Absolutely stunning writing. I wasn’t familiar with the story that this novel is based from, but I enjoyed it all the same. Even when parts got confusing from lack of context and getting characters confused, the storytelling was so beautiful that I was just happy to be there.

The strained family relationships between the son and his parents from different worlds was so well written. I could feel his uncertainty, but of course was always rooting for his mama even when it made sense for him to stay with his dad.

The scenes with her newborns were written in a beautifully sad way versus being senseless for the sake of getting it done. The author spent the perfect amount of time on this section. Not too much, but not too little.

Would love to read more from this author!

Content warnings are stated right away at the beginning of the book with specific chapter references which I love. 🫶🏼

Thank you NetGalley and Redhook for this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

* 4.5 Stars *

First, I had an arc of this I was able to get 40% through but not in time before the book was released. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the arc!

This was great. BEAUTIFULLY written. I haven't read the authors first book yet but this solidifies that I will be. Absolutely fantastic storytelling around the mythology involved.

The characters were great, wasn't anyone I didn't like. Of course our main character and goddess Ganga was the star of the show. Her son Bhishma is also a fantastic character. I can't really explain what happened as I do think this was a lot and very slow paced, definitely could have been a bit longer to really grasp the history and detail on these character but because it was already slow paced the length may not be the main issue.

Overall loved it and would recommend to anyone who typically likes retellings of mythology and or historical fiction.

Thank you for this ARC!

I absolutely ADORE Vaishnavi’s writing style and have been anticipating this book for so long. Definitely a hit for me, full of rich lore and tantalizing characters and larger than life settings.

I really enjoyed Vaishnavi Patel‘s debut novel, Kaikeyi, so I was excited to read her newest release, Goddess of the River. Also inspired by Hindu mythology, this one reimagines the story of the goddess Ganga, specifically her role in the Mahabharata.
Special thanks to Redhook and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!
Goddess of the River is an immersive book about mother-son relationships, gods vs. mortals, the vitality of change, and philosophical explorations. It’s a great chance to learn more about the Mahabharata and Hindu mythology—or, if you’re already familiar with those plots and characters, to see them reimagined in a new way here. I didn’t connect emotionally with the characters, but it certainly inspired a lot of thought.
Ganga is a goddess, the personification of a river, but her perspective must drastically shift when she’s cursed to take the form of a mortal woman. The only way to break her curse is to give birth to the eight Vasus, immortal godlings in their own right. Upon marrying the king Shantanu, Ganga proceeds to have each son and immediately drown him, freeing him back to his immortal form. But Shantanu catches on to her actions, and by the time her eighth son is born, he’s there to stop her from fulfilling her quest. Their son Devavrata becomes prince, destined to be the next king… until he later makes an oath, giving up the throne in the process. Now going by the name of Bhishma, he tries to live his life as honorably as possible, but he makes grave mistakes along the way, ultimately leading to a devastating war.
The novel goes back and forth between Ganga’s first-person perspective and a third-person account of what Bhishma is doing in his old age. He’s managing his many grand-nephews, now adults themselves and drawing ever closer the war that will divide them.
I was engaged throughout and interested to see what happened. I would pick this one up.

I absolutely loved Kaikeyi by this author, and Goddess of the River was another great and very similar read! My only issue may have to do with the ARC, I didn't have the family tree and I really could have used it to deal with a lot of similar names.

With that said, the first half of this book was very 5 star vibes and then it just went a bit downhill for me once it started to focus on a war rather than Ganga's internal life.

With that said, the culture and storytelling here was so rich and i would absolutely recommend it!

This is a retelling/reimagining of a portion of thethe Mahabharata, an Indian epic. It is focused on a more minor character and how their story threads through the history in the Mahabharata. It follows the story of Ganga, Goddess of the River, and her son Bishma. Vaishnavi Patel is such a smooth storyteller, for lack of a better term. It is told in a very poetic, dreamy, and magical way. Her style flows wonderfully and it is so easy to read despite being a very complicated and twisty story. I had to refer to the family chart many times while reading to follow how the characters relate to each other. The characters often go by multiple names (for example, Devavrata also goes by Bishma, Gangapatra, and Pitamaha). You would think this would make the story hard to understand but because of the writing style, you don't get bogged down it.

