epic fantasy

THE OLEANDER SWORD by Tasha Suri

/ Daniel Haeusser / 1 Comment

The Oleander Sword
(Burning Kingdoms Book 2)
By Tasha Suri
Orbit Books — 16th August 2022
ISBN: 9780316538565 — Paperback — 512 pp.

If you haven’t yet read The Jasmine Throne, the first book in Tasha Suri’s Burning Kingdoms series, go away. Read it. One of the best epic fantasies I’ve recently read, it succeeds with powerful themes, strong characters, and a propulsive plot.

If you have read the first novel in the series and enjoyed it, you will probably love this sequel just as much, if not more. Now, readers might get a bit angry at Suri and what she does with our emotions. But it’s a love/hate kinda thing that makes readers thirst for the next installment, holding onto hope.

If you read The Jasmine Throne, but didn’t really like it much… well… you’re a mystery to me. But, to be fair, no book is for everyone. The characters and themes of The Oleander Sword resemble the first novel, most clearly feminist themes of being seen and heard (respected) and having a freedom from control by a patriarchal society. I’m glad this didn’t change, and I enjoy how Suri takes these themes in new directions from where the plot of the series left off in the first novel’s end.

Malini has now been declared the rightful Empress of Parijatdvipa, but the opposition of her despotic brother Chandra remains, and the supporters of her elder brother Aditya (who has given up a throne as a Priest of the Nameless God) seem to only warily follow a female of the royal line. When the apparent use of Mother’s Fire by Emperor Chandra’s forces begins to cast doubts of the Mother’s blessings on Malini’s position, the Empress must make difficult choices to ensure her victory and Chandra’s defeat.

Meanwhile, Priya and Bhumika serve as co-rulers of Ahiranya, thrice-borne priestesses with the powers of the Yaska. With the fanatical Ashok lost to the waters, the former rebels under his command have now taken on the role of Mask Keepers within the new freedom the Ahiranyi people have achieved. However, the return of the worship-hungry and self-serving Yaska soon darken this vision of hope and freedom for the leaders.

Malini sends for Priya’s help, also seeking a reunion and continuation of their romance. However, the sacrifices that each must make for their own goals and people may make their partnership and love impossible.

The Oleander Sword is an excellent sequel to The Jasmine Throne, and a middle entry to trilogy that reminds me a bit of the feelings that The Empire Strikes Back evokes: dark and bittersweet, yet with some little bit of hope still remaining. Suri expands the world building of the first novel with a deeper dive into the deities of the Burning Kingdoms lands, most notably the Yaksa. But, she also expands details of the world with more political machinations among the representative lands of the Parijatdvipa Empire.

Though, I obviously enjoyed The Jasmine Throne, it didn’t really surprise me much in the plot development. It went exactly as I expected. (I may not have expected all the events to happen already in the first book.) What I loved even more about The Oleander Sword is that things became complicated in ways I didn’t necessarily foresee. The first novel is a bit of an underdog story, of three relatively powerless women defiantly seizing power. The Oleander Sword shows that this was decided not the end of their fight. Their defiance must continue, and worse threats to their freedom and agency than they ever imagined are coming.

Like its predecessor, this is a novel about surviving and sacrifice, but with increasing costs and difficulty, if not regret. Suri does interesting things with this that tie nicely into the building plot and epic fantasy world she’s created here, with its inspirations from Indian history and mythology.

This is a middle chapter that really made me curious and eager to see what happens, how it could possibly conclude, both for the characters and the themes Suri is tackling. I was fortunate to finish the first novel not long before I was able to get a copy of this sequel. Now the pain of the waiting game.

THE JASMINE THRONE by Tasha Suri

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The Jasmine Throne
(Burning Kingdoms Book 1)
By Tasha Suri
Orbit Books — June 2021
ISBN: 9780356515649 — Paperback — 533 pp.

