Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Martin Dougherty's Hindu Myths is an interesting, though very basic, collection of Indian myths. There are nice illustrations and a Ganesh on the cover, which is kind of a plus. Nothing mind-blowing, but very pleasant nevertheless.

As someone who knew just next to nothing when it came to Hindu stories, this book was great! I loved that I was able to learn about a new culture in a way that was accessible and entertaining.

Dougherty's text on Hindu myth is an excellent entry-level offering, providing an overview of most of the major concepts, deities, and practices of the religion.

A very interesting overview of Hindu mythology, offering a lot of information. It might be a little overwhelming for a beginner, though I wouldn't say beginners should avoid it either. The accompanying photographs and artwork are really wonderful, and add so much to the overall book. The text jumps around a bit, but it is a good reference for the subject matter. Recommended.

#HinduMyths #NetGalley

i got a digital copy of this book via NetGalley. I was disappointed when I read this book. Early in the book (on page 29), when referring to a pic, the book makes a mistake on the name of the epic (they refer to the picture as from Ramayan while I think they meant Mahabharata). I just could not read the book beyond that page :( Someone needs to go through the book and do some fact check before releasing the book,.

I love mythology, but knew very little about Hindu myths before reading this book. I found this book to be very interesting, but not something that anyone is likely to sit down and read in one sitting. There's a lot of information in just 250 pages.

I picked up this book because it showed up on Netgalley around the time I was engaged in a discussion about Hindu myths with a friend. I’m probably not the right person to review this, because this was more of a refresher for me. I grew up with these myths, and while none are wrongly presented, it definitely didn’t offer anything new. Hindu myth is also not something that can be condensed into 250 pages. I’m sure that’s the case with most mythologies, but more so with the Hindu pantheon, because of how it’s still actively believed by a billion people and is mostly open to change in interpretation.

It’s a very well put together book though, so for anyone who wants a basic look at the origin stories of some of these gods it’s a good reference book. I’d suggest starting with the epics, since those are actual written stories, and have less contradictory back stories. There are still a huge amount of names though, and there’s not much one can do about that. Indians use those stories and names on a daily basis, as in the names of our people, in idioms, as analogies and as curses (the asuras are particularly good for this), and I still got tired of the multitude. I can only imagine the confusion of someone with no background in this subject. The book also leaves out a ton of material, which is also expected.

The author strives to keep it all impersonal and chatty, and I mostly enjoyed the book. I just don’t know if it’s a beginner level book. I’d maybe call it intermediate.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I didn’t really know anything about Hindu Mythology when I started this book, and it’s full of a lot of information which would definitely take multiple reads to digest ! I enjoyed the photos and illustrations in the book .

I do love mythology - I would love to see other books in this series.

trigger warning
<spoiler> kidnapping, rape, suicide, mutilation </spoiler>

This book serves as an introduction to Hinduism, where it came from, which are the most important gods and other figures in the myths, illustrated by beautiful pictures of artwort.

I reached for this because my understanding of Hinduism was pretty basic before reading this book. I could have told you a hand full of gods, maybe even thrown in a name like Hanuman, and then shrugged. Reading the first Aru Shah novel this year made me realise I want to know more, so here we are.

I have a few problems with this book. The information given feels very, very unstructured and I had the impression that different sections had different writers who didn't exactly know what was going into the other articles. No footnotes.
The layout was annoying, drawing sentences over the border presented by the pictures, putting in boxes with extra information before you even had finished what you just read. I really don't like that level of attention, though it's not the author's fault.

What is are the multiple instances of awkward phrasing. Not having looked up the author before reading this, I thought maybe they're not an English native speaker, because nearly every page in the sections where the myths are retold have parts in which the most extra word was used, if it fits in or not. No feeling for language.
Now that I looked the author up and see a white guy from UK before me... I have my opinions. Let's leave it at that.

Next time I'll make sure to have either a person specialised in the topic or, on top of that, someone with a personal connection to this religion.

In retrospect, I'd have liked a short excourse on Hinduism now - roughly how many people are thought to self-identify as hinduist? Apart from India, in which countries can they be found? This is not a dead topic that ended with the last myth being written. The people are still around.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

There is an amazing amount of information in this short book (224 pages) but at least 20% is repetitious or so convoluted you can't consider it as written for a novice. If you want to know more you have to find a sage and spend many years at his/her feet listening to the stories of how to become a better human being. But fear thee not, if you don't finish in this life, you can do it in one of your next.

This book is richly illustrated, and well set up providing the reader first with a foundation of hinduisms beliefs and history, making for a wonderful journey through the basics of its religious concepts, beliefs, cosmology and practices. I do not consider myself a novice on the topic, as I have previously read translations of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, know of the trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and their respective vehicles and consorts, and in the past took time to distinguish the panoply of colourful hindu gods.

Still, after making my way through the familiar epics, I found myself mired down by the multitude of different characters of the puranas and was left dazed and bewildered when the book detailed the other sages, king and personalities. I was simply left at a loss on how to tie the multitude of diverse characters together. Sometimes I was simply confused by similar-sounding names as in the example of Bhima and Bhisma appearing beside each other in the Mahabharata. But other times, I felt at a loss what lessons could or should be drawn from the stories. What about caves becoming pregnant by virtue of having semen hidden in them or - while we're on the topic of semen - semen being caught in a bowl of leaves which is subsequently dropped in a river by an eagle thus impregnating a poor passing apsara. Or poor Indra being cursed so throughly that his genitals fell off and had to have them replaced by those of a goat!