It is dual POV with scenes from both Ganga and Bishma's perspectives. I preferred Ganga's POV but Bishma added much needed context and tie in to the wider Mahabharata story. I love that this reimagining/reinterpretation gives more agency and power to the women of the story, even as the men in the story try to control their lives. There is a lot of character development driving the story; the way you see Ganga grow throughout this story is amazing.

I cannot recommend this more highly. Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for providing an eARC of this book..

This was my first book by Vaishnavi Patel. This was a Hindu retelling of The Mahabharata, and I thought it was written very well. Patel kept me interested in the story of Ganda the river Goddess and with her overall poetic writing. I gave this book a 4 star rating. I can't wait to pick up her next book.

Thank you NetGalley and publishers for this ebook for an honest review.

Like this author's previous gem, Kaikeyi, Goddess of the River is a powerful and enthralling retelling of ancient Sanskrit epic stories. While Kaykeyi took as its source material the Rāmāyaṇa, Goddess of the River explores the Mahābhārata and the Kurukshetra War from the perspective of Ganga, the river goddess. When the eight godling Vasus anger a sage who has powers from Shiva, Ganga defends them, so he curses them all, and Ganga must assume a mortal human form until she has given birth to the human forms of each of the Vasus. When the eighth Vasu is born, Ganga's curse is broken, but her husband, king Shantanu, takes the child Devavrata (later called Bhishma) to raise as heir to his throne. However, when Shantanu wants to remarry, Bhishma must swear vows renouncing his claim to the throne in favour of his younger stepbrothers, and of celibacy to ensure no future heirs can threaten their succession. Bhishma's sacrifice, and his steadfast adherence to his vows, cast ripples that affect the rest of the story as destiny leads inexorably towards war.

The writing is absolutely gorgeous, and the author shines at creating a vast and sweeping scale while immersing readers in the setting, characters, and plot through lush and vivid prose. The story explores themes of duty versus justice, individual desires versus the greater good, intention versus impact, war and peace, and maternal connection and devotion. Echoes of the past continue to make themselves felt in the future. If you enjoyed Kaikeyi, this is a must read as well. Beautiful, devastating, profound, and brilliant. I loved it, and can't wait to read more from this extremely talented author. Kudos also to Sneha Mathan for the exquisite audiobook narration.

I'm thankful to the author, the publisher, and to Netgalley for providing me with a free advance reader copy of the book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

3.5 I think. Dont feel satisfied enough to give it a 4 but the rating system doesn’t help.

If you’ve ever followed my blog, you know how much I love the Mahabharata and while reading the original gives me immense satisfaction, I also love reading different authors’ reimaginings of this epic to see how creative they can get. So naturally I was very excited when Vaishnavi said her sophomore book was inspired from the Mahabharata and have been eagerly waiting to get my hands on the audiobook to listen to my favorite Sneha Mathan narrate this story to me.

Looks like I had too many expectations though. I can’t find any fault with the writing itself - the prose is beautiful and elegant, progressing just like the titular river with all its ebbs and flows - and I was swept away in the beauty of it for the most part. But the prose isn’t enough to make me feel the emotions. The non linear timeline of this book really disconnected me from the emotional side of it, because we kept moving from one character to another across decades, but we never really spent enough time with anyone to feel invested in their arc. It’s not surprising though considering how short this book is relative to the epic. It honestly left me wondering how readers who aren’t familiar with the epic understood this book with its all mixed up chronology.

As the titular character, Ganga is the one who we follow along the most. Her conflicts felt very real - her sense of duty towards the Vasus versus her duty as a mother, her indifference towards mortals and their endless quest for land and power versus her own desire for freedom, and her gradual change towards trying to unburden the same mortals of their agonies and giving them some peace - all while trying to prevent (rather unsuccessfully) her son from getting too entangled in mortal conflicts. On the other hand, Bhishma is oath bound to his kingdom and the Kuru line, making decisions (or not making them in many instances) that at times skirt the line between dharma and adharma - ultimately leading to questions of whether his oath is more important than the well being of the whole realm, whether he could have prevented the war, or stopped many other atrocities from occurring. I definitely could feel the deep conflict these two characters felt due to their actions and inactions, unable to do what they actually wanted or maybe even not know in what it is they needed to do. The mother - son bond was also written well, especially considering that they don’t really spend much time together.

We really don’t get to meet other characters for long periods of time. Amba was probably the only other person who I really felt for, and her rage and subsequent decisions felt very deserving. I found it interesting that the author decided to have Amba meet Ganga and I thought their whole interaction was written really well. The little glimpses of Lord Krishna that we got were just not enough but that’s coz I always want more of Him. The Pandavas and Kauravas both came across as entitled and bratty royals at times, with some small moments of thoughtfulness and emotion.

