THE FORSAKEN SOULS

The second volume in a fantasy series about reincarnated lovers.

Ravi’s follow-up to her debut novel, The Heartless Divine(2019), reintroduces readers to her fictional world infused with Indian mythology and the rhythms of urban fantasy. This book continues the story of the godling Kiran and his young female human lover, Suri, whose hearts were bound together centuries before in earlier lives that only one of them remembers in detail. As in the first novel, this sequel shifts points of view and also time periods as it chronicles the further adventures of Suri, her mortal friends, Kiran, some newly introduced members of Kiran’s extended godly family, and a group of new and old villains, including the forbidding thuranaiand “Athrasakhi of Thyva, god of wrath and war and the flame of the devourer.” These villains are often melodramatically evil, but even at their worst, they’re kept believably busy scheming and striking when least expected. Ravi’s various supporting characters (including a scene-stealing pair named Viro and Tarak) get ample airtime in these pages, and readers of the first book will be pleased at how extensively Kiran’s personal history is fleshed out; he’s given a lovingly detailed backstory. The plot swings from explorations of Kiran and Suri’s relationship in the present to the unfolding of their stories in the past, with the forces aligned against Kiran and the rest of the gods steadily gaining potency until the climactic confrontation.

Ravi writes this complex tale with an arresting amount of skill and confidence. The book is very much a sequel; readers are advised to take in the first volume before moving on to this one. And the novel’s language, lovely and often sharp, doesn’t always manage to walk the fine line between evocative (“There was too much blood between them, even now. Dead cities and saints, flames of wrath and love, every bloody desert and luminous palace of heaven. Every word out of his mouth sepulchered”) and slightly purple (“Relief and vindication warred inside her”). But the supernatural world overlaying the mundane in these pages is lovingly crafted, and elements drawn from ancient mythology and modern fantasy tropes are smoothly blended. Ravi’s penchant for commenting on her own magical world (“Spellwriters were rare enough; passionate mortals who threw themselves into the dark weft of magic and let it close over their heads. It was a legacy of power and youth and hubris”) consistently lends it a verisimilitude that makes this particularly involving reading. Kiran is unquestionably the star of this sequel; readers hungry for more of the Kiran-Suri chemistry that floated The Heartless Divinemay be a bit disappointed at what sometimes feels like a lack of balance. But Ravi is such a compelling writer, with such a sure hand for both dialogue and especially dramatic pacing, that these minor imbalances aren’t major concerns. The characters are so well rounded and individualized that all the book’s dramatic stresses land perfectly.

A thoroughly absorbing fantasy sequel about gods and mortals fighting the forces of darkness.