Tag: indian-mythology • BookLikes

review 2016-03-30 13:33

Review: The Star-Touched Queen - Roshani Chokshi

Release Date: April 26, 2016
Source: Netgalley
Published by: St. Martin's Griffin

The Star-Touched Queen - Roshani Chokshi | Goodreads

Cursed with a horoscope that promises a marriage of Death and Destruction, sixteen-year-old Maya has only earned the scorn and fear of her father's kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her world is upheaved when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. But when her wedding takes a fatal turn, Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Yet neither roles are what she expected. As Akaran's queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar's wife, she finds friendship and warmth.

But Akaran has its own secrets - thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Beneath Akaran's magic, Maya begins to suspect her life is in danger. When she ignores Amar's plea for patience, her discoveries put more than new love at risk - it threatens the balance of all realms, human and Otherworldly.

Now, Maya must confront a secret that spans reincarnated lives and fight her way through the dangerous underbelly of the Otherworld if she wants to protect the people she loves.

The Star-Touched Queen is a beautifully written gem, lush with an epic romance and imaginative details of an Otherworld inspired by mythology. Sights, scents, textures, and more are captured under Roshani Chokshi's deft hand such that the world and the characters truly come to life. This will not be the only book of hers that I read. (If you are interested, I'd recommend reading one of Chokshi's online stories (I read The Star Maiden by Roshani Chokshi). That will give you a sense of her writing style. If you love her writing style, you're more than likely to really enjoy the book. Alternately, you can also read the first five chapters of The Star-Touched Queen here.)

First and foremost, I would give The Star-Touched Queen to fans of Cruel Beauty and Daughter of Smoke and Bone. The Star-Touched Queen was "pitched as a Hades and Persephone-style romance infused with Indian mythology, about an unlikely princess who must overcome her sinister horoscope and embarks on a quest to unravel her true identity and find the one she loves." You may already see why I made these comparisons but anyway-- the set-up, I think, feels similar to what happens in Cruel Beauty, where Nyx ends up married to the Gentle Lord and things are not as she expected. Here, in The Star-Touched Queen, Maya doesn't expect to end up married. There is a similar level of exploring the meaning of their new marriages alongside worlds and romances that are inspired by mythology. On a detail level, of course the books are very different; plus, Nyx is bitter about her fate, whereas Maya wholeheartedly embraces the idea of marrying someone who wants her to be his equal. Marriage is her escape--and while Nyx discovers that later, Maya knows that from the start, and she's a different lead to follow. Still should have overlapping fanbases. As for Daughter of Smoke and Bone, you can imagine that with the Hades and Persephone pitch, there is talk of an Other/underworld in The Star-Touched Queen - talk of death and fantastical creatures like demons, which fits with DoSaB. Also likely to appeal to DoSaB fans are the lush writing and epic romance within The Star-Touched Queen.

Okay, now enough about the comparisons and more on the book itself. From the start, it's easy to sympathize with Maya, our heroine. Because of her sinister horoscope, Maya has been mistreated by her father's harem and court. They mistrust her and her fate; and I think that it's always easy to sympathize with someone who's less privileged because of their birth. Plus Maya herself is a delightful heroine who, despite the great cause for bitterness, remains optimistic about finding a way for her sinister horoscope to not define who she is or what her future will be. As for the world, Roshani Chokshi hits the sweet spot: she included plenty of details to set the mood and stage for the romance, and the creatures and magic system are elaborated on enough so that you, too, can imagine yourself there and the kind of choices you would have to make. Meanwhile, there's still room for more in the giant world she's built, which means Roshani Chokshi has been posting some cool extras on The Star-Touched Queen website. But maybe you really want to know about the romance. Oh, readers, it is glorious. The romance in The Star-Touched Queen has glorious feminist leanings such that the equality between Maya and her husband is always emphasized. They are equal partners. Romantic one-liners are frequent, but they're also backed up by action -- fighting for that epic love in name and deed. Like I said, beautifully written gem, lush world-building and epic romance.

(If you've ever seen the Broadway version of Aladdin, remember the magic carpet ride with all the lights and the epic romantic singing and the shifting stage. That's what reading this book felt like to me. Wondrous, magical; a whole new world to explore and evoke your imagination.)

I think my only complaint would have been that I wanted more. I wouldn't have minded if the book were a little longer to answer some questions I had-- but I think that's always a great complaint to have of any book. Assuming you liked the book, the more you want, the more successful the author was in hooking you. And that's exactly what happened for me and The Star-Touched Queen.

I hope that you all give this book a chance. It was on my YA 2016 debut TBR list and I nominated it for Most Anticipated 2016 Book for the Epic Reads Book Shimmy Awards. It did not disappoint.

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video 2014-10-10 13:13

inkplot

Though book was a disappointment, the trailer is amazing and nothing less of a little movie magic

afterworlds afterworlds book review darcy patel indian mythology paranormal scott westerfeld thriller yamaraj

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review 2014-10-10 13:10

A fire that got watered down even before it started out

inkplot

To proceed with this review I have to first brief a bit about the book’s background, otherwise whatever I will have to say will come across as a speech excelled in stupidity. So here it goes

Afterworlds is a case of two stories running parallel. One, a story of a teenage girl who had just written a paranormal book called Afterworlds and has got a publishing deal and other half is this very book itself. So Afterworlds is two books combined in one. One a realistic world of a teenage author that is finding her place in the competitive publishing world and other a paranormal world mixed with Indian mythological elements. it’s like you are reading two different books belonging to different genres at the same time.