In the end, I feel like I’ve rambled endlessly without any coherence but my brain isn’t cooperating. While I did like the book and really enjoyed Sneha’s narration like always, it definitely didn’t live up to my expectations. But having again been impressed by Vaishnavi’s beautiful writing, I can’t wait to read her next, which is going to be an alternate history India setting and maybe not being inspired by the epics might temper my expectations.

I got the eARC for this so thank you to Hachette for the eARC! I was really hoping to like this book since it's based on the Mahabharata and I was surprised by how much I love it! I love the complex relationships between all the characters, but especially between Ganga and Devavrata and I loved both of their struggles to understand the complexities of humanity. I love the look at human nature and war and kind of how somethings are inevitable because of who we are as a person.

As much as I wanted to love this story I feel like I got bored by the end. The first third of this book was great and had me hooked and intrigued but unfortunately those thoughts and feelings didnt continue as the book progressed. The pacing was a bit off, as I mentioned the last half of this book just didnt keep my interest. The writing was beautiful and I am definitely intrigued to pick up more by this author, but unfortunately this one was not a success.

THIS BOOK WAS IMMACULATE! Patel has become
one of my favorite authors. Part lore, part storytelling. It a whirlwind of a story that centers on a woman who is a goddess of river and her son. I would recommend this for anyone who is looking for mythological retellings.

This was my first retelling from the Mahabaharata and I was really looking forward to reading the story of Ganga. The first 30% of this story was amazing, Patels prose is beautiful and poetic, and the story was very engaging. After that I found there were too many people and too much jumping around for me to effectively follow the story. I found myself further frustrated that this felt less like Gangas story, and more like she was just the narrator. Because of this I felt the entire last half of the book became a slog and a chore to get through.

Goddess of the River is Hindu retelling of the river goddess Ganga that spans over the course of many years as she must watch her son from afar and see the city of Hastinapur come closer and closer to war. Vaishnavi Patel weaves a beautiful narrative unpacking what it means to be human and the trials and joys of motherhood.

Goddess of the River didn't quite reach the same level of love from me as Kaikeyi, but I still very much enjoyed it. The beautiful prose fit perfectly with the story. And I always enjoy how we follow a more minor character (women) from these original epics. If you like mythology retellings or Kaikeyi, I would highly recommend.

I do want to point out that you may want to check trigger warnings before reading. She does have a note at the beginning of the book mentioning then. There is some infant death scenes that may be unsettling for some readers.

Vaishnavi Patel has taken on a huge challenge in reimagining a story as epic, sprawling, and subject to many interpretations as the Mahabharata. I have not read the Mahabharata, but I have been told many of the stories that make up the epic and I was pleasantly surprised how much this telling matched my memories of the story as it was told to me.

Patel's previous book, Kaikeyi, retold the Ramayana from the point of view of its female villain. In that book, we get the perspective of a woman trying her best in a world where she's pre-destined to be the antagonist in someone else's story.

This book gives us the story from two perspectives: the first is the goddess Ganga (aka the Ganges river). She is not human and doesn't understand or like humans. Her main desire is to be free to return to the cosmic ocean that was her origin. The second is Bhishma, her son with a human king, the product of a curse that briefly trapped her in a human body. Bhishma is of divine origin, but he is raised as human and acts, feels, and thinks like a human. Through him, Ganga becomes more and more entangled with the events of the world, forcing her to come to know and understand the humans she despises.

I have no concept of what it's like to read this book without any knowledge of the source material, but as someone who is familiar with it. I really enjoyed it. I appreciated the way Patel embraced the contradictions and messiness of the "heroes" of this story and allowed them to be imperfect and flawed while still being heroes who do great deeds and are destined to succeed or fail.

On one level, this is a series of vignettes that takes us through a mythic/religious text that details a generations-long family conflict that culminates in a great and terrible war, so I was surprised at how emotional I felt in the end. But it's not so surprising when you consider that this is also a story of a divine being learning to understand and embrace us for who we are. As Ganga learns to feel for her son and for all of humanity, her perspective is infused with more empathy and emotion.

If you are a fan of Patel's writing, this will not disappoint. And if you are curious about the Mahabharata, this is an accessible way to experience the main events, characters, and themes of the epic without diving into a story that, unabridged, is about ten books worth of content.

