Rebel Queen: A Novel, by Michelle Moran
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Rebel Queen: A Novel, by Michelle Moran
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From the internationally bestselling author of Nefertiti and Cleopatra’s Daughter comes the breathtaking story of Queen Lakshmi—India’s Joan of Arc—who against all odds defied the mighty British invasion to defend her beloved kingdom.When the British Empire sets its sights on India in the mid-nineteenth century, it expects a quick and easy conquest. India is fractured and divided into kingdoms, each independent and wary of one another, seemingly no match for the might of the English. But when they arrive in the Kingdom of Jhansi, the British army is met with a surprising challenge. Instead of surrendering, Queen Lakshmi raises two armies—one male and one female—and rides into battle, determined to protect her country and her people. Although her soldiers may not appear at first to be formidable against superior British weaponry and training, Lakshmi refuses to back down from the empire determined to take away the land she loves. Told from the unexpected perspective of Sita—Queen Lakshmi’s most favored companion and most trusted soldier in the all-female army—Rebel Queen shines a light on a time and place rarely explored in historical fiction. In the tradition of her bestselling novel, Nefertiti, and through her strong, independent heroines fighting to make their way in a male dominated world, Michelle Moran brings nineteenth-century India to rich, vibrant life.
Rebel Queen: A Novel, by Michelle Moran - Amazon Sales Rank: #55991 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-03-03
- Released on: 2015-03-03
- Format: Kindle eBook
Rebel Queen: A Novel, by Michelle Moran Review “I could not put this book down! Sita’s voice as narrator is a strong one, and the time and characters fascinating. Moran’s evocative writing transports the reader from small backcountry villages where women live out their lives in purdah to the exotic kingdom of Jhansi whose women freely walk the streets, and finally to the eye of the hurricane as British authority in Jhansi increases. . . . A riveting and addictive glimpse of that era.” (Historical Novel Review)"This often deeply moving novel focuses on its characters, allowing history to play out as a backdrop to the personal story of a young woman who would risk everything, including her own life, for her people." (Booklist)"Filled with fascinating historical details about a subject that is not often portrayed, the novel looks at both the rights of women and the conflict between the British Empire and India in a fairly unbiased way....Readers who have enjoyed Moran's previous works will not want to miss this." (Library Journal (starred review))"Stunning in form, theme, and plot... Don’t hesitate to purchase this beautifully written gem, which is certain to shoot to the top of the charts, if not start a craze for 'everything Moran.'" (Library Journal, on The Second Empress)"Moran expertly balances fact and fiction . . . . Intimate and entertaining." (Associated Press, on Madame Tussaud)"Certain to be a breakout book for Moran, this superbly written and plotted work is a welcome addition to historical fiction collections. The shocking actions and behavior required of Tussaud to survive the revolution make the novel a true page-turner and a perfect reading group choice." (Library Journal (starred review), on Madame Tussaud)"Dramatic, engrossing, and beautifully written, this is essential reading, and Moran is definitely an author to watch." (Library Journal (starred review), on Cleopatra's Daughter)"Moran skillfully weaves into her latest book plenty of political history and detail without ever weighing down the story, which is fast-paced, intriguing, and beautifully written....A subplot about a mysterious 'Red Eagle' who is trying to incite a slave rebellion is riveting....In Cleopatra's Daughter, she once again demonstrates her talent for taking long-forgotten historical figures and bringing them vividly to life." (Boston Globe, on Cleopatra's Daughter)"Historical fiction enthusiasts will delight in this solid installment from a talented name in the genre." (Publishers Weekly, on Cleopatra's Daughter)"A solidly researched history lesson ... The book is a satisfying blend of romance, intrigue and fascinating historical fact. Cleopatra’s daughter may not share her mother’s renown, but Selene’s own life story is also worth surviving through the centuries." (Chicago Sun-Times, on Cleopatra's Daughter)"The tale brims over with rich details of Roman life, historical personages and political turmoil. Add the coming-of-age aspect and you have a novel that will appeal to readers on many levels." (Romantic Times Book Review, on Cleopatra's Daughter)"It's all here: palace intrigue, politics, romance, warfare, and religion. As beautifully written and engrossing as her first novel, this should enjoy wide readership. Recommended for all popular fiction collections." (Library