The Satapur Moonstone

By: Sujata Massey

Narrated by: Sneha Mathan

Length: 12 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

India, 1922: It is rainy season in the lush, remote Satara mountains southeast of Bombay, where the kingdom of Satapur is tucked away. A curse seems to have fallen upon Satapur's royal family, whose maharaja died of a sudden illness shortly before his teenage son was struck down in a tragic accident.

The kingdom is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur's two maharanis, the dowager queen and the maharaja's widow. The royal ladies are in dispute over the education of the young crown prince, and a lawyer's council is required - but the maharanis live in purdah and do not speak to men.

Just one person can help them: Perveen Mistry, India's only female lawyer. Perveen is determined to bring peace to the royal house and make a sound recommendation for the young prince's future, but knows she is breaking a rule by traveling alone as a woman into the remote countryside. And she arrives to find that the Satapur palace is full of cold-blooded power plays and ancient vendettas. Too late, she realizes she has walked into a trap. But whose? And how can she protect the royal children from the palace's deadly curse?

©2019 Sujata Massey (P)2019 Recorded Books

PJ Mystery struggles to be smart enough

The plot is pretty good and the descriptions of landscape, Indian royals, and the complications of British rule add to the plot nicely. But in this book Perveen struggles and fails to follow very clear clues, making numerous mistakes and is apparently unable to act with ingenuity through court intrigue. The story is entertaining, but the serious mystery reader will often be disappointed.

What a pleasant gift!

I enjoyed the first volume in this series and planned to listen to more of them at some point. What a pleasant surprise to see that this second volume was an Audible freebie! It’s a delightful series, Perveen Mistry is a well-developed character, the historical setting is great, and the plot quite good. I enjoy mysteries sometimes, and I love historical fiction, so the combination here is terrific. I’ll be back for more. The performance is well-done.

An unusual mystery

First of all, I love Sneha Mathan's reading. Her voice is mellow and soothing and it is a pleasure to listen to her tell the story. In fact I decided right after to listen to the Widows of Malabar Hill also by Sujata Massey, but the reader was awful and I had to return the book.

About the story, I love how Ms. Massey creates three dimensional characters that bring the story to life. A story that was a refreshingly different mystery. Palace intrigue where women are either secluded in a harem or - as in this case - widows and their attendants isolated by purdah, is always a hotbed of lies, gossip, murder (poison a favorite), envy, hatred, jealousy.....
Ms Massey also introduces us to a culture with different customs, diet, ways of dressing, servants, etc. But in the end, they are not that different from us. Take away the differences, and you have human beings with the same desires, needs, ambitions.
A wonderful book.

An incredible book

A wonderful story, beautifully written and a brilliant performance, one of the best I have heard

Excellent new narrator for book two

Glad I had confidence in the author to continue to the second book in this series. Well woven tale and lovely mellow voice of talented narrator. Highly recommended!

Excellent

The performance can make or break an audible. Sneha Mathan was absolutely superb! She really brought the characters to live.

Great

Good, fun, fresh read. Unlike most books set in a long ago era, this one did not jump into preposterousness, nor did the characters assume current-day points of view - at least not much. The reader did a fantastic job. She handled the different accents, moods, genders, ages masterfully. The prior reader was over emotive in the Widows of Malabar. This was a huge improvement.

This was a wonderful story.

The story is very interesting. I really enjoyed the good job of the narrator.

Reimagined Roles for Women

Women in definitive roles in an Indian historical cultural context with varied mysterious aspects with undeveloped hints of romance.

Glad I tried book 2

the first book was kinda clunky, but this one was much better. I think the person who performed the first book was talented but made the main character come across as even more naive than the written text (which really played up her youthful ignorance to be). Additionally, while I understand that the author had to provide a lot of background and context via flashbacks in the first book, and that there was a clear effort to use a "current event" to drive the flashback, it still really felt disjointed to me.

In this book, the heroine was more polished (though to the author's credit, still had a few gaffes to confirm humanity) and the story just felt better put together. My only disappointment, and it is a small one is that her parents or even her friend Alice didn't really play a role in this iteration.

it has convinced me to get the next in the series. I honestly only bought this book (#2) because I refused to believe I could have been so wrong about the potential of the main character and the series.