Steven LaVigne: This review was originally published in White Crane Journal (#54). It is reprinted with permission from www.whitecranejournal.com online.
Bram Stoker probably didn't consider the question of immortality in the vampire novel when he published “Dracula,” in 1897. In the next century, Anne Rice has become the Joyce Carol Oates of vampire novelists, seemingly publishing new books monthly. Sanskrit scholar and Ramakrishna monk William Schindler has joined Stoker, Rice and others with his mesmerizing novel, “Blood of the Goddess.” However, Schindler's tome goes several steps further. One practically needs a map of India (and possibly a knowledge of India's history) to follow the leading characters on their journey to the shrine of the goddess.
Written in the style of an historic novel, “Blood of the Goddess” takes place in the India of 1612. Than Verloren, a Dutch Merchant Marine thinks himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. He encounters Manmatha, a strange man, who, in a previous life, was his teacher and lover. As Verloren, renamed Mukul by Manmatha, is led into a dangerous yet wondrous search for the shrine of the Goddess, Mukul and Manmatha become father and son,and intensely sexual lovers.
While Manmatha never loses his role as teacher as Mukul remains ever the student, he's drawn into learning about the future of his own immortality. “Blood of the Goddess” explores, (among so many things), in effectively hallucinatory passages, the gay side of Krishna and the dwarf as a magical, mythic being. He probes religious aspects on penis worship, as he utilizes his yogic training and learning on India's culture, to draw us into a deeply philosophical novel.
Schindler finds freshness in his approach as he renews the elements of the vampire novel, too. For example, when Manmatha "feeds," taking a life so he can maintain immortality, along with the victim's blood, his lives, past and present flow into the vampire, who's then able to relate entire histories to his student. Schindler has wisely left out the ponderous questions of immortality so prevalent in other vampire novels. The Goddess of the title, is a very powerful one, a warrior goddess, who easily justifies the vampire's killing, yet remains a great mother.
If Schindler's writing has philosophical elements similar to those in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, and a battle with corpses that will remind readers of a scene with Ray Harryhausen's special effects in the 1963 film, Jason and the Argonauts, these are minor quibbles. The reader may even be amused that the evil presence hovering over our two lovers is named Virochana. He strikes fear in Manmatha the way that Voldamort terrorizes our hero in the Harry Potter books. “Blood of the Goddess” is a terrific achievement in the realm of the vampire novel.
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