Guns of the Gods — Talbot Mundy

Talbot Mundy was an early 20th century English writer who often wrote under the pseudonym Walter Galt. At age 19 he left London to travel to India and parts of the Near and Far East. Most of Mundy's novels are set in India under British Occupation in which the loyal British officers encounter ancient Indian mysticism. Guns of the Gods is the story of the youth of Yasmini. It begins, "She never made any secret of the scorn with which she regards those who singe wings at her flame. Rather she boasts of it with limit-overreaching epithets. Her respect is reserved for those rare men and women who can meet her in unfair fight and, if not defeat her, then come close to it. She asks no concessions on account of sex. Men's passions are but weapons forged for her necessity; and as for genuine love-affairs, like Cleopatra, she had but two, and the second ended in disaster to herself. This tale is of the first one that succeeded, although fraught with discontent for certain others."