Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - The Jasmine Throne

Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

18 reviews

misoreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

WOMEN—
Tasha Shuri has written some of the strongest, wittiest and most morally grey women I've read and I love them for that. Bhumika, Malini and Priya are amazing characters and hard carry the story on their wise, fearless, ambitious shoulders. I love them so very much and would literally die for them 😭

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bisexualwentworth's review

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Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I really enjoyed this book. I just didn’t love it as much as I wanted to.

The worldbuilding is fantastic. I loved the way the different cultures played off of each other. The plant magic was intriguing. The different creation myths were fascinating. The use of language and geography and food was rich and realistic.

And Priya and Malini’s relationship was such a strong centerpiece to this book. I loved how they played off of each other, and I loved how balanced their relationship felt even though one of them always had more power than the other.

The pacing was rough at times. I know this is a controversial opinion, but I didn’t like all of the extra character POVs. I don’t think they added anything, and in fact I think that repeatedly meeting minor characters and getting a chapter from their POV

only for them to die at the end of that chapter

ruined the book’s momentum and made those scenes much less impactful than they would have been from the perspective of Priya, Malini, Bhumika, Rao, or Ashok.

Also, why did no one warn me that the magical cure trope was such a big part of this book? It’s an ableist trope that I’ve definitely seen handled worse but that certainly wasn’t handled well in this book, and I’m disappointed in the dozens of reviewers I’ve seen recommending this book for the sapphic romance without mentioning any other aspect of it.

Overall, I would still recommend this book, and I look forward to the sequel, but I wish I’d loved it more.

EDIT: Looking back on this book a year after reading it, I still think that the characters and the worldbuilding are fantastic. However, my interest in reading the sequel has dropped to almost nothing because this book put me off of high fantasy for several months with how rough the pacing and use of point of view were. I know that this is an unpopular take on this very popular book, and that's fine. I just found it to be such a struggle that I honestly would not recommend it to anyone who pays a lot of attention to craft and pacing issues while reading. If you're only there for the sapphic aspect and the interesting lore, you'll definitely like it better.

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kathleencoughlin's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

My final and favorite of last year's sapphic trifecta. The magic system was interesting and the characters were dynamic and complex. Good stuff 👍

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yavin_iv's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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foreverinastory's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Thank you Sapphic Trifecta.

Rep: sapphic BIPOC female MC, sapphic (lesbian coded) chronically ill female MC, BIPOC supporting cast, queer side characters mentioned in a historical context.

CWs: Abandonment, addiction, blood, past mentions of child abuse, chronic illness, colonisation, confinement, death, drug use (poison), emotional abuse, fire, injury/injury detail, lesbophobia/lesbomisia (general queerphobia/queermisia), medical content (depictions of withdrawal), misogyny, murder, physical abuse, sexism, violence, war.

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troisha's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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tachyondecay's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Sisters are so inconvenient, right? We’re always messing with your attempts to run an orderly, oppressive empire hostile to any religion except your own. Best to just ship us off to some quiet, out-of-the-way prison where we can languish until we decide to jump onto a pyre like a good girl. But, of course, there is always the possibility we will instead align ourselves with a plucky maidservant who has nascent powers granted by her culture’s nearly-exterminated religion, and then … well, that would be bad.

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri intrigued me because its description just felt so fresh. This is a fantasy novel about political intrigue and rebellion, but most of the main characters are women. Moreover, it takes place in a fairly limited number of locations, none of which are the capital of the empire. Throughout the story, Suri challenges our expectations of what it means to be revolutionary, and reminds us that the revolution is merely the beginning of any attempt to take back one’s land and culture. I received an e-ARC from NetGalley courtesy of Orbit.

The two principal characters are Malini, a Parijati princess, and Priya, an Ahiranyan maidservant. Malini’s people have conquered several nations and turned them into vassals; Ahiranya itself is ruled by a Parijati regent who is sympathetic, in general, to the Ahiranyans—and he has married an Ahiranyan wife, who is our third main character—yet who nevertheless is willing to do “what’s necessary” to keep order. The entire political situation, as well as aspects of the different cultures, is loosely based on cultures located in what is now India. This departure from Eurocentric inspiration would by itself feel refreshing (not that Suri is unique in this, but it still isn’t common enough to feel common!). But it’s the dynamic between Malini and Priya, and the story that the two of them create together, that makes The Jasmine Throne stand out.

Malini has led a sheltered life, and it shows. Politically savvy, she wants to depose her brother, the Emperor Chandra, and replace him with her other brother, Aditya. Yet she has very little idea of how exigencies in life force people to desperation. This is a lesson she learns from Priya, a maidservant who was once something more, a child in training to be a priestess to the “Deathless Waters” of the Hirana, which just prior to the Parijati occupation were gifting children with powers that could have been, in the right (or wrong) hands, influential in the conflicts to come. This is what Ashok wants—like Priya, he grew up in the Hirana, and he wants to wield the powers of the waters against the occupying empire. But Ashok’s bar for “acceptable violence” is far lower.