Journal (starred review), on The Heretic Queen)"Moran's careful attention to detail and her artful storytelling skills bring these people – pharaohs, princesses, and queens; petitioners, servants, and soldiers – to vivid life, imbuing ancient history with suspense and urgency." (Boston Globe, on The Heretic Queen)"Almost every character in the book is based on a historical figure, and Moran fleshes out their personalities beautifully, highlighting the teenage pharaoh's arrogance and paranoia, underscoring his queen's ambition and insecurity....Inspired by the distinctive bust of Nefertiti at the Altes Museum, in Berlin, Moran has created an engrossing tribute to one of the most powerful and alluring women in history." (Boston Globe, on Nefertiti)"Mutnodjmet as narrator is a stroke of genius. . . . Beautifully written and completely engrossing, this first novel should enjoy wide readership." (Library Journal (Editor's Pick of the Week), on Nefertiti)"Nefertiti is a fascinating window into the past, a heroic story with a very human heart. Compulsively readable!" (Diana Gabaldon, on Nefertiti)"Another enjoyable historical from Moran." (Publishers Weekly, on The Second Empress)"Michelle Moran has authentically evoked an era, infusing her narrative with passages of gripping and often horrifying drama, set in one of history's most brutal periods. The scope of the author's research is staggering, but you won't need to get to the notes at the end to realise that. As historical novels go, this is of the first rank--a page-turner that is both vividly and elegantly written. I feel privileged to be able to endorse it." (Alison Weir, author of Innocent Traitor)
About the Author Michelle Moran is the internationally bestselling author of seven historical novels, including Rebel Queen, which was inspired by her travels throughout India. Her books have have been translated into more than twenty languages. A frequent traveler, Michelle currently resides with her husband and two children in the US. Visit her online at MichelleMoran.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Rebel Queen Chapter One 1840 Imagine I took you down a long dirt road to the edge of a field, and we entered a farmer’s house built from mud brick and thatch. Now imagine I told you, “This is where I stood with the Rani of Jhansi during our escape from the British. And that corner, there, is where we changed into peasant’s clothes so she could reach the Fortress of Kalpi.” I suppose you would look from me, in my respectable sari and fine gold jewels, to the dirt floor of that one-room home and laugh. Only my eyes would remain serious, and slowly, the realization would dawn on you that all of the stories you heard must be true. The Rani of Jhansi—or Queen Lakshmi, as the British persisted in calling her—really did elude the powerful British army by dressing like a common farmer’s wife. I’m not sure why this is so surprising to people. Didn’t Odysseus manage it when he disguised himself as a beggar? And the Duke of Vienna in Measure for Measure? Perhaps people’s surprise then is that I was the one who suggested she do it, taking inspiration from characters who’d only lived on the page. After all, I was not born to read such texts. In fact, I was not born to read at all. It was Father who insisted on my education. If it had been left to Grandmother, I would never have seen anything beyond the walls of my house. For, as I’m sure you know, women throughout India are nearly all in purdah. When I was seven years old, I asked Father how this concept of secluding women came to be, and he guided me to a cool place in the shade. Our garden was large enough for a peepal tree, and it wasn’t until I was much older that I learned that not every house in Barwa Sagar was so spacious. But we were Kshatriyas, meaning our ancestors had been related to kings, just as their ancestors had been related to kings, and so on, I suppose, since the beginning of time. People have often asked me what these different castes mean, and I explain it like this: Imagine a beehive, which has workers, and breeders, and finally, a queen. Well, our castes are very much the same thing. There are Brahmins, whose job it is to be priests. There are Kshatriyas, who are the warriors and kings. There are the Vaishyas, who are merchants, farmers, and traders. And then there are the Shudras, who serve and clean. Just the same as a worker bee is born a worker bee and will die a worker bee, a person can never change their caste. But that evening, as the setting sun burnished the clouds above us, turning the sky into a wide orange sea, Father explained purdah to me. He patted his knee, and when I climbed onto his lap, I could see the knotty muscles of his arms. They bulged beneath his skin like rocks. I held out my hand, and he used his finger to trace his words onto the flat of my palm. “Do you remember the story of the first Mughal leader in India?” he wrote. I took his hand and drew the words, “He was Muslim, and we are Hindu.” “Yes. He was the one who brought