This review never made it up on the Skiffy & Fanty blog. The second book in the Burning Kingdoms series comes out tomorrow, and I plan to have my review of it up there then. So in the meantime, I decided to put up my review of the first book here, in case readers weren’t already aware and enjoying this wonderful epic fantasy series…

Regular followers of Skiffy and Fanty may already recognize the name Tasha Suri as the author of the well-received duology The Books of Ambha. Back in Episode 356 of the podcast, Paul picked the first novel of that series, Empire of Sand as a favorite Epic Fantasy of 2018. I haven’t gotten a chance to read those, but I was fortunate enough to discover Suri’s talent with The Jasmine Throne, the first book in her new Burning Kingdoms series. Its sequel, The Oleander Sword, is scheduled for release this August, so if you haven’t delved into this yet, let me convince you.

Ruthless and fanatical Emperor Chandra of the Parijatdvipa Empire has punished his sister Princess Malini for failing to fulfill her duty of immolation to the Mothers of Flame. Exiled to the colonized Ahiranya, under the care of Regent Vikram, Malini is imprisoned within the Hirana, a decaying temple of the Ashiranyi culture. She pins her only hope of rescue on a friend known as Rao, a noble from the Aloran realm of the Empire who worships the Nameless God – a man who is trying to unite Parijati factions under Prince Aditya, the elder brother of Malini and Chandra, who has abdicated the throne to become a Priest of the Nameless after a religious epiphany.

The site of a now lost spring of magical waters, the Hirana was once home to Temple Elders and children, whose connection to the Yaksa gods of the Ahiranyi manifested through surviving sequential baptism in those waters to become reborn twice, and thrice. The power of the Yaksa and the political domination of Ahiranya during the Age of Flowers ultimately ended with Parijati colonization: the destruction of the temple and slaughter of its adepts. As the magic of the gods has faded and the Ahiranyi culture becomes silenced, a mysterious rot forms in the surrounding forests, infecting the most vulnerable and slowly spreading to lands of the Empire beyond.

But, not all of the Temple children died in the purge. Priya escaped with her temple brother Ashok, who left young Priya at the regent’s court in care of Vikram’s Ahiranyi wife, Bhumika. Bhumika happens to be another former child of the temple, who had left to care for family before the destruction had occurred. Priya became one of Bhumika’s maidservants, suppressing her innate magic, and turning her meager life to helping the destitute whenever she could: such as taking in a young boy named Rukh who suffers from the rot.

In the meantime, Priya’s temple brother Ashok has gone on to become the volatile leader of a rebellion against the empire, and has turned his sights on using Priya to rediscover the lost waters of the Hirana and regain the powers of the Yaksa to overturn the oppressive foreign rule. The threads of Princess Malini and Priya’s lives become entangled when the two encounter one another within the Hirana, and the each realize the power of the other, and the potential they may have together to change to world.

The Jasmine Throne begins with the line: “In the court of the imperial mahal, the pyre was being built.” I’ve not read a more fitting line to start a novel. The events of the prologue truly set things up as Emperor Chandra orders a literal pyre built for immolation of Malini and her maidservants. But, this action also starts building a metaphorical pyre that will soon engulf the Parijatdvipa Empire and its colonized Ahiranyi.

Suri starts with Malini’s act of defiant rebellion against the misogynistic religious fervor of her brother, introduces the humble and compassionate Priya, and then slowly weaves the complex tapestry of characters and plot summarized above. Suri excels at revealing her world of the Burning Kingdoms series in a manner that feels effortless, natural, and engaging. I never felt lost amid the cast of characters and their disparate story lines that become increasingly entangled. Revelations are given to readers in a logical way that matches the pace of foreshadowing; the system of magic and the history of these lands becomes clear through well-placed background information given to the reader that Suri organically integrates with the plot and character motivations.

Chapters are each written with an identified point-of-view character, mostly alternating between Malini and Priya, but intermixed with others, particularly Bhumika. These three women become the central core emotional core of the novel, disparate in their temperaments, social castes, and goals, but united by their femininity and a desire to be recognized and seen as individuals of agency who can support one another.

Malini sees this, for instance, in Priya:

“Priya hated being belittled. Priya hated not being seen. Hated being made small… It was lucky, then, that it was always so easy to meet Priya’s gaze. To look into that face and give her what she wanted, simply by allowing herself to be honest. Not having to manipulate Priya felt like a small blessing.”

