My top reads of 2016

Stars in my eyes

Book review: The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

This is a book whose release date I have been stalking for months, after being mesmerized by the excerpt released by the author earlier. The initial preview promised a mix of Indian mythology and folklore, Rajas and Ranis (kings and queens), fantasy and romance. But what had stood out in my mind was the author's entrancing prose - her lyrical, otherworldly descriptions full of unusual imagery. So when this book was finally released, I grabbed it as soon as possible and finished it in one sitting. Did it live up to my admittedly high expectations? Yes, absolutely! That's why I'm writing this review today:)

I have not come across any other historical fantasy set in the Indian context, barring Amish's mythological "Shiva Trilogy"; so this book was an almost uncharted territory to venture into. The magical descriptions of rulers and kingdoms at the beginning reminded me of the "Amar Chitra Katha" books I used to read in childhood, while some parts of the book had similarities to Rosamund Hodge's "Cruel Beauty". But this book had enough of its own breath-taking imagery and an intensely romantic story line involving reincarnation (my favourite theme) to keep me enthralled for hours. There are so many utterly magical passages in this book that I kept going back and re-reading them so that the beauty of the words could truly sink in. I'm afraid I won't be able to stop myself from quoting the most memorable ones here:) So this review will be slightly different from the rest. I will rely more on Roshani Chokshi's lyrical prose and refrain from revealing too much of the imaginative plot. In fact, what better way to express my admiration for this brilliant wordsmith than by quoting her in this blog of words?

Source: revelwallpapers.net

Staring at the sky in Bharata was like exchanging a secret. It felt private, like I had peered through a veil of a hundred worlds. When I looked up, I could imagine - for a moment - what the sky hid from everyone else. I could see where the winds yawned with silver lips and curled themselves to sleep. I could glimpse the moon folding herself into crescents and half-smiles. When I looked up, I could imagine an existence as vast as the sky. Just as infinite. Just as unknown.

This book tells the story of Mayavati, a young princess of the kingdom of Bharata. At the beginning of the book, Maya lives in a palace full of scheming Ranis where she is ostracized by everyone because of her inauspicious horoscope promising a marriage of death and destruction. Her mother died at childbirth and her father, the Raja, is indifferent to her. So she lives in a quiet world of her own with only books for company, hungering for the unknown and imagining a world beyond what she has seen:

The week before, I had lost myself in the folktales of Bharata. Stories of elephants who spun clouds, shaking tremors loose from ancient trunks gnarled with the rime of lost cyclones, whirlwinds and thunderstorms. Myths of frank-eyed naga women twisting serpentine, flashing smiles full of uncut gemstones. Legends of a world beneath, above, beside the one I knew - where trees bore edible gems and no one would think twice about a girl with dark skin and a darker horoscope. 

Source: picswallpaper.com

The only person in the palace she is close to is her half-sister Gauri, to whom she narrates fantastic bedtime stories every night - tales of the Otherworld of her imagination, of the Night Bazaar with its strange creatures, and of Narasimha - the half-human, half-lion incarnation of the god of death. 

I wanted it to be real so badly that sometimes I thought I could see the Otherworld. Sometimes, if I closed  my eyes and pressed my toes into the ground, I could almost sense them sinking into the loam of some other land, a dream demesne where the sky cleaved in two and the earth was sutured with a magic that could heal hearts, mend bones, change lives.

With a horoscope that portends death, Maya has no hope of getting married, though she imagines the kind of love she would wish for:

What I wanted was a connection, a shared heartbeat that kept rhythm across oceans and worlds. Not some alliance cobbled out of war. I didn't want the prince from the folktales or some milk-skinned, honey-eyed youth who said his greetings and proclaimed his love in the same breath. I wanted a love thick with time, as inscrutable as if a lathe had carved it from night and as familiar as a marrow in my bones. I wanted the impossible...

The author grabbed me then and there and I was unable to let go of the book after that, even though it was well past my sleeping time :) 

Source: www.sheryna.in

Maya's country is suddenly threatened by rebel forces and rival kings. As she is the only princess who is yet to be betrothed, the Raja arranges for a fake swayamvar for her so that he can invite the neighbouring kings into his palace on this pretext and defeat them. Maya is shocked when he orders her to drink poison during the ceremony instead of choosing a groom, so that his plans of victory are not jeopardized. Maya thinks that there is no point in continuing her ill-fated, lonely existence anyway and prepares to drink from the poison vial. 

But at the last moment, she is stopped by a hooded stranger in black whose voice triggers a strange reaction in her:

It drilled through the gloaming of my thoughts, pulled at me...The hollow inside me shifted, humming a reply in melted song. I could have been a verse made of flesh or compressed moonlight. 

