Goa

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Portugal's exotic colony of Goa, on India's western shore, was in the 16th century the farthest-flung outpost of Europe's fiercest and longest-lasting Inquisition. Here, historical fantasist Dalkey (The Nightingale) uses it as backdrop for an exemplary start to a new series. En route to Cathay on an Elizabethan privateer to establish trade in Oriental medicines, apothecary's apprentice Thomas Chinnery, an engaging young Englishman, stumbles upon, but then loses, a sorcerer's vial of powder that can resurrect the dead. In an obsessive quest for this unholy grail, Thomas follows his only link to it, the enigmatic Hindu beauty Aditi, through Goa's teeming multiracial byways, until he is trapped and interrogated under torture by the colony's fearsome Holy Office, whose Inquisitor Major, Domine Rui Sadrinho, is also hellbent on finding the eerie powder. Under investigation himself for practices even the Portuguese Grand Inquisitor finds irregular, Sadrinho needs the drug to extend beyond death the agonies he relishes inflicting in the name of the Church. Dalkey's meticulous research pays off in ravishing atmospherics that highlight the aromas, sights, sounds and traditions that shroud malevolent European church-and-mercantile-state power politics on a mysterious subcontinent. Every bit as absorbing is the author's rich tapestry of characters, from Timteo, a 13-year-old monk whose irresistible innocence is the Inquisitor Major's most effective torture device, to sinister Father Antonio Gonsao, the Machiavellian special envoy of the Grand Inquisitor. Dalkey serves an exotic repast here, one that, like the exquisite spices of the Indies, tempts the palate with tantalizing hints of wonders yet to come. (Aug.)

Roland Green

Here comes another historical fantasy trilogy, Blood of the Goddess. The setting is late-sixteenth-to early-seventeenth-century India--specifically, the Portuguese colony Goa. A young English apothecary meets an alchemist with a strange powder that can restore life to the dead. In its pursuit of heretics, a singularly corrupt Inquisition becomes involved in things; a mysterious lady aids and betrays arbitrarily; and merchants from Europe, the Arab nations, and the Mughal Empire all put their oars in. The resulting book displays fine historical scholarship and a good deal of sound characterization, but the sheer mass of erudition sometimes slows the pace unduly. This is an encouraging beginning, however--one likely to draw enough readers from the ranks of historical fantasy fandom to be a popular addition to most collections.

Kirkus Reviews

Hardcover debut and first of a projected historical fantasy trilogy, from the author of The Nightingale, etc. In 1597, young English apothecary's apprentice Thomas Chinnery voyages toward China in search of rare herbs and curatives. Off Goa, a Portuguese colony in western India, his ship intercepts a small galleon that's being pursued by a Portuguese warship; aboard are the mysterious Lady Aditi and the sorcerer Bernardo De Cartago, from whom Thomas takes a small phial of dried blood—blood that, he soon discovers, has the power to raise the dead. Then, betrayed by his shipmate Andrew Lockheart, Thomas is captured and brought before the Inquisition in Goa. Lockheart, now dressed as a monk, tries to use the blood to raise De Cartago, already several days dead. The Portuguese, preoccupied by a power struggle between the Grand Inquisitor, Rui Sadrinho, and Special Envoy Antonio Gonsço, sent from Lisbon to investigate the doings of the Inquisition, demand to be told the source of the blood. Poor Thomas, tortured anyway as a heretic and sorcerer, admits that De Cartago (now dead again through an insufficiency in the restorative) gave him a map and hinted as to the location of the source. Whereupon the dangerously obsessed Sadrinho organizes an expedition, including Thomas, Lockheart, Gonsço, and a disguised Aditi.

Splendid characters, intriguing historical details, fascinating cultures, and agreeably restrained sorceries: a highly auspicious launch.