The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming (Brotherhood of the Conch Series #2) Book

I was not too impressed with The Conch Bearer, but I checked out the sequel because I was curious if Divakaruni would undo the WTF ending of the former (no), and because the sequel had such an intriguing premise: Anand is transported back to Mughal times!

I liked this much more than The Conch Bearer, though mostly for the same reasons I liked what I did like of that: the atmosphere is fantastic, and I was more interested in the setting. Also the plot, though not what I'd call startling, was much less clichéd, some of the magic was pretty cool, and the ending wasn't bizarre.

When Anand's mentor disappears, Anand borrows the magic conch and goes to the rescue, ending up in a ruined palace in the jungle listening to some evil dude info-dumping his evil plotting to a jinn. Anand leaps through a magic mirror to escape, and lands in the court of Haider Ali (an actual historic figure.) There he finds himself in the body of a servant boy, his mentor impersonating an elephant trainer, his pal Nisha amnesiacally inhabiting the body of Haider Ali's niece, and the evil dude plotting away.

The characterization is simple at best, but the vivid sensual detail makes you feel like you're there at that court with Anand, pulling a heavy punkah in the stifling heat and longing for a sip of the prince's fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice. The effect is a bit like watching paper dolls against a real background. There is a knack for characterization in children's books, and Divakaruni doesn't have it. (Her adult books which I've read don't have this problem.)

There's also a failure to think through one of the premises. It was never explained whether Anand and Nisha were spirits inhabiting real (past) people's bodies, or whether they were in their own bodies and everyone's memories had changed so they thought Nisha and Anand always been there. This is a big omission, since it becomes a serious question whether Nisha will stay. I would have liked to know whether her staying would change history (since she hadn't existed before) or if it wouldn't because she'd be taking over the body of a real historical person (poor person!)

Though there's a moment near the end when I nearly flung the book across the room, it turned out to be a false alarm. The ending did not make me boggle in a bad way after all.

You can read this without reading the first book, as Anand recaps its entire plot in the Mirror of Fire and Dreaming. In fact, he does so twice.