Title: Kaikeyi
Description: This is the story of the chief  'Bad Girl' of the Hindu epic the 'Ramayana.' imaginative and well-written, it is a defiantly feminist view of the start of the myth, and the forces that drove her to her present situation as an outcast, hated by the generations that follow. A little too long, especially the midsection, and rather marred by the use of magic to establish bonds and control minds, but on whole much better than the usual run-of-the-mill mythological recreation of obscure women as first person principals.

And then, in a mythological setting which has gods, demons, ogres and monkeys in the mix, one cannot seriously object to a little magic an mind-control!
Subjects: nyt:hardcover-fiction=2022-05-15, New York Times bestseller, feminist retelling
Places: Ayodhya, Bharat, Kosala (Kingdom), Kekaya
People: Kaikeyī
Time periods: 7th-5th to 5th-4th centuries BCE.