There’s a lot that can be unpacked here. In particular, I want to focus on the ways in which each main character thinks change should be achieved. Malini wants to build an overwhelming military force to challenge the sitting emperor. Priya initially has very few ambitions for Ahiranya; she is just trying to survive and only ends up drawn into this conflict as a matter of survival. Somewhere along the way, her spiritual experiences result in a shift of her perspective. But she always opposes the militancy of Ashok, who is nearly uncompromising in his belief that violent uprising is the only way to free Ahiranya, even if it means lots of innocent people will die. Finally, Bhumika is a mixture of the traits of these others. She has more of a taste of power, as the regent’s wife, yet she would also avoid bloodshed if possible. She is far more pragmatic at politics than Priya too. All of these characters are fighting, in one way or another, for liberation. But they also don’t always agree, and that makes for fascinating conversations and plenty of potential for betrayal.

It would be easy to carve up some of these attributes along male/female lines. This book definitely has themes related to smashing the patriarchy—the ending fairly certainly communicates this! Yet this is not as simple as “men = aggressive” and “women = collaborative.” There’s a lot of aggression pent up in Malini and many of the other female characters, whereas some of the men are chill and not all that aggressive. In this way, Suri challenges that patriarchy is about natural differences between how men and women interact. It is indeed a system propped up by cultural and social constructs. We see this even in the cultural differences between Malini and Priya.

One thing I wish we had more time to explore would be the religions and cultures in the book. We get a small amount of exposition around the nameless god, whose followers receive a ritual name that is actual a prophecy for them to fulfill. That’s a very cool concept. But it’s less clear to me what kind of fire deity Chandra worships. In comparison, we learn much more about the yaksa, the Hirana, and other important parts of Ahiranyan spirituality. However, overall I was left wanting more on that level. Priya’s transformations, this idea of “hollowing out,” hints at something larger on a spiritual/moral level. I wanted to understand the deep cultural divides and how they might have shaped someone like Chandra into a tyrant and left such a mark on Malini.

On the other hand, I enjoyed that we never visited the capital except in flashbacks. It’s cool how all this action is taking place on the edges of the empire, rebellion brewing from discontent and malcontents. Suri captures the way that sprawling dominions can be fractious and hard to fully control: even when you sound out representatives, those representatives often have a difficult time enforcing your will.

I’m loath to comment on the romantic subplot given my aromantic tendencies and how much I tend not to pay attention to these things. Basically, you’ve got a lovely women-loving-women love story here, and there is definitely some payoff near the end (but it is not, let me be clear, a happily-ever-after type of romance). If that’s your thing, this book will not disappoint on that level.

My final nitpick? This book felt very long as an ebook. I’m not sure that’s anything Suri has done here; I think long books in general feel longer on e-readers. However, I suspect that this book’s pacing is in general rather slow. Suri takes her time developing each character and bringing them together, and maybe in my impatience I was hoping that would happen faster.

All in all, I’m very glad I picked up The Jasmine Throne. Will I read the sequel? Not sure yet. But I heartily recommend this book for anyone who wants something different in their fantasy, who wants a romance between women, who wants a story that’s a little different.

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jamieleepilk's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Thank - you so much to Orbit/Little Brown for sending me a proof of this book for review.
UK Release - 10/6/21

"Malini wanted to explain that being monstrous wasn't inherent as Priya seemed to believe it to be. It was something placed upon: a chain or a poison, bled into you by unkind hands."

This has been on my radar for a while and I was thrilled to receive a proof! I'm finishing this book as we return to work and I can't wait to shout about it to customers, I will be recommending this book left right and centre when it's released in the summer!

This books world building is nothing short of incredible, every little detail is well thought out and plotted through. The characters are brilliant and well written, each of them has their own hearts and motivations. It is told through multiple characters POVs but mainly through the point of view of Priya a maidservant with a hidden, dark magical past and Malini a Princess in exile, it was so wonderful to have those two characters chapters overlap with one another the more the story progressed.
This world is dark, ruthless and intriguing. I utterly loved the mixture of magic and politics.
The world building in this book is heavy going which is to be expected in the first of an epic new fantasy series of this nature and at first it does feel slightly daunting but the more it gets into your brain you'll be engaged in no time at all. This book hooked me straight away but I felt I couldn't read fast because I was constantly worried that I would miss details that were important!

I adored this book so much, if you like fantasy with dark magic, political and religious themes, queer protagonists and beautifully lyrical writing DO NOT MISS THIS in the summer. I can't wait for the next book in this series and see where Tasha takes this story and these characters!

📚 For Fans of/If You Liked 📚
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

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