Series Review | The Books of Ambha by Tasha Suri [CC]
Hello, everyone! This is Shannon from That’s
So Poe, and today I’m doing a series review
of The Books of Ambha duology by Tasha Suri. This
is a Mughal India inspired desert fantasy series
that I think is absolutely fantastic. There’s
so much about this that I really, really love,
so I want to talk to you about why you should
pick it up. So let me start with what each book
is about, beginning with the first book in the
series, Empire of Sand. This follows Mehr, who is
the daughter of an imperial Ambhan governor.
She, however, is also Amrithi. Amrithi are
a desert people who have a lot of magic and
on her mother’s side she has inherited that,
but it is very much a secret because the Amrithi
are persecuted in the Ambhan empire. However, one
day it becomes apparent that she has this magic
and the empire takes her away in order to sort of
make use of her magical skills. The second book,
Realm of Ash, follows Arwa, Mehr’s younger sister,
who is raised by her father and her stepmother to
become a perfect Ambhan noblewoman, suppressing
all of her Amrithi culture. However, after she
grows up and marries well, she loses everything
when a massacre on her
and everyone else and she becomes a widow.
Widows are very much not valued in Ambhan society,
but she needs to find purpose, so she offers her
services to the empire, her magical Amrithi blood,
to help when there’s an imbalance in terms of the
power and magic in the empire. So these two books
in the duology are actually a little bit more of
companion novels than direct sequels. Empire of
Sand does occur 10 years before Realm of Ash,
so there are some chronological things that
happen, some things that happen in terms of
the empire that do follow through from one to
the other, but because they’re companion novels,
truthfully you could read it in either order
and it would be fine. This review is going to
be a series review, so talking about what I liked
across both of these books, but I’m going to link
below a couple of standalone reviews for each of
these books. So for Empire of Sand, Jocelyn @ yogi
with the book, Joe @ FinalBlowJoe, and Isabella
@ Stubbornly Bookish all have standalone reviews,
and Isabella @ Stubbornly Bookish also has a
review of Realm of Ash. So all of those are linked
below if you want more details about each book. I
really enjoyed both of the books in this duology,
although Empire of Sand had a couple of minor
issues in terms of a little bit of extra drama
and some slightly illogical choices by characters,
whereas Realm of Ash was pure perfection for me,
but I think that each person has sort of a
different opinion on each of these books. I
still think that both are absolutely excellent.
So what I want to talk about now is all of the
reasons why this series as a whole I thought was
just so worth picking up, starting with the world
building. There is so much world building that is
going on in this series, and that world building
is both cultural and political, as well as magic
based. So in terms of the culture and politics,
we follow the Ambhan Empire, which
is something that is inspired by
Mughal Empire in India. The Mughal Empire was in
the 16th through 19th centuries, where some groups
from Central Asia invaded a lot of the different
kingdoms in India. India had many, many different
kingdoms, all of which had different cultures and
different groups of people, and it sort of united,
in an imperial way, the land. So a lot of
this story is focusing on the Ambhan Empire,
which is one that has a lot of culture, but
also a lot of brutality in the way that it has
subjugated other peoples. It has a lot of very
intricate court politics, a lot of rules as far
as things like women need to be really demure,
there’s a lot of separation of women and men,
there is a one true religion where the Maha,
who is the religious leader, and the emperor
are considered almost deities. So there’s a lot
of fascinating things about the empire itself.
And we also get a lot of perspective about the
Amrithi people because both of the sisters,
Mehr and Arwa, their mother was Amrithi,
which is a desert tribal nomadic people,
very different culture, a lot of focus on their
religion, which is a separate type of religion,
their magic, their beliefs. And I loved the way
that the Ambhan Empire and the Amrithi people
are sort of very distinct and described in this
world building. The magic system in these books is
also just completely fascinating, and I love the
way that it has been inspired by Indian culture.
So in these books, the Amrithi worship these
things called daivas, which are desert spirits,
and the reason that they worship them is because
they are related by blood. The daiva are,
in a sense, their ancestors as well, and they
are able to call on the power of the daiva
through a lot of different rites. Many of these
rights are done through dance, and I loved this
aspect of the book. So the dance that they do is
inspired by Bharatnatayam. I’ll put a clip up here
of what Bharatnatayam looks like, and I will link
the video below that I grabbed that clip from.
It is just the coolest dance. It is an actual
dance that is a religious dance. It is done
to tell religious stories and has been done for
centuries by priestesses. And I love that that was
the way that the Amrithi people communicate with
and worship the daivas – completely unique and
wonderful. There’s also the realm of ash, which
was especially explored in the second book,
which is sort of this world where the ancestors’
spirits live – their family’s ancestors – and
where they can gain some of the knowledge of
those ancestors. It is a completely different
feel and really desolate and bleak but
beautiful, and I love that magic system as well.
One of the things that I will warn
is that a lot of the magic in this
is blood magic. So what the sisters have to
do is often cut themselves in order to bleed
as a sacrifice to the spirits. So if you’re not
comfortable with blood magic, this may not be
for you, but I didn’t think that it was too much.
I think that I’m very sensitive to anything too
bloody, and this really wasn’t it. But I thought
that the magic system was just really, really
fascinating and so well done. Next, I want to talk
about the pacing and the writing style. So both of
these books do have very strong plots where there
are a lot of high stakes and a lot of consequences
in terms of politics and magic for what
they’re doing, and there is a big goal in mind
in each story, but they are very much also
internally focused. So a lot of these stories
are just focused on the atmosphere, on the
internal emotional world, and they’re very,
very slow paced, which is perfect for me
because I love slow paced fantasy. This is
extremely atmospheric in the way that you feel
what the characters are feeling, and you feel
the magic, and you feel the world around you,
but if you’re somebody who likes a fast pace,
this may not work for you. For me, as a slow pace
reader, it was perfect. The romance in this was
also perfect for me because it was incredibly
sweet and slow burn. In both of these books,
the sisters fall in love, and the person that they
each fall in love with is such a gentle and kind
and considerate and compassionate hero. They each
fall in love with a man who is somewhat tragic in
terms of a lot of trauma experienced, but somebody
who is very caring and loving and a good partner
for them. And I love that focus on a slowly
developing friendship and trust and relationship
that leads to true partnership. I adored the
way that the romances worked in these books.
I also loved the incredibly feminist focus on
women in these stories. So obviously we have
these two sisters who are each the center of their
stories, but really so much of both of these books
is focused on women – their relationships and
their value. So we have such a strong sisterly
bond between Mehr and Arwa, but we also have
bonds that they have with older women mentors,
which I absolutely love seeing. They have such
a focus on women understanding their own value,
especially when they are treated by society as if
they don’t have value, such as both of them for
being of Amrithi blood, which is extremely
oppressed and subjugated in the society,
and especially Arwa, who is a widow and considered
almost a ghost of society. She has no more value
now that her husband is no longer alive. And I
loved the way that it was just such a feminist
take of exploring how women do have value and how
their relationships matter and how they matter.
Another very complex type of relationship that
is explored in these books is that of parents
and daughters. So because Mehr and Arwa are
half Amrithi, and their father is Ambhan and
their stepmother is Ambhan, it causes a lot of
very conflicted issues and emotions for them,
especially for Arwa, who is taken in by their
stepmother and raised as her own, but raised very
much to push down all of the Amrithi parts of her.
There is so much in this about how parental love
can often not be as healthy as it should be. The
father in this is very weak. Even though he loves
his daughters, he doesn’t always make the right
decisions. And the stepmother, although perhaps
motivated to protect, is in many ways harming
the daughters. So I really liked that complexity,
especially in the Realm of Ash, between the parent
and daughter relationships. On a broader societal
level, I love the way that this book explored the
ideas of prejudice. Because the Ambhan Empire is
seen as this great thing, and the Amrithi people
are seen as backwards and lesser than, there’s
a lot of discussion of the prejudice between the
Ambhan Empire for the Amrithi people, especially
because the Amrithi people are very different in
culture, and also very different in appearance.
The Amrithi people have darker skin and curlier
hair. It’s really interesting to read both of
these novels because Mehr is physically very
obviously Amrithi – she has the darker skin and
the curly hair – whereas Arwa is passing – she has
lighter skin and straight hair. And so there’s a
lot of discussion of sort of racism and colorism,
and this idea of Arwa passing and what that costs
her to pass as Ambhan when she is also Amrithi.
And so I loved that really complex discussion
of prejudice. And lastly, one of my favorite
things that these books did was the exploration of
imperialism. This is such a fascinating
topic and I think that it was dealt with
with the complexity that it deserves in these
novels. Often when you read fantasy or sci-fi,
you have these grand empires, but it’s not always
discussed with the kind of nuance that I think
that is done in the Books of Ambha series. So in
this series, we are both seeing sort of the glory
of the Ambhan Empire, as well as the cost, the
genocide that is enacted against the Amrithi
people, the way that they are subjugated, the
way that the empire uses and takes all of their
magic and their resources. But also, when the
empire starts to crumble, the cost of that,
the cost of what happens after an empire has come
in if it then dissolves. It is also filled with
so many problems. And I loved the way that that is
discussed. I also really loved in Realm of Ash the
way that Arwa has this complicated relationship
between her Amrithi roots as well as her Ambhan
upbringing and culture. She feels so connected to
the Ambhan empire even though she is discriminated
against by it, and that complexity of connection
and emotion I thought was done so well. Overall,
I think that the Books of Ambha duology is
fantastic. I think that this is such a great
example of very slow atmospheric fantasy that is
focused on women, that is focused on interesting
issues, constantly looking at ideas of culture and
of imperialism, questioning the ways that we form
our identities, and how we conform to society,
and what we buck. I really loved all of the
themes in this. The characters were fantastic. The
magic was beautiful. Really, such a great series.
If you guys have read either of these books, if
you have any thoughts, any comments, if you’re
planning to read this, anything at all, just
go ahead and leave me a comment down below.