purdah to our land.” “So it’s Emperor Bahadur Shah’s fault that I can’t leave our house?” Father’s arm tensed, and I knew at once that what I wrote must be wrong. “Purdah is no one’s fault,” he traced swiftly. “It’s to keep women safe.” “From what?” “Men, who might otherwise harm them.” I sat very still. Did he mean that for the rest of my life, I would never know what lay beyond the walls of our garden? That I would never be able to climb the coconut trees? I felt a deep agitation growing inside of me. “Well,” Father went on, “what’s troubling you now?” Of course, Father didn’t use words like “well.” That was my addition; the way I imagined he would have spoken if he hadn’t lost his hearing while fighting alongside the British against the Burmese. Although you may wonder what the British were doing in India, and why any of us were fighting against the Burmese at all. It began in 1600, when English sailors first arrived in my country. If you’ve ever heard the story of the camel’s nose and how, on a cold winter’s night, the camel begged its master to allow it to place its nose inside the master’s tent, then you will quickly understand the British East India Company. In the beginning, it was nothing more than a trading company buying up all of our rich spices and silks and shipping them to England, where a fortune could be made. But as the Company grew more successful, it needed to protect its profitable warehouses with several hundred armed guards. Then it needed several thousand armed soldiers. And one day, the rulers of India woke up to discover that the British East India Company had a powerful army. They were exactly like the camel, who promised at first it would just be its nose, then its legs, then its back, until finally it was the camel living inside the tent while the master shivered in the cold outside. Soon, when one of our rulers needed military aid, they didn’t turn to other maharajas like themselves; instead they asked the British East India Company. And the more favors they asked, the more powerful the Company grew. Then, in 1824, a group of maharajas in northern India decided they’d had enough. They had been watching the Burmese take over their neighbors’ kingdoms year after year, and they knew that, just like with that cunning camel, it would only end once the Burmese were seated on their thrones as well. I can’t tell you why these same maharajas didn’t see that this story might apply to the British, too. You would think the safest thing would have been to turn to each other for help. But none of those powerful men wanted to be indebted to another maharaja. So instead, they indebted themselves to an outsider. They enlisted the help of the British East India Company, which was more than happy to wage war on Burma for their own, mostly economic, reasons. Father fought in this war. Because of his caste, he was made a commanding officer and the Company paid him one hundred rupees a month for his post. I was only a few months old when he left for Burma, and there was every reason to believe that a glorious future lay ahead of Nihal Bhosale. He sent my sixteen-year-old mother letters from the front telling her that even though British customs were difficult to understand, fighting alongside these foreigners had its advantages. He was learning to speak English, and another officer had introduced him to a writer—a brilliant, unequaled writer—by the name of William Shakespeare. “According to the colonel, if I wish to understand the British, I must first understand this Shakespeare.” Father took this advice to heart. He read everything Shakespeare wrote, from Othello to The Merchant of Venice, and when the war took his hearing two years later, it was Shakespeare who kept him company in his hospital bed. Many years after this, I asked Father which of Shakespeare’s plays had comforted him the most while he was coming to terms with a world in which he’d never know the sound of his child’s voice or hear his wife sing ragas to Lord Shiva again. By that time, I had become a soldier myself in the rani’s Durga Dal—an elite group of the queen’s most trusted female guards. And by then, I, too, had read all of Shakespeare’s works. Father thought for a moment, then told me what I had already guessed. “Henry V. Because there has never been a clearer, more persuasive argument for why we go to war.” But war wasn’t what concerned me on that evening Father explained purdah to me. I was too young to understand about politics. All I knew was that I couldn’t play outside like the boys who drank juice from hairy coconut husks and staged mock battles with broken shoots of bamboo. I looked up at Father, with his bald head gleaming like a polished bowl in the sun, and wrote: “Will I always be in purdah, even when I’m grown?” “If you wish to be a respectable woman with a husband and children—as I hope you shall be—then, yes.” But just as a crow will build its nest in a tree, only to have the sparrow come and tear it apart, the life Father had planned for me was ripped away by a little bird.
