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sophia_sol) wrote2020-07-21 06:30 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-07-21 06:30 pm
Empire of Sand, by Tasha Suri
Ahhhhh this was amazing! I've been hearing good things about this book for a while but the Hugos were the kick in the pants I needed to finally prioritise reading it.
I found the first 100 pages a bit of work to get through, so with how easily distracted I was from reading I didn't really retain a lot of what I read, but everything after that I was just THERE for it completely and it totally made up for the slow start.
Empire of Sand is a Mughal India inspired fantasy, featuring a young woman named Mehr caught between her two cultural heritages. Her father is an Ambhan nobleman, and her mother a part of a persecuted people-group, the Amrithi. Mehr inherits a certain magical ability from her mother's people, which puts her particularly at risk.
What happens after 100 pages: Mehr is forced to get married to a man she doesn't know, in order to bind her magical powers to the Maha, the first ruler of the Ambhan Empire who's been using Amrithi magic to stay alive for hundreds of years! The rest of the book is about, among other things, Mehr and her husband Amun cautiously learning how to like and trust each other and how to save each other from the Maha and it's AMAZING and I love it so much. They're both so carefully kind to each other, in a situation that doesn't have much space for care or kindness.
I love reading books where the setting and context matter to the story being told, and this one definitely delivers. Your standard vaguely-medieval-european-inspired tolkien ripoff type of fantasy doesn't really care about that stuff (even though Tolkien himself definitely did!) and one of the great things about reading books like this one is that the different cultural context inspires different kinds of worldbuilding. For example, the magic of this book is inspired by Indian classical dance, and especially the way that the movement and placement of hands is communicating a great deal. And this book's themes see balance as important, rather than the binaristic notion of Good Triumphs Over Evil. It's great!
I also love when you have characters who have complicated relationships to other people, and characters who do bad things for understandable reasons. This book has plenty of both. Also there's themes of family and family of choice! Yessss!
All in all a book that made me care a lot about the people in it and immersed in the world it took place in, and that's pretty much everything I love most in a book, so YAY.
And there's a sequel out! Which looks great! Let's see how soon I can justify spending money on it. :D
I found the first 100 pages a bit of work to get through, so with how easily distracted I was from reading I didn't really retain a lot of what I read, but everything after that I was just THERE for it completely and it totally made up for the slow start.
Empire of Sand is a Mughal India inspired fantasy, featuring a young woman named Mehr caught between her two cultural heritages. Her father is an Ambhan nobleman, and her mother a part of a persecuted people-group, the Amrithi. Mehr inherits a certain magical ability from her mother's people, which puts her particularly at risk.
What happens after 100 pages: Mehr is forced to get married to a man she doesn't know, in order to bind her magical powers to the Maha, the first ruler of the Ambhan Empire who's been using Amrithi magic to stay alive for hundreds of years! The rest of the book is about, among other things, Mehr and her husband Amun cautiously learning how to like and trust each other and how to save each other from the Maha and it's AMAZING and I love it so much. They're both so carefully kind to each other, in a situation that doesn't have much space for care or kindness.
I love reading books where the setting and context matter to the story being told, and this one definitely delivers. Your standard vaguely-medieval-european-inspired tolkien ripoff type of fantasy doesn't really care about that stuff (even though Tolkien himself definitely did!) and one of the great things about reading books like this one is that the different cultural context inspires different kinds of worldbuilding. For example, the magic of this book is inspired by Indian classical dance, and especially the way that the movement and placement of hands is communicating a great deal. And this book's themes see balance as important, rather than the binaristic notion of Good Triumphs Over Evil. It's great!
I also love when you have characters who have complicated relationships to other people, and characters who do bad things for understandable reasons. This book has plenty of both. Also there's themes of family and family of choice! Yessss!
All in all a book that made me care a lot about the people in it and immersed in the world it took place in, and that's pretty much everything I love most in a book, so YAY.
And there's a sequel out! Which looks great! Let's see how soon I can justify spending money on it. :D
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