white_hart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_hart) wrote2021-10-16 06:46 pm
white_hart) wrote2021-10-16 06:46 pm
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Reading: The Jasmine Throne (289/365)
Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne is the first book of a planned trilogy set in an Indian-inspired fantasy world. One of its main characters, Malini, is the sister of the emperor, exiled and imprisoned after trying to overthrow her brother's despotic, fundamentalist rule; the other, Priya, is a maidservant with a hidden past who is assigned to attend the princess. As political tensions rise in the province around them, Priya and Malini have to learn to trust each other in order to fulfil their destinies; destinies which will change their world.
The Jasmine Throne was a darker book than I'd expected (though I probably should have expected it, as I also found that with Suri's earlier novel, Empire of Sand); all the recommendations I'd seen had been along the lines of "morally grey lesbians who set an empire ablaze", but in fact the romance between Priya and Malini is much more subtle and less central than I'd expected from that, while there's significant violence, cruelty and evil and death, and the moral greyness is deep and all-pervading. There are no good people in this book, although some are certainly worse than others, and the questions around empire and culture which it raises don't have simple, black and white answers. The worldbuilding is wonderful, though; the complexity of the different cultures and faiths that make up the empire, and the physical details of the world, are vividly evoked.
It took me a while to get into the book, and at one point I almost put it aside as something that was clearly very good, but perhaps darker than I want right now, but I kept reading, and then about halfway through I suddenly found that I couldn't put it down and ended up reading the last 250 pages today. It does end in a very inconclusive, first-book-of-a-trilogy way, so I think I'll definitely be reading the second and third (although possibly being more thoughtful about having to be in the right headspace for something darker whenever I do).
The Jasmine Throne was a darker book than I'd expected (though I probably should have expected it, as I also found that with Suri's earlier novel, Empire of Sand); all the recommendations I'd seen had been along the lines of "morally grey lesbians who set an empire ablaze", but in fact the romance between Priya and Malini is much more subtle and less central than I'd expected from that, while there's significant violence, cruelty and evil and death, and the moral greyness is deep and all-pervading. There are no good people in this book, although some are certainly worse than others, and the questions around empire and culture which it raises don't have simple, black and white answers. The worldbuilding is wonderful, though; the complexity of the different cultures and faiths that make up the empire, and the physical details of the world, are vividly evoked.
It took me a while to get into the book, and at one point I almost put it aside as something that was clearly very good, but perhaps darker than I want right now, but I kept reading, and then about halfway through I suddenly found that I couldn't put it down and ended up reading the last 250 pages today. It does end in a very inconclusive, first-book-of-a-trilogy way, so I think I'll definitely be reading the second and third (although possibly being more thoughtful about having to be in the right headspace for something darker whenever I do).