I can’t help but be in awe of the unique concept. But did it work wonders in final Outcome? . Sadly no. The final impact of the book to me was like having my feet in two different boats at the same time and end up drowning not being able to keep up the balance. That’s exactly what happened with the book because both the stories struggled to keep up with the balance and eventually sank like the titanic without Leonardo
For comfort sake I am treating the two books differently.

First let’s talk about the Afterworlds half of the story. It was quite interesting, good paced and to a certain extent grabbed attention but the in between interruption of the other half of the book, the real life scenario of the author kept me from fully enjoying Afterworlds. It was like being hit by commercials after every five seconds when you are trying to watch your favorite show. I hated how this particular half of the story was wrapped up hastily with so many questions left in open air. The story on its own would have made one hell of a ride without the other half of the story pulling it down.

On a completely different note, the official trailer of the book is super impressive ( link below and separately added on my blog). It gave me an idea that maybe this book would not be that bad if converted to a movie... well ...maybe

Now let’s talk about the other half, the life of Darcy Patel who has written Afterworlds. This half to me was the boring parts without anything relevant contributions except that I did get a peek into the life of publishing and how authors struggle with writing. Which also gave me a very good idea. NEVER TO BE AN AUTHOR. It’s seriously very demanding line of job. The pace was extremely slow and had too much jargons and kept halting my good relationship with the other half of the book. Plus the language was completely alien.

The funniest thing is that in Afterworlds the central character is named Yamaraj and being a fellow Indian I could not stop myself from laughing because no Indian parents in their right mind would name their kids Yamaraj because it would be like naming your kid Satan. Plus if somebody named yamaraj comes for you, then run in the opposite direction rather than swooning over him. In Indian culture, the name yamaraj is considered to be kind of a bad omen and if you try saying something on the lines like “ yamaraj is waiting for you” to some old Indian guy, he would probably drop dead right there out of fear and panic. So I kind of had a hard time holding on to my laugh every time the character Yamaraj was brought into a romantic scene. But then again everybody has their own views and perspective and this was just mine.

This book had such a beautiful and one of the most innovative concepts I have ever seen or heard but unfortunately the execution spoiled the fun partly because the culmination of two different stories of different genres needed more careful treatment. Because frankly Afterworlds (which is one half of the book) was muddled by the low paced and dull other half of the book. The book is freakishly long and sometimes without reason and the part that required length and explanations lacked it terribly. Classic case of “Brilliant Idea. Bad Execution”

How was it?

Afterworlds Official Book Trailer

afterworlds afterworlds book review darcy patel indian mythology paranormal scott westerfeld thriller yamaraj

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review 2012-06-21 00:00

Affairs of M/Men

This book didn't start out well with me due to the title. A book on Indian Mythology would be quite long as there are dozens of recognized religions in India that have a large sized following including Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and so forth. It's true that most are Hindu but it's like writing a book on American mythology and only discussing early biblical parables.

Anyway, that aside, it's a decent book. It starts out with an introduction to mythology, the history of India, and the roots of Hinduism. There is a brief discussion of reincarnation, Dharma, and the caste system. In regard to the latter, the text is very neutral, including only a couple of phrases about people fighting it as always and a picture of a low caste man who barely makes a living. The rest of the text is very positive about everything so perhaps this neutrality is to be taken as a sign of disapproval. Take it as you will.

Then the book moves on to introduce some of the key players in the Hindu pantheon including Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and Kali as well as less well known Indra, Durga, Lakshmi, Ganesha, Rama and of course Krishna. The descriptions include a little historical context, i.e., how popular they were in worship throughout history, as well as brief relationships to other gods and sometimes a couple of sentences of a popular story about the deity.

The artwork is nice, representing a variety of traditions, media and skills. Many are clearly quite old as they are just stock images probably taken at palaces, temples and museums in India. There is a glossary section in the back that is good for the most part but is just silly in others. For example, in the first section of the book, when introducing the idea of myth, the writer mentions Luke Skywalker (quite a stretch but obviously geared to hook kids). Luke Skywalker appears in the glossary.

I like the idea of this book, introducing the vast and complicated mythos of Hinduism to children but I don't think this book succeeds very well. It tries to tell too much and gets confused about its target audience which I would guess is about 3rd to 5th grade reading levels. For example, there is a section on creation stories which is only one page long and includes three versions. Considering this is a large print book for kids, I feel this is way to many versions with too little detail. Another example is that I don't think children really care that Brahma grew less popular over time because he wasn't as exciting.

I think this age group would prefer stories over general information. I think the introductory sections could have been cut down, the index removed (for a 32 page large print book? Really?) and the glossary white space reduced so it took up only one page. Then the multiple versions of stories could be removed and more space given to fuller versions of stories for all of the gods mentioned.

This isn't a bad book but if you are looking for a children's book on Hindu Mythology, I recommendTales from India by Jamila Gavin. (I don't find the title problematic because the book is just that: tales from India.) I gave that one five stars.