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Most helpful customer reviews
86 of 93 people found the following review helpful. Not What Was Promised By Sandra Saidak The writing was good, and the descriptions of life in 19th century India were great.But this book had two very big problems. The first was that almost nothing in the book matched the description found on Amazon and on the inside cover. The "Rebel Queen" of the title, Lakshmi, didn't even appear in the book until P. 88, and was, at best, a secondary character throughout. Far from raising two armies when the British come to take her throne, Lakshmi surrenders without a fight, hoping that letters to Queen Victoria will eventually get her back her throne. When the queen does fight (in the last 40 pages of the book), the only women who fight beside her are her ten female bodyguards. By the way, not one of these women has never fought in battle. And if the narrator, Sita, was actually Lakshmi's most trusted soldier (as described) several tragedies might have been avoided.The second problem, for me at least, was the way Sita, a strong, intelligent character and a highly skilled fighter, spent most of the book being bullied by her abusive grandmother, then later by an obnoxious "mean girl" in the queens guard. While reasons are given for why she never stands up to them, those reasons felt hollow. Sita needed to find a way around the roadblocks and stand up to these villains--but she never does. I don't like reading about victims, and victims who have the skills and incentive to fight back but don't, drive me crazy. And spoil books for me.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful. Loved "visiting" India - but this is Moran's weakest writing to date By ViolettePen Actual Rating: 2.5 / 5Dumbfounded. That's how I feel as I piece together my opinions on Rebel Queen and hope I can write something coherent. I've read two other Michelle Moran novels in the past (The Heretic Queen and Cleopatra's Daughter) and thoroughly enjoyed the characters, political intrigue, and complete immersion in ancient Egypt and Rome, respectively. So, naturally, I was expecting a similar experience with Moran's first foray into Indian history. In some ways, that's what I got - but in other ways, it wasn't.Rebel Queen is a fictional account of the final years of the Indian kingdom of Jhansi before Britain's conquest and unification of India's separate states. However, the story isn't told from the viewpoint of Rani Lakshmibai, the wife of Jhansi's last maharaja (king) Raja Gangadhar Rao. Instead, readers witness it through the eyes of Sita, a member of the Durga Dal (the rani's all-female bodyguards - not exactly an army, as described in the blurb). It seems like an odd decision, given the assumptions I'd drawn from the title, but it works quite well. The book follows Sita from her childhood through her training for the Durga Dal, to her tenure as a Durgavasi and her companionship with Rani Lakshmi. All the while, readers experience 19th century India to the fullest. Manners, rituals, food, holidays and celebrations - I truly felt like I was there with Sita, smelling camphor and spices, relishing the fabrics and vivid colors of saris and other clothing. Also, India isn't a country I've read about much in historical fiction, so it was a treat to visit someplace new and exciting through a novel.Sita's a good choice as Rebel Queen's narrator for other reasons. Firstly, she's a well-developed character. She's hard-working, educated, deeply principled, and as loyal to her birth family as she is to Rani Lakshmi and the Durga Dal. Her personal journey in Rebel Queen involves adjusting to her new life, developing a thicker skin, and learning who to trust. She doesn't always make the right choices, but she tries valiantly to redeem herself every time - sometimes with success, other times with heartbreak. Also, Sita offers unique insight on cultural differences between India and Great Britain as well as within India. Having lived in a rural village for the first 17 years of her life, she arrives in Jhansi with wide-eyed wonder and childlike naivety. Both qualities help Sita remain grounded in several "worlds" (city and rural, royal and commoner, conservative and liberal) as the conflict with the British escalates and affects everyone she cares about.And when the war finally begins, that's where Rebel Queen began its nosedive for me. By that, I don't mean that the war shouldn't have been included. It's a pivotal part of the story; readers need to understand the atrocities committed on both sides