[…]

“I do not think you are used to being seen, are you Priya?“

It made something warm settle in her stomach, that thought. That she had recognized the value of this woman when all others hadn’t. That somehow […] she had witnessed a woman full of raw potential. Someone powerful who looked at her and looked at her, as if Malini – sick, unkempt, her curls in a snarl and her mind liquid – had the sun inside her.”

The relationship between Malini and Priya builds from uncertain alliance to friendship and on to romance, rekindling Sapphic unions that were accepted by the ancients during the Age of Flowers, but only became taboo upon colonization. This parallels the reality for cultures of Southeast Asia where homosexuality had been historically accepted, only to become suppressed in modern times. Suri addresses this type of outcome from cultural colonization throughout the novel, not just in sexuality but also at the levels of language and art. She points out the collective psychological damage that can happen to a conquered people, and what such oppression can end up inciting:

“Symbolism is important. And freedom. You will not understand this, Princess Malini. But there is a subtle pain the conquered feel. Our old language is nearly lost. Our old ways. Even when we try to explain a vision of ourselves to one another – in our poetry, our song, our theater masks – we do so in opposition to you, or by looking to the past. As if we have no future. Parijatdvipa has reshaped us. It is not a conversation, but a rewriting. The pleasure of security and comfort can only ease the pain for so long… Now bloodshed is inevitable…I gladly enter a pact that allows the death to be minimized, and even a shade of our freedom, our selves, to be saved.”

Bhumika also yearns for a voice of her own to match the power she clandestinely wields within her colonialized marriage. Just as the Ahiranyi resent the yoke of the Empire that quashes their cultural identity, so too does Bhumika become frustrated by a husband who can only see her as something to control, rather than recognizing and making use of her unique strengths and talents. She laments how perverse this is in the context of Virkam’s child that she carries within her:

“A child should not be a chain, used to yoke a woman like cattle to a role, a purpose, a life she would not have chosen for herself. And yet she felt then, with an aching resentment, how Vikram would use their child to reduce and erase here. She hated him for that, for stealing the quiet and strange intimacy of her and her own flesh and blood and making it a weapon.”

The three female characters of The Jasmine Throne have led lives where others around them have painted them as deviants, as monsters, declaring that the only purposes for womanhood are procreation and sacrifice.

“Some parts of me are monstrous,” Malini said… “You know why? A woman of my status and breeding, Chandra told me, should serve her family. Everyone told me I should be obedient to my father and my brothers and one day, my husband. But Aditya and Chandra made their choices, and I didn’t simply accept those choices. I didn’t obey. Because my brothers were wrong. But more than anything, Priya – more than that – I’m monstrous because I have desires… I’ve avoided marriage. I’ll never willingly beget children with a man. And what is more monstrous than that? To be inherently, by your nature, unable to serve your purpose? To want, simply because you want, to love simply for the sake of love?”

The novel is about these three women finding each other amid political situations that force things to a head, that force them to act. They reject the demented violence of rebellious men like Ashok. They strip the ignorant Vikram of power, and they mold the more tempered support of Rao and Aditya to their own will. The Jasmine Throne is about these women coming into power to change the world together, each to their own strengths.

“I’ve never wanted justice. Maybe I should have, but the thing I truly wanted was myself back. And now I just want to know – to prove – that the temple elders were wrong. Parijatdvipa was wrong. My brothers and sisters and I, we were never monsters. We didn’t deserve what was done to us. I want to believe that. I want to know that. I want that to be true, and if it isn’t I want to make it true. But you, Malini,” she said. “You want to remake the world.”

Though Priya recognizes this first in Malini, by novel’s end, Priya effectively states a variation of the same thing as her immediate goal, as she looks to take on the Rot. I cannot wait to continue the story of these three women, and all the other characters. (I have no room here to also go into all the interesting things she does to enrich her secondary characters, such as Rao and Rukh.) Suri’s skills here at imagining a captivating world populated by profound characters has easily enticed me to also read The Books of Ambha. She writes one hell of an engaging epic fantasy, full of entertainment, heart, and meaning.

SON OF THE STORM by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

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Son of the Storm
(The Nameless Republic Book 1)
By Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Orbit Books — May 2021
ISBN: 9780316428941 — Hardcover — 446 pp.