Kaikeyi is one of my all time favorite books, so I was on the edge of my seat for this one, especially after seeing the glorious cover art. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations — I think the story suffered from being split into two parts about halfway through. I was very into Ganga’s story in the beginning (expect for one small part that almost made me DNF the entire thing), but when we jumped into her son’s viewpoint as an adult, I felt things started to lose focus and I just didn’t care about all of the side characters who were involved in the brewing war. I really liked the main storyline and the depiction of the unique mother/son relationship, and I wish that had been the focus the whole way through!

The Goddess of the River was a gorgeous, expansive novel. I love any type of mythology but know so little about Hindu mythology so Vaishnavi Patel's novel was a breath of fresh air in the midst of all the Roman/Greek myth retellings. And even as someone who knew next to nothing, I was still able to follow along and keep up.

First off—Patel's writing is beautiful. Every word and description was lush and so deliberate. I was captivated instantly. She was able to capture the voice of a Goddess, while still making her not only easy to read but someone who audience could relate to. I raced through the first part of the book.

Unfortunately, once she expanded the point of view past Ganga, I felt like everything slowed too much. I understand that writing from her son's perspective, who is in the human world, takes us back down to regular speed but it disrupted the flow. I also felt like it took too much away from Ganga's story; with it being titled Goddess of the River, I was a little surprised to see the narrative divided as such.

This patterned continued throughout—I had a noticeable difference in speed of reading Ganga v. Devavrata's chapters and a noticeable difference in enjoyment of the chapters as well. That being said, Patel truly captured the beautiful, horrible humanity of everything. I look forward to reading works of hers in the future and do think this is a fantastic novel that any fan of mythology would enjoy!

This is a companion novel to this authors previous book, Kaikeyi but you can read them both separately. Though their mythology stories do connect within the Hindu epic. In Goddess of the River, we are following Ganga and her son and It’s a beautiful tale of a mother and son’s bond and how even a god can learn to have love for humanity through their own growing sense of what it means to be a human. If Hindu retellings are your thing, check this author out.

I love reading all kinds of mythology and folklore and retellings, so this sounded like something I would like. While the writing starts off beautiful enough, the storytelling is extremely dry and boring. It's a fascinating history and religion and lore written like stale crackers and room temperature cheese. The majority of the narrative is inside the narrator's head, rather than much dialogue, which makes it all the more a slog.

Thank you to Redhook Books for an arc to read and review voluntarily. I'm sorry this was a DNF for me.

3.5 stars rounded up.
Vaishnavi Patel's "Goddess of the River" is a retelling of the Mahabharatham. It is retold from the perspectives of the goddess of the river, Ganga and her mortal son, Bhisma. I would recommend this novel for fans of Chitra Banerjee's "Palace of Illusions", another retelling of the Mahabharatham from Draupadi's point of view and for fans of Madeline Miller's "Circe", a feminist retelling rooted in Greek mythology. Goddess of the River shares the themes of motherhood and sacrifice that are portrayed in Circe. I find the feminist retellings of religious texts to be far more palatable than the annotated versions of the original texts. The personification of the river in the earlier chapters was written beautifully. Patel questions the hypocrisy concerning the notions of righteousness and how one is born into a hierarchy. All the characters, both mortal and immortal, are portrayed as flawed. Is it possible for one to be completely good? Or even for a choice to have consequences that are beneficial to everyone involved? Or at least not harmful to anyone?
Since Patel's debut, Kaikeyi, is also a retelling, you are bound to compare the two. Kaikeyi is a retelling of the Ramayanam which extends to an earlier point of time to include Kaikeyi's childhood. This creative choice offered something fresh for those who are already familiar with the original text. The primary difficulty with the Mahabharatham is that there are far too many moving parts — numerous plot points and characters who may or may not be connected to one another. Also, if you already know how the story ends, then there is not much room for new or creative elements. I liked Patel's choice of giving the river characteristics of a Pensieve, which can reveal an unfamiliar character's thoughts and the events of their lives to fill in the missing plot points that aren't directly connected to the narrators. However, the alternating narrators were not always cohesive and felt a bit choppy at times. Goddess of the River also lacks the bolder lines and more overtly feminist elements that Kaikeyi had. I wonder if Patel took some of the harsh right-wing criticism of Kaikeyi to heart when writing this book.
Thank you RedHook & Orbit Books for the ARC.