β Scribed by Thalassa Ali
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The final installment of Thalassa's Paradise Trilogy (following A Singular Hostage and A Beggar at the Gate) finds Mariana Givens living within the confines of the British cantonment at Kabul in 1841, on the eve of the first Afghan war. An assassination attempt in Lahore thwarted by her husband, Hassan Ali Khan (son of a Sufi sheikh), has forced Mariana to leave Lahore, abandoning Hassan (and her stepson, Saboor). Mariana lives miserably in an English microsociety that doesn't recognize her marriage, full of dinner parties and eager suitors. Hassan, meanwhile, is recovering slowly from wounds, and his family is second-guessing Mariana's intentions. As tension escalates between the British (who have deposed the Afghan king, Amir Dost Muhammad, and installed a more friendly rival, Shah Shuja) and the Afghans (who are preparing to attack the British army and its 10,000 "camp followers"), Mariana faces dangerous choices. As in the other books, Ali does a highly credible job creating the clannish atmospheres of the British and Sufi subcultures, and makes the strictures that Mariana and Hassan face (and those of their servants) palpable. The detail she offers (including mystic writings from a variety of traditions) is nicely wedded to the plot, which moves with brisk and engaging efficiency. (Apr.)
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Readers first met the brave Englishwoman Mariana Givens in Ali's exciting debut novel, A Singular Hostage (2002), and Ali continued Mariana's incredible adventures in A Beggar at the Gate (2004). The final book of the Paradise trilogy concludes Mariana's saga. It's 1841, and Mariana is at the British cantonment in Kabul. The pressure is on to break all ties with Hassan Ali Khan, her Muslim Indian husband (from whom she's been separated), and marry a British officer as one of her own. Mariana can't make up her mind. Does Hassan still consider their marriage valid? Does he still love her? To help with her decision, she goes to a mystic, a Sufi seer. But things are never easy in nineteenth-century Afghanistan. Afghan forces have the British cantonment under siege, and Mariana is put in a terrible position. With its incredible detail, historical accuracy, strong sense of place, Sufi mysticism, and fearless heroine who risks her life to do the right thing, this is a perfect ending to an excellent trilogy. Shelley Mosley
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