THE RED FIEND

More presents a fantasy novel steeped in Indian mythology about a demon’s fight against deadly forces.

This book’s unconventional protagonist—the demon-King Drumila, leader of the daityas—has his four hands full: Not only is he facing an unexpected onslaught of serpent-demons who are the ancestral enemies of the daityas, but he must also deal with a more distant, much greater demonic conflict that will make the first look trivial. The warfare of the first event livens up the book’s early chapters, and Shukracharya, the guru-sage of Drumila’s people, has a plan for the second battle: Drumila can move his entire group from their subterranean homeland (where they “cavorted with their consorts under skies never visited by the sun or the moon”) to a divinely protected island up on Earth’s surface. Drumila is a valiant and conscientious leader, but in his heart, he has one overriding passion: his hatred for the Creator, who killed his mother and has the appearance of a 16-year-old boy, even though he’s “older than the world itself.” The demon-king has vowed to kill him, which would require breaching a supposedly impregnable wall around the sacred stronghold of Svarga. The Creator, meanwhile, is no fan of Drumila, either, and conscripts his daughter Arundhati to weaken and distract his enemy with lovemaking; however, as the novel’s action escalates, Drumila and Arundhati discover unexpected feelings for each other. Over the course of this mythological epic, More effectively immerses readers into the intense and offbeat world that he’s created. To that end, he also helpfully appends a glossary of most Hindu terms in the text, and also sprinkles the narrative with very modern language; the story, meanwhile, is packed with the kind of colorful action that one expects of good epic fantasy. There’s a bit too much exposition at times, which can make the work feel labored. However, there’s also intriguing worldbuilding that draws on elements that, for many Western readers, will be refreshingly unfamiliar.

A vivid and complex, if sometimes overly dense, epic of a heroic warrior-demon.