Sons of Darkness

Mohanty debuts with a hefty grimdark fantasy retelling of the Mahabharata, inspired in part by Game of Thrones. He wisely supplies a list of characters and a map at the front of the novel to help readers wrangle the vast cast of, in Mohanty’s words, “real people faced with impossible choices,” and the several small kingdoms making up his “Narnia of India.” Made up of stories within stories, the tale fleshes out the history of a deadly 10-year war—thousands of years after the fact—and the ensuing fragile armistice between the once wealthy Republic of Mathura and the neighboring totalitarian Magadhan Empire. Now led by handsome former cowherd Krishna, who covertly works to abolish the ancient caste system, Mathura nears the end of its resources while the Empire threatens to resume hostilities, joined by strange allies from across various castes and even ancient Greece. In vivid prose, Mohanty combines ghastly tortures, sly political machinations, throbbing romance, and eerie religious and social rites into a demanding but rewarding epic and sets the stage for even more gasps in a coming sequel. This is an impressive feat. (Jan.)