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Fate, Love, and Demon Horses

Author: Roshani Chokshi

Maya’s horoscope has kept her sequestered. She is hated in the harem. Outcast by the other women. After all, her doomed future could spill over onto them, onto their children. She is destined to bring death and destruction, and many think that the kingdom would be better without her presence. Her mother is already dead. Who else is next?

The weird thing about prophecy, however, is the twists and turns you take to arrive at a final destiny. On the eve of the destruction of her empire, as Maya prepares to end her own life (as ordered by her father for the good of the realm), a suitor comes to her. She marries him and is whisked away to his magical kingdom of Akaran. It seems that the stars lied, or is there something more behind her new husband’s reticence? He claims that the time for revelation has not yet come, that the moon stops his tongue, that she must be patient. But in the beautiful, silent halls of his home, she hears whispers, voices calling out to her. In the tapestry of fate that he keeps and works, the threads reject her, and Maya herself rejects this rule over fate, this opportunity to fulfill the foretelling and bring death through her own decisions. As the whispers behind locked doors continue and Amar, Maya’s new husband, patiently waits for her love while hiding all his secrets, she starts to scout out the terrifying answers herself. Soon, she finds out exactly what her fate means . . . or she thinks she does . . . and she makes a drastic decision that will change everything: her life, the nature of the otherworldly realm she finds herself in, and the reality of her home kingdom.

I discovered Roshani Chokshi through The Last Tales of the Flower Bride and immediately fell in love with her poetic prose, the trippy sequence of surreal days and nights, the blending of the modern with the ancient nature of fate and folklore. I had to read more, and so I came to The Star-Touched Queen, Chokshi’s first work. The story here is a little less finely woven, but the sheer talent and lyricism is already here as we watch the author start the first book in her magical writing journey.

Image by Ian Lindsay from Pixabay

The novel succeeds with the finesse of Chokshi’s writing. It’s beautiful and harkens us away to lands where gardens are made of glass, stars shine and can be plucked and woven into the living threads of life, and emaciated demon horses eat the flesh of the dead. It’s a world that is both deadly and beautiful, and the language captures the magic of what is seen and the terror of what is shielded. It makes us believe in this world, with its lonely princess  gazing into the reincarnation pools.

Maya herself is an empathetic, albeit naïve character. Her decisions do not always make sense or follow the trails of thought. She intends to thwart her father’s desire to marry her, but easily gives into his edict for suicide. She instantly marries her rescuer yet holds off her physical affection and doubts him. She falls for the sinister whispers in the palace yet makes a frantic decision before having a simple conversation. We forgive these actions because the story is good, because we’re invested, and because the atmosphere, while imperfectly rendered in these sharp transitions, is still magical. Yet . . . the fluidity and dynamism of creating flawed characters that will showcase itself in Chokshi’s later writing is in its infancy here. Imperfect, but still a lulling siren song.

The novel has three portions really. The first is Maya’s childhood and her sudden rescue. The second is the slowest portion of the tale as she wanders through Amar’s surprisingly empty mansion and hears voices behind doors no one else can see. The plot drags a bit here, but then