and see how it tests Sita's emotional strength. However, the first hints of war don't come until the last 100 pages of the book. From there, the trot-like pace that had allowed readers to bond with the characters and savor the world-building breaks into a canter. It was a jarring change, and I struggled with it through the novel's frenzied, abrupt ending. I actually felt dizzy at that point. I couldn't wrap my head around how so much was happening in a short amount of time page-wise, especially after a smooth start and steady build-up. That's not a good feeling to have when you finish a book.The other problem I have with Rebel Queen is the weak writing. Moran resorts to a lot of telling when it comes to her characters' emotions. Reading phrases like "I felt" don't help me feel what the character is feeling; I prefer visceral reactions and physical or internal clues. But I got very few of the latter during Rebel Queen, and my enthusiasm for the story waned as the "emotional telling" carried on. I also wasn't thrilled by Sita's tendency to revert from past tense to present tense to explain beliefs or customs to the reader. It interrupts the story-telling flow, and frustrated me more each time it popped up.All of this led to me feeling completely disengaged by the end of Rebel Queen. Even though certain aspects horrified me and should have compelled me to care more about the characters, I found myself reading solely for the hope that the quality of the story itself would improve. And it didn't, which is a shame. If I could give one reason to recommend this book, it would be for the chance to immerse yourself in India's rich, vibrant culture, which Moran captures in spectacular fashion. Otherwise, anyone who's curious to read a Michelle Moran novel should start with The Heretic Queen, Cleopatra's Daughter, or any other work besides Rebel Queen. It's an unfortunate example of what can happen when the research is all there but the quality of the writing isn't.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Wonderful By Toni Osborne Also under the title “The Last Queen of India”Once more Ms. Moran has brought to life a moment in history and has transported us back in time when the British Empire was setting its sights on India in the mid-19th century. At the time India was not a country but a collection of kingdoms. This historical fiction is of Rani (Queen) Lakshmi of Jhansi, one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and an epitome of bravery and courage.Told from the perspective of Sita, the Queen’s most trusted female soldier, the story highlights how the Queen resisted the takeover of her kingdom from the invading empire. She was so determined to protect her country and her people she raised two armies, one male and one female to ride with her into battle and defend the land she loved so much.The story mainly depicts both life at the royal court and the everyday life for the women in India who had at the time very little freedom and lived in seclusion. In the first part of the book, Sita tells how she was raised and trained to become a warrior in the Queen’s service. In the second half, Sita finds that freedom comes at a cost and must discover whom she can trust from those she can’t…In “Rebel Queen”, history plays out as the backdrop to Sita personal story and is a deeply moving story that focuses on the characters. Both the Queen and Sita are strong independent characters. This book is beautifully written and the perfect balance between facts and fiction. The author pays a lot of attention to details, especially concerning the colourful sari Indian women wear and their traditional ways of life. Although mostly a fiction this book is an eye opener on how the British took over land, crushed the local culture and set their rules upon the population (at least those still breathing). It also captures the differences with castes and why this still exist to this day.I am a huge fan of Ms. Moran and I have read and enjoyed all of her books to date. I must admit that if history lessons would have been taught in a lively manner such the author does I would have been far more attentive to my classes….The author did not forget to tells us where the fine line between her imagination and the real events stands and has included a list of references and a glossary to orient us.Once more, well- done Ms. Moran
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Rebel Queen: A Novel, by Michelle Moran
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Rebel Queen: A Novel, by Michelle Moran
Rebel Queen: A Novel, by Michelle Moran
