"Making": It took me a while to catch on to the characters in this story. The most interesting part was the Sita character's thoughts during exile. She explains the oft-questioned insistence that Rama himself rescue her; she wants her husband to come by himself, not to arrive with an army, and she regrets the destruction of the people she's been with in captivity. It's a more nuanced version of her time at Ravana's palace than is given in the original epic.
"The Good King" was also interesting. The repeated reminders about Ravana's heads were humorous, and also aided my visualization of him (I'd always forget about his unique characteristic while reading the epic). The sci-fi elements I found difficult to parse out -- lots of jargon, especially for such a short story -- but the idea that, even in a multiverse where they live out an incredible number of lives, the story still ends the same was fascinating. And then Ravana even ties this in with multiple versions of the Ramayana, where in this case he's finally creating his own!
Ravananugraha statue with Ravana, Shiva, and Parvati
There's a couple great quotes from this story: "Even when they were children her brother had refused to give her any importance. However, if matters ever came down to her status as his sister he would be out there protecting her like a piece of property before she could object." Sums up the patriarchy.
"When a bunch of monkeys tried to cross the straits from India, his neuroscientists caged them in the lab and ran a series of experiments on the origins of economic theory." I should add, the combination of mythic and science, religious devotion and physics is also pretty great in this story.
I don't have much to say about "The Mango Grove," other than that I love a good love story and couldn't wait for the characters to end up together again.
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