Rebel Queen

For a book ostensibly about Rani Lakshmibai and her rebellion, this book sure spent a lot of time on things that were utterly made up and not at all about Rani Lakshmibai.

I couldn't help but compare it to “The Moon In The Palace”, about similarly cool historical lady, Empress Wu. Bu where “The Moon In The Palace” was narrated by the Empress and slowly explored the palace intrigues and the people who made up her court, this book is narrated by an invented character about her invented family life and spent an inordinate amount of time showing us characters who had nothing to do with the Rani. The amount of the book taken up with “the Rani didn't call me into her chambers for a month, so I'm going to pine over this random love interest” was fucking ridiculous. If I wanted to read about court women who didn't get to do anything interesting, I would have picked up a romance. I started reading this book because I wanted to read about Rasni Lakshmibai! Hell, the rebellion that gave her the title used for the novel doesn't even appear until the last 10 percent of the book.

I enjoyed the first quarter, until I realized that the book relished all of the bullshit fictional characters way more than it gave a crap about providing me an enlightening view of a fascinating historical figure.