledge the incredible amount of work that Patel devoted to the crafting Goddess of the River. Her author's note discusses the level of research and care put towards the creation of this novel, and I found it so valuable to understand this process which was no doubt at times of overwhelming and all encompassing. Condensing a two million word epic into a four hundred page novel is no small feet.

The love Patel has for this story emanates off the pages, and for that alone I felt it was a worthwhile read. Her writing is gorgeous, and while this is a retelling of the Mahabharata from the perspective of Ganga, the mythological eminence is still felt throughout the story, with ethical dilemmas and discussion on morality abound.

Part one was my favourite, I was immediately drawn to Ganga and very invested in her character. However, I was decidedly less interested as the novel wore on and the scale of the retelling swells to include a vast family tree of characters who repeatedly frustrated me to no end. I completely understand this is, in part, the point of the story however I simply grew tired of the continued bouts and didn't enjoy the musings over ethics which felt repetitive.

While the story lost me a little, I do still want to impress the quality of the novel at hand. The origins of this novel were very cool to read into, and I will be looking into more of Patel's work in the future.

This was pretty enjoyable as far as a listen-while-I-work goes. The men are awful, the writing beautiful, and the Goddess lovely. I agree with others that it does get a bit bogged down with some of the POV choices, and it was a little annoying to have a book titled after a goddess and to then spend so much time in the heads of men. Like, who cares about them?? surely not me.

But I did genuinely have a great time listening to this. I think the audio book is particularly lovely, and the quality of that definitely helped me wade through the middle slog. There's some meat to this book if you want to dig into it - a lot about morality and choices and autonomy. I am not familiar with the original tale this is a retelling of, but I'm glad it's somewhat on my radar now!