The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

The blurb:

Exiled by her despotic brother, Malini spends her days dreaming of vengeance while trapped in the Hirana: an ancient cliffside temple that was once the revered source of the magical deathless waters but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

The secrets of the Hirana call to Priya. But in order to keep the truth of her past safely hidden, she works as a servant in the loathed regent’s household, biting her tongue and cleaning Malini’s chambers.

But when Malini witnesses Priya’s true nature, their destines become irrevocably tangled. One is a ruthless princess seeking to steal a throne. The other a powerful priestess seeking to save her family. Together, they will set an empire ablaze.

The review:

How about that blurb, right?

Look, I’m all about setting empires ablaze. That’s my thing. Not that I’ve ever done it, but I’ve thought about it a whole lot. So when you have a book like this — ancient ancestral magic, evil emperors, festering rebellion — yeah… I’m gonna love it.

And I did. I adored The Jasmine Throne.

Not only because of the premise (which is great), but because of the characters, too. Priya is this wonderful ball of contradictions. Quiet on the outside, subservient. But defiant. Dangerous. Furious. And with the potential to do something about it.

I really liked Malini, too. Which… yeah, came as a bit of a shock. I usually have a bit of a Thing with royal characters (specifically, I usually wish they’d all die horrible deaths), but Tasha Suri managed to make Malini feel sympathetic enough that I actually managed to root for her. Here’s a character that has been locked away, drugged to a stupor, sent to die out of sight of a brother that now burns women alive for pleasure. No matter what he says his reasons are. Yet despite all that, she still has strength. Priya may be dangerous in a physical sense, but Malini’s cunning can kill you just as dead.

I’m always worried about the power dynamics in relationships that go across class lines. Specifically, I’m worried that an author will just… ignore them. Yet the relationship between Priya and Malini always felt very grounded. Like no one of them had too much power over the other. So, again, I felt myself rooting for something that I generally would be very opposed to — for these two characters to just get together already. I found myself appreciating that the book had done the work, considered the angles, and as a result left me deeply invested in Priya and Malini’s relationship.

I always find that Tasha Suri’s prose has this wonderful quality of reading very quickly, yet being full of evocative and sensory description. The way the author describes things, you can hear the crunch of leaves, the swish of skirts, the splash of water. At other times, you feel suffocated by the heat and smoke of a fire.

I read this novel over the course of a day. I picked it up before bed one night, it was finished before I went to bed the next. It’s one of those books that takes small, gradual steps towards where it wants to be. There are some big action moments and emotional crescendos for sure, but it was the quiet moments that grabbed me. The frank conversations between two women in a cell. The sharing of wants and dreams.

I realise that I am focusing very heavily on these two characters in my review. But I can’t really help it, I was utterly captivated by them. There are some other point-of-view characters too — I believe six in total — but it always felt like this book belonged to Priya and Malini. The other POVs didn’t grab me too much, aside from Bhumika — Priya’s mistress, who has some secrets and some power of her own, and is just generally not someone to be fucked with.

While there is an empire out there in the world beyond this couple, the conflicts and the stakes feel so much more intimate than this wider picture. The wider world maybe felt a little “out of sight” for much of the story. But then… I didn’t really care. The book is sprinkled with tantalizing hints of the culture that this empire has tried to destroy, and I was too caught up wrestling with that sense of loss to spare much of a thought for a regime that burns women and leaves children to rot with disease.

It’s a cliché, but the thing I disliked most about this book is that it ended. I felt like I was just gearing up to watch these characters fly when final page caught me off-guard. It might make me sound cruel, but I can’t wait to see how these characters will react in higher pressure situations. I can’t wait to see how they make the difficult choices. I can’t wait for the next book.  

We received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Orbit UK for the review copy!

The Jasmine Throne is available to purchase from 8th June in ebook and 10th June in paperback!

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