The stranger introduces himself as Amar, the Raja of Akaran, before rebel soldiers attack the hall and all hell breaks loose. In the pandemonium that ensues, Amar holds out his hand to Maya and asks her to come with him. Maya is overwhelmed by a strange feeling that she has lived this moment before and she almost unconsciously throws her swayamvar garland round his neck, thus choosing him as her husband:

Something else guided my hands. Images flashing sideways - a different hand, a samite curtain. I was convinced that we owned this single moment, this sphere of breath, this heartbeat shared, like a secret. 

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Amar and Maya flee the kingdom of Bharata to go to Akaran, Amar's home. On the way, Maya is stunned to see the Night Bazaar which she had always thought was a place found only in childhood fantasies. Maya finds that the market is exactly as she had imagined it to be - full of otherworldly beings and magical wares. She knows that the Night Bazaar cannot exist in the human realm and the fact that Amar has access to it proves that he is something other than human. She gets worried that she has married a sinister demon and asks Amar what he wants from her:

"I want your perspective and honesty," he said, before adding in a softer voice, "I want to be humbled by you..."

"My kingdom needs a queen," he said. "It needs someone with fury in her heart and shadows in her smile. It needs someone restless and clever. It needs you."
"You know nothing about me."

"I know your soul. Everything else is an ornament."

- whereby I was reduced to a puddle of mush :) Now you know why I had said that the author has a way with words, with a knack for writing incredibly romantic dialogues.

Amar offers Maya a blood oath that he will always protect and cherish her, and asks for her trust and patience in return. He says that he cannot reveal anything about himself till the new moon; till then she will have to trust him and live with him in his kingdom. When they arrive at Akaran, Maya finds the kingdom and the palace completely devoid of any living or otherworldly beings, except for Amar's councilor Gupta.The palace is lavishly decorated and full of stone hallways and strange locked rooms. During a tour of the palace, Gupta warns her that because Akaran is at the border of the human world and Otherworld, some of the locked doors may lead to endless holes or pools of glass, or to dense forests or night skies where one can get lost forever.

As the days pass by, Maya increasingly feels that an important part of her memory is missing, even as she is irresistibly drawn towards Amar:

When I looked at him, something stirred in me. It felt like recognition sifted through my dreams; like the moment before waking - when sleep blurred the true world, when beasts with sharp teeth and beautiful, winged things flew along the edges of your mind...

"My star-touched queen," he said softly, as if remembering something from long ago. "I would break the world to give you what you want."

Source: wallpapersnexus.com

Maya discovers a strange, intricate tapestry whose threads can alter human fates, hears the barking of bloodthirsty hunting hounds and listens to disembodied voices chanting from behind locked doors:

You can have him, but not hold him

He gives you gold, but your bed is cold

You've seen his eyes, but not his spies

Who is he?

She starts displaying unusual powers of her own, which Amar encourages her to explore further. She also keeps hearing whispers in the hallways and her nights are riddled with nightmares:

That night, I dreamed of locked doors and baying hounds, rooms that were night-dark and a beast-king that smiled and laughed around a mouthful of broken stars to sing one phrase over and over: I know the monster in your bed.

Maya finds a charred door wrapped in chains which no one else seems to see and a forbidden room which haunts her. A multitude of questions start plaguing Maya and she is unable to trust Amar anymore, even though she still can't stop being fascinated by him:

His voice wrapped around me, lustrous and dark. It was the kind of voice that could soothe you to sleep in the same moment that it slit your throat. Still, I leaned towards it.

What is behind that charred door? What are the strange voices trying to tell her? Who are the wraiths that she sees walking in the halls? What memory is her mind trying to remember? What is Amar hiding from her? Who is Amar really? Maya gets desperate for answers but does not know who to turn to for help, as Amar refuses to provide answers till the new moon day. She even sees visions of people who were part of her old life in Bharata, including her father. One day she loses patience and opens the forbidden door to discover a banyan tree with shards of her lost memory hanging from it like pieces of a broken mirror.

Does she remember what she has forgotten? Does she find out who Amar is? How does she befriend the funny, demonic horse Kamala? How does she come across the celestial, cloud-sifting elephant Airavata? Does she get to meet her beloved sister Gauri again? Can she ever experience the kind of eternal love she has always longed for?

Fortunately, to get the answers to all these questions, you don't have to wait till the new moon but only till you read the book:) I can just hint at a happy ending and the promise that there are no loose threads left untied at the end and hence no need for a sequel!

Neither the secret whirring song of the stars nor the sonorous canticles of the earth knew the language that sprang up in the space between us. It was a dialect of heartbeats, strung together with the lilt of long suffering and the incandescent hope of an infinite future.

This book is more of an ethereal fairy tale romance set in a fantastic world of myths. So one shouldn't expect complex character development, a kick-ass heroine or non-stop adventure.  It is however a coming-of-age story in a way, for Maya. As the story is narrated in first person by Maya, we get more insights into her character than Amar's. I would have liked to know and understand Amar better though; he stays somewhat mysterious till the end. I am very tempted to compare this with "Cruel Beauty" which has a similar premise, but is undoubtedly darker and more complex than this book. However when it comes to dream-like descriptions and the feel of a true fantasy, "A Star-Touched Queen" wins hands down. As a reader, I adored both books albeit for very different reasons, and would not hesitate to re-read either of them when I'm looking for something out of the ordinary.

For a die-hard romantic like me who believes in true love transcending lifetimes, this book is a treasure trove of brilliantly-hued emotions. But even if romance or fantasy isn't your thing, I would recommend this to you if you are someone who appreciates the luminous beauty and sheer magic that words can evoke within the pages of a book.

Can beauty be cruel?

Book Review: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Synopsis from the Back Cover:

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom—all because of a reckless bargain her father struck. And since birth, she has been training to kill him.

Betrayed by her family yet bound to obey, Nyx rails against her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, she abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, disarm him, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle—a shifting maze of magical rooms—enthralls her. As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. But even if she can bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him?

Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

Source: www.all-free-download.com

My thoughts:

How did the author do it? How did she turn characters so twisted and bitter into people I ended up caring for? At which point did my emotions start turning in their favor? Throughout this book, I was wondering who is cruel and who is not, who is heroic and who is not, who is real and who is not, what is illusion and what is not. Is Ignifex Gentle? Is Nyx the Beauty? Is Shade a shadow? Are the Kindly Ones kind? Is the sparrow a bird? Is the Arcadia sky a sky?

The author turns every element of fairy tale on its head by making her characters seemingly unlikable yet strong, by mixing mythology and horror with a dark yet satisfying romance. Mingled with the Beauty and the Beast story are fragments from Rumpelstiltskin, the French folk tale of  Blue Beard, the Greek myths of Hades and Persephone and Pandora's box, and even references to alchemy.

Source: www.pininterest.com

The imagery of the land of Arcadia is fantastic - I could almost visualize the shifting shadows:

Demons are made of shadow. Don't look at the shadows too long or a demon might look back.

Every room and hallway in the Gentle Lord's castle is ever changing and mysterious, every door opens into some strange illusion:

The house changes. It has a will and it changes at its own caprice.

The room with the dead wives is horrifying, but the Children of Typhon are the creepiest of them all:

They sang from all around me, a million bodiless children whisper-chanting in my ears:

Five for the symbols at your door,
Telling us your name, oh.
Four for the corners of your world,
We are always nibbling, oh.

Shadows dribbled down my face and welled up out of my skin. The shadows in the hall responded, coming alive. I wanted to claw my skin off, to gnaw the flesh from my bones, anything to get the shadows out of me...

Just like the illusions in the castle, the characters in the story are flawed and difficult to categorize too. Nyx is neither good nor accepting of her fate, and her feelings are always conflicted. She resents that she was chosen to be the wife of the Lord of Bargains and not Astraia, her twin sister:

She smiles because she is safe. She is safe because I am going to die.

She is bitter but brave underneath her scars:

He said: "This house had many dangers. I cannot save you from most of them."....
Then I let go and forced a smile. "I wasn't born to be saved."

Source: www.pininterest.com

Nyx's relationship with Ignifex is the most complex of all:

I knelt over him and smiled down into his face. My body was wrapped in ice; my voice came from somewhere very far away.
"Do you think you are safe with me?"

Both Nyx and Ignifex are conflicted and deeply flawed, yet something tender starts growing from the bitterness and enmity. We start seeing a different side to both of them:

"You deserve all of that and more. It made me happy to see you suffer. I would do it all over again if I could." 
I realized I was shaking as the words tumbled out of me. 
"I would do it again and again. Every night I would torment you and laugh. Do you understand? You are never safe with me." 
I drew a shuddering breath, trying to will away the sting of tears.

He opened his eyes and stared up at me as if I were the door out of Arcadia and back to the true sky. "That's what makes you my favorite." 
He reached up and wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. 
"Every wicked part of you."

The writing, as must be apparent by now, is lush and lyrical,

I could feel every contour of the space between us, and I wondered if this weakness was visible, if it glimmered off my body like an oily film on water.

...and portrays wondrous images:

“Have you seen lamplight shine through dusty air, setting the dust motes on fire?” 
He waved a hand. “Imagine that, spread across the night sky—but ten thousand motes and ten thousand times brighter, glittering like the eyes of all the gods.”

The author tantalizingly leaves some clever riddles strewn around, hinting at the solution:

The Kindly Ones liked to leave answers at the edges, where anyone could see them but nobody does.

Ultimately, it remains a story of two flawed individuals discovering that love may not always be beautiful but a handful of kindness can redeem cruelty.

Though mountains melt and oceans burn,
The gifts of love shall still return.
Where you go, I shall go;
Where you die, I shall die,
and there will I be buried.

Goodreads reviews of this book