Shiva 3000

Projecting exotic, multifaceted India into the far future, Jensen whirls readers off on a colorfully surreal series of peculiar adventures. Young Rakesh, a jilted bridegroom, and his new acquaintance, disgraced Royal Engineer Vasant Alamvala, seek vengeance. Rakesh intends to slay the legendary Baboon Warrior who stole his arranged-marriage bride, and Varent means to obliterate his palace rival Prince Hapi, a devotee of intricate Kama Sutran amatory entanglements, in order to regain his position at court. The two join forces when Brahmins summon the monstrous Jagganath, the earthquake god made visible, to crush the city of Sholapur. After discovering that the Jagganath is a dung-fueled wooden construct, Rakesh and Varent crawl inside it, learn to operate it and smash their way through India, meeting strangers and swapping yarns until each realizes an enlightened goal quite different from his original obsession. By treating India's ancient pantheon--Kali the Destroyer, Shiva, Vishnu, Hanuman the money god--as beings created by the human need to worship, Jensen explores some faces of religious intolerance. He also uses India's broad spectrum of religious observance, from the self-denial of ascetics to the intricately implemented sexuality of the Kama Sutrans, to suggest the infinite possibilities of human faith. Individual passages of this ambitious tapestry of spicy sensory overload are briefly fascinating, such as those concerning the erotic temple sculptures at Khajuraho, but as a whole, the book leaves only a nebulous impression of the futility of human life. (July)