Again with the interesting world-building, but I especially love the blood-and-bone bridge tidbit: A bridge of war, death and defeat. A bridge of blood and bone.
I think part of why this is such an interesting question to me is that the way it’s posed is both very direct and carefully indirect. But beyond that, it’s a great hook, and all of the different directions you could take this dream thing are really compelling: ‘Do you believe in dreams?’
I also dig this dynamic between a jailer/guard and a criminal/prisoner: ‘Not many people knew, or were perceptive enough to notice. But I spent years with her as her jailer. I think I knew her better than anyone else.’
I’m a fan of the way this long-awaited moment ended up twisted into something so unexpectedly awful, too. Way to play with expectations: 'There was nothing beautiful. Even when Ram and Sita finally came together… that was a terrible moment. Full of hate and anger.’
And then, finally, there’s the way the author continues to play with the hero/villain duality of the way a leader of one side of a war is viewed and portrayed: ...realizing that the artfully depicted subject of the portrait is his brother, the infamous Ravana, an image so much at odds with the pictures one finds in Ayodhya. The movies, the photographs, the recreated, dramatized versions of the Lankan war portray a sinister and evil Ravana, shoulders hunched, an eerie light glinting in his eyes, mouth bared in a fiendish grin. Here, he is noble – a soldier and philosopher; an immaculately dressed gentlemen; thinker and a man of strength, who takes pleasure in beautiful things. A complex character.
Bibliography: The Missing Queen, by Samhita Arni.
Image Credit: Ocean, by Unsplash. Source: Pixabay.
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