Published By: HarperVoyager
Pages: 384
Released On: 27/03/2025
Welcome to the Ran Empire. Where winged serpents fly through the skies. Giant leopards prowl the earth. And witches burn blue as they die.
A prince born into violence.
Prince Ashoka is considered an outcast for opposing his father Emperor Adil Maurya’s brutal destruction of the Mayakari witches.
A witch seeking revenge.
Shakti vows retribution for the murder of her aunt and annihilation of her village at the hands of the emperor, even though she is bound by the Mayakari’s pacifist code.
A curse that will change the world
In her anger Shakti casts a violent curse, the consequences of which will leave both her and Ashoka grappling for power. Do they take it for themselves and risk becoming what they most hate? Or do they risk losing power completely as the world around them is destroyed?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperVoyager for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I had been on a major fantasy book high recently, with some fabulous stories and so I had high hopes for this one, but it didn’t live up to them unfortunately.
I had some big issues with this. It had such promise and I was excited but it feels…unfinished. I know I read an advanced digital copy of it and so edits may still be forthcoming, but with just over a month until publication day, there wouldn’t have been enough time to make the edits it requires. The wording, the flow, the picture Maithree was trying to paint, it just didn’t work.
There’s no real plan in my mind. Yes of course there’s a plot, but it doesn’t feel finalised, a bit all over the place. I’m fine if a character is like that, but it feels like Maithree was too, just stumbling around hoping for something to happen and then it becomes awkward to read. It’s confusing. Things happen that have no bearing on what happened before or after, and then they’re forgotten about.
The characters were a let down too. They are conflicted within themselves, they chop and change, they’re not consistent. They say or think something but instantly do something opposite with absolutely no reason at all.
The prologue was intriguing. I really enjoyed that, but it felt like it was coming from a completely different book. It set up something historical and fantastic, but it felt lost, with no real bearings on the rest of the book.
It just felt really hard to read. It was a real struggle and I just don’t appreciate books that feel like hard work to get through. I did finish it, because some books – especially if it’s the opening book of a new series – take a little while to get going, but sadly this did not get any better.
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