So in the end, I concur with some other reviews that this is a most beautiful book, but directed to the reader who is more of a hinduism specialist with a sufficient enough basis to be able to tie the stories together into a more coherent whole.

It was upsetting to find that this book was removed from my shelf and archived before I was able to download it.

It is unfair for me to give a an honest and fair review if I could not read it. I will give it 3 stars just for the technicality.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish this book before it was archived and removed from my shelf. From what I did read (which wasn’t much) I was not overly impressed and did not find it to be as exciting and informative as I had thought it might be. It seemed to take an interesting topic and make it bland.

Many thanks to Netgalley.

And many thanks to Amber Books Ltd for providing me with an e-ARC of this book!

Hindu Myths: From Cosmology to Gods and Demons is an example of scholarly work that asserts itself to be “an excellent introduction to understanding the varying tales of creation in Hinduism” but isn’t remotely accessible for a reader without some form of understanding of Hinduism and the related myths, gods and demons. When I requested this title and was approved, I was hopeful the text would join up the dots within my understanding of Hinduism. I was excited to learn more about Hanuman and Shiva and Ganesh. I was looking forward to a history of India and the social constructs that make Hinduism one of the largest world religions.

Dougherty, a prolific writer going by Goodreads, has taken an opportunity for educating via entertainment and squandered it on dry prose. I also need to question if he was the best writer to create this book. His biography states he specialises “in military and defence topics” and his back catalogue supports this. Why, though, was this topic given to Dougherty when there must have been at least one Indian Hindu who could have taken on the work.

I feel that someone with sympathy towards the topic might have produced a work that felt more inclusive of all readers. A text that doesn’t jump from one topic to the next before unpacking the ideas and contextualising them. I recognise this would have made the book far larger but the book it could have become would have been comprehensive in both history, society, religion and myth.

Readers aren’t stupid. They select books they hope will give them enjoyment, education, peace, escapism, but in Hindu Myths, some readers won’t find any of this. I feel sad that I spent hours waiting to feel an understanding, a connection that never eventuated. Ultimately, there are better teachers and sources of knowledge than this book can ever hope to be.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

"Hindu Myths" by Martin J. Dougherty does an incredible job of narrowing down the highly complex and lengthy history of the Hindu religion into comprehensive, key elements for those interested in learning about Hinduism.

No religion is easy to understand or explore as a beginner, and that is especially true of Hinduism. There are a lot of tough terms, ideas, and topics to wrap one's mind around and keep track of. Trying to narrow down a long history and an abundance of information into a single text is not easy, but I found "Hindu Myths" was able to divide this information under major headings and provide a variety of examples to explain these tough concepts. The photos were a beautiful addition, giving more depth and insight into the myths, deities, and history of Hinduism to create a further understanding of the topics being presented in the text itself.

There is no singular text that is able to perfectly and comprehensively compress years of religion and all of its ideas and conceptions into one simple text. Religion is not a novel you can read in one sitting, but something to muse over and think about over a period of time. Dougherty has definitely highlighted many important key events, ideas, terms, deities, and concepts for readers to sit and think about. A beautiful and highly informative text about the fascinating and influential world Hinduism has to offer.

I don’t know whether I am really dumb, or if this book was a bit too advanced to be a beginner’s book.

I love anything to do with mythology, but I had never ventured into Hindu myths before because I knew they were difficult to follow, and I was right. When this came up I was looking forward to finally understanding some of them, but this felt tailored to people who know more than a passing knowledge of Hindu mythology. If you are a complete beginner like myself then this is going to be a struggle.

I loved the images presented. They were photographed wonderfully, so I appreciated them a lot. The book is well researched and informative, but it’s a bit too steep for my understanding.

This book was so all over the place.

It kinda started slow introducing you to the main concepts of Hinduism, and then suddenly it was very info-dumpy and writing name after name after name, which isn't in favor a topic line Hinduism, where a single deity could have over 20 names/reincarnations/forms.

This book isn't for the beginner who haven't read anything about Hinduism before, because it's a vast world of lore. They myths are so very different and a lot of them contradict each other, and if this was your first read about Hinduism, sadly you'll be very lost.

I appreciate the pictures and the chapters divide but it should've been clearer especially for beginners.

I thank Netgalley and Amber Books for the digital ARC, and this is my honest review.

The colorful illustrations in this gorgeous book make it easy to keep track of all the events, gods and mortals in Hindu Myths. I’m ashamed to say that my knowledge of the matter was reduced to Kali and Ganesha, even if other names and concepts were familiar, so I was worried I was going to get lost. The information is greatly reduced to make it manageable and it’s still not too easy to follow, as there are so many events and characters. I had to take my time, go back and forth (I’ve never been so thankful of the “search” function on my computer) and I’m sure I still missed some things. Still, the effort was worth it. The author successfully condenses the information while keeping all the necessary details to make everything clear. It’s fascinating to find commonalities with other myths and religions, from ancient Greece to Christianity. Other concepts are original and very specific to Hindu Myths. This book requires care and attention from the reader, but the reward is as long as the 18 volumes of the Mahabharata.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Amber Books!