asianamlitfans | A Review of Tasha Suri’s Jasmine Throne (Orbit, 2021)

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

Tasha Suri’s Burning Kingdoms trilogy is completed, so I’m now starting with the first: Jasmine Throne (Orbit, 2021). This first installment is clearly one of those Asian-inspired high fantasies. I wonder sometimes about the need to code Asian-ness so specifically in these texts in the first place, but I digress (for now). Let’s let the pithy marketing description give us some more information: “Exiled by her despotic brother, princess Malini spends her days dreaming of vengeance while imprisoned 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 and cleaning Malini’s chambers. When Malini witnesses Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a ruthless princess seeking to steal a throne. The other a powerful priestess desperate to save her family. Together, they will set an empire ablaze.”

This description really doesn’t do enough to outline the variety of major characters that you’ll see throughout the text. From what I recall—and pardon my hazy memory, as I finished this one using a mix of audiobook and print editions, and I completed this one over a good month—there are at least three or four other major characters, including Bhumika, someone with powers much like Priya, and then Ashok, who is Priya’s brother and part of the revolutionary movement to depose the current power structure. The novel starts out a bit slow, but Suri is giving us time to get into the world-building. This world is one in which magic is somewhat hidden, and Priya seems to have some powers related to nature, which are connected to the Hirana. The deathless waters are the places where temple-goers used to be able to bathe into and, if they survived, they were given increasing level of magic ability. As I understand it, figures can be bathed up to three times, and the thrice-born, as they are named, are the most powerful of them all. What the synopsis doesn’t really outline is there is a queer romantic subtext between Malini and Priya that is all the more complicated by each other’s station. Malini realizes that Priya would be a powerful ally, given her magical abilities, while Priya begins to understand that, should Malini be able to find a way out of the Hirana, Malini might be a better ruler than the current one and give everyone a better chance at flourishing. But there are tons of obstacles. Needless to say, the novel sets up the chess pieces to let us know that an even larger battle is brewing. Though Priya and Malini go their separate ways by the ending of the novel, we know that each is well-positioned to make the kingdom a better place. I appreciated most Suri’s attentiveness to character development, which makes the novel move much faster at the later stages, given your investments in each character. A good example is even a minor figure like Rukh, a character who infested with the rot, and who is introduced very early on in the novel. He seeks out Priya for her aid. You are inclined to hope that there will be a way to save him, even as it is clear he might have multiple intentions for gaining Priya’s favor. By the end, Rukh’s arc is particularly well-earned and poignant, and Suri thus always leaves a very satisfying element to the stories, even as the larger battles of power remain unclosed. Very much looking forward to the second in this series!

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