Though a scholar in training at the university of Bassa City, Danso itches for more than the typical Juri initiate. Within the walls of the ancient city, he hunts repositories for glances at forbidden texts the elite have secreted away. But, his gaze also goes to beyond the Bassai walls, yearning to know what lies beyond the Empire borders – wonders hinted at within the suppressed histories he’s dared read, mysteries seen glistening from the eyes of immigrants sworn to silence.

Danso is also physically atypical from those around him. He’s a Shanshi, one of mixed raced parentage with a lighter skin tone that the Bassai view as inferior. Though unable to ever attain the higher caste of society, Danso’s academic skills have placed him on course for a solid future, including arranged betrothal to Esheme, the head-strong daughter of Nem, an affluent woman who acts as the city’s leading Fixer, a tenuously powerful service that is one part feared and one part loathed by the Bassai.

Though on friendly terms, Danso and Esheme are opposites. The free-spirited and wistful Danso looks to horizons and mysteries beyond, with little sense of urgency or worry over immediate responsibility. Frequently late and disorganized, he bears a childish naïvety and aversion to facing discomforting truths that Esheme finds infuriating. With a parentage that also limits her social status in Basa, Esheme purposefully strides toward those challenges that stand in her way to greater power. And Danso is not necessarily a part of that plan. While Danso’s emotions can ultimately drive him to action, Esheme carefully suppresses her empathy from interfering with her ambitions.

The fragile coupling between Danso and Esheme strains further with the clandestine arrival of a stranger from the distant Nameless Islands to Bassa, a young woman named Lilong. Lilong is a Yellowskin, a people of dark-skinned heritage who are descended with an albinism mutation that lightens skin, eye, and hair pigmentation to an extreme of Otherness that long ago exiled them away from the Bassai mainland.

Lilong comes to the ancient heart of the Bassai Empire in search of an artifact that has been taken from her people, an ibor, a totem of bone rock that a wielder with inherent talent can use to channel supernatural feats at profound mental and physical costs. Lilong has one of her own, permitting her to change her appearance and track the totem to where it has ended up: the home of Nem and Esheme. Retrieving it and fleeing from Bassa, Lilong’s actions draw both Esheme and Danso onto separate paths that intersect with her own: three interwoven and transformative journeys.

Okungbowa models the continent of Oon and its Bassai Empire in the Nameless Republic series on the historical Benin Kingdom (Empire) of West Africa, and its city of Edo, later Benin City, eventually of modern day Nigeria where Okungbowa originally hails. (The Benin here bears no relationship to the present-day nation of Benin.) In this he creates an epic fantasy world filled with details and populated with characters that come 100% from West African root inspiration, a diversity of cultural and ‘racial’ elements from within a region that too often is viewed monochromatically by outsiders.

Such focus on West African diversity appears right at the start of the novel in a prologue set right at the literal intersections of political and cultural realms within Oon. Events are triggered in this setting to propel the plot threads of Son of the Storm that then entangle Danso and Esheme in Bassa with Lilong’s arrival. The opening third of the novel works hardest at the world building, most notably the class and ethnicity differences that define Bassai societal structure and views on immigrants. These reveal how such cultural struggles, injustices, and arbitrary ‘racial’ division is nothing remotely new to present day societies or immediate history. On the negative side, Son of the Storm does little to really subvert or transcend the Bassai racism or classism. Yet, I suspect this may be a theme that grows through the series to come.

That opening third of Son of the Storms is an essential foundation to the wonder and developments with the remainder of the novel. I found the pacing to be excellent throughout, but readers who find themselves not gripped by the start of the novel should not be dissuaded from continuing. The characters also start built of seemingly standard archetypes of epic fantasy, warriors, those on quest, those born into a familial destiny of changing the world.

However, Okungbowa does a fantastic job at developing these characters through their journeys, often subverting expectations of fantasy tropes. He balances well between the three main characters, making each of them compelling and flawed, yet capable of growth. As Esheme turns increasing into something more villainous and callous, Danso slowly progresses from innocence (and frankly, stupidity) into getting some sense knocked into him. Lilong changes from an isolated and wary force of anger and vengeance into a more trusting partner who can begin to see possible hope for the future.

The only critique I have for the characterization is in how Danso does often seem molded to obliviously succeed to help move the plot forward. His flaws may limit how quickly he progresses or limit the reach of what he ends up capable of doing, but the supernatural abilities he turns out to be able to command through ibor seems to rely on ‘inherent talent’ without adequate explanation (as of yet.)

The ‘magical’ elements of The Nameless Republic series are particularly fascinating. They revolve around the aformentioned ibor (essentially, this is ivory) as a conduit to the supernatural. Okungbowa makes a point on his blog that this is not an epic fantasy with magic. He distinguishes magic from things supernatural, with ibor being a link to other realms. It may be a semantic issue, but Okungbowa has a lot of interesting notes on the background to the cultures of Oon on his website, and it’s well worth checking all this detail out after reading Son of the Storm.

Son of the Storm succeeds for me because of its rich characters (even secondary ones like Nem – or Zaq, a loyal muscled giant who serves as indentured servant in Danso’s family – become absolutely captivating. It also succeeds in how well it ticks all the boxes for what one might expect from an epic fantasy, while remixing them and casting them with inspiration from West African history to make it all significantly fresh and captivating. Okungbowa also nicely plays with reader expectations for who the protagonist ‘hero’ or antagonist ‘villain’ for the novel (and series) will be, with the trio of connected characters who have elements of each within them.

Warrior of the Wind, the second novel in the series was originally slated for release sometime around now, Summer of 2022. However, latest information seems to be that it has moved into 2023. So there is still plenty of time to catch up on things with Son of the Storm, if you haven’t gotten to it yet. Or if you already have read it, in the meantime for any Stranger Things fans, Okungbowa has a YA novel soon out, Lucas on the Line, writing as Suyi Davies.

The Warded Man, by Peter V. Brett

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The Warded Man, by Peter V. Brett
The Demon Cycle Book 1
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345518705
453 pages, paperback
Published March 2010
(Original Publ: 2008, as The Painted Man)
Source: Goodreads First-Reads

Somehow I never heard about this series or author until coming across the giveaway for this book, and I am fortunate to have won it, one of the more enjoyable fantasy novels I’ve read in some time.

With any fantasy, world-building has prime importance, as any other element of fiction will be easily ruined by a crumbling facade of suspended disbelief or grow dull in a clichéd, familiar setting. From the opening chapter, Brett’s world of pre-tech (or is it post-tech), demon-plagued night is fascinating. With characters in relative ignorance of the world they inhabit beyond the pressing immediacy of the daily struggle to survive, Brett is able to reveal the world of his series gradually, enticing the reader’s interest, supplying bits of satisfaction, and leaving the tease of deeper revelations still-to-come. Yet nowhere does one feel shortchanged or played with. Brett’s construction of this world shows that he is simply a masterful storyteller with a love and appreciation for fantasy at its simplest.

The novel’s apparent simplicity as entertaining story and comments by others regarding the black/white good/bad dichotomy made me somewhat wary when starting the novel, afraid things would be a little too simplistic. With those expectations I actually was pleasingly surprised to see that the plot did not unfold in the manner I expected, the journey of each of the series’ protagonists did not go straight from A to B without mis-step. Too often in fantasy novels the heroes are presented with challenge after challenger, yet surpass each without any actual deviation from the original intentions, from the original set-up. In meaningful ways, Brett does take the story and his characters in unexpected directions or excursions, even if their broad, ultimate destiny is clear.

Through this all, Brett makes the reader care deeply for each of the three main characters, and enjoy the presence of the various secondary characters, good and bad, who cross their path. Of the trio, Arlen (the Warded Man) is featured the most, and for all of the novel I grew increasingly concerned that he was being made into far too powerful of a hero, a cartoonish superhero that could not fail. While others were in danger, including those he cares about, one never doubts that Arlen won’t be able to face any demon coming out with no more than a mild scratch. However, this is balanced nicely by the vulnerability of the other protagonists, and the novel begins to develop (and hint for further developments) in the true weaknesses of Arlen, not physical, but spiritual, a loss of humanity.

This was a surprisingly satisfying read and I’m eager to read the remainder of the series, always the drawback to finding a fantasy novel that captures the imagination.

Five Stars out of Five