EmpirE of Sand

released OUT NOW! 464 pages | Paperback/ebook

Author Tasha suri Publisher Orbit

Let’s get the cliché over with: you wait ages for a secondary-world fantasy inspired by medieval Asian history, and then three turn up (almost) at once. Hot on the heels of SA Chakraborty’s City Of Brass and Ausma Zehanat Khan’s The Bloodprint comes another mould-breaking fantasy debut, and it’s the most complex and satisfying one yet.

Stubborn, principled Mehr lives a sheltered but precarious life as the daughter of two clashing worlds: the urbanised, authoritarian Ambhan empire of her father’s people, and the egalitarian traditions of her Amrithi mother’s desert tribe. She also has a wicked stepmother, because what fairy tale is complete without one?

Loosely inspired by the society and – especially – the aesthetics of Mughal India, this is a thoughtful and absorbing debut. The vision’s cosmic – nothing less than the suppressed dreams of gods keep this empire stable – but it’s the nuanced, sympathetic portrayal of the characters’ hopes and fears that keep the reader involved, even as the emotional register increasingly hits the part of the scale marked “larger than life”. Mehr is torn between the two sides of her heritage, and Mehr’s world and her relationships are built in a way that repeatedly complicates the picture, leaving us struggling alongside her to see a clear moral path through. Impressive stuff. Nic Clarke