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A review by incipientdreamer
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri
4.0
4 stars
South Asian speculative fiction that has good story writing, interesting characters, intricate worldbuilding, and themes of colonialism, feminism, and empire are surprisingly hard to find. So when I heard about Suri's new adult fantasy trilogy featuring an entirely South Asian cast, with inspirations from Hindu mythology, starring morally ambiguous sapphic MCs, I just had to read it.
Unlike most readers, I found the worldbuilding and the magic system easy to understand as my mum raised me in Hindu mythology. Plus the names weren't hard to remember for me because I myself belong to the South Asian community. I felt a sense of kinship at the casual mentions of dhotis, parathas, laddus, and flower imagery.
While I found the start of the novel to be excruciatingly slow, it did pick up pace in the second third, i had a hard time putting it down. The start bombarded the reader with a plethora of POVs which made me annoyed. I was interested in Malini and Priya's POVs, but Malini's chapters were so short, and then we would have chapters of seemingly random characters. However, once it came clear how the different characters were interlinked the multi POVs became fun.
Bhumika was easily my favorite character of the book. The baddest bitch to exist. I was placed on this earth to simp for alpha female characters like Bhumika. The romance was a cute slow burn. There was one other ship that sadly sank before it could become canon. The writing was mediocre, I didn't find it affecting me as such. After the middle, however, the plot once again slowed down and I had to force myself to read the final 10 chapters. I'm worried that the sequel might end up facing the infamous second-book syndrome because The Jasmine Throne could easily have been 100-150 pages shorter.
South Asian speculative fiction that has good story writing, interesting characters, intricate worldbuilding, and themes of colonialism, feminism, and empire are surprisingly hard to find. So when I heard about Suri's new adult fantasy trilogy featuring an entirely South Asian cast, with inspirations from Hindu mythology, starring morally ambiguous sapphic MCs, I just had to read it.
Unlike most readers, I found the worldbuilding and the magic system easy to understand as my mum raised me in Hindu mythology. Plus the names weren't hard to remember for me because I myself belong to the South Asian community. I felt a sense of kinship at the casual mentions of dhotis, parathas, laddus, and flower imagery.
While I found the start of the novel to be excruciatingly slow, it did pick up pace in the second third, i had a hard time putting it down. The start bombarded the reader with a plethora of POVs which made me annoyed. I was interested in Malini and Priya's POVs, but Malini's chapters were so short, and then we would have chapters of seemingly random characters. However, once it came clear how the different characters were interlinked the multi POVs became fun.
Bhumika was easily my favorite character of the book. The baddest bitch to exist. I was placed on this earth to simp for alpha female characters like Bhumika. The romance was a cute slow burn. There was one other ship that sadly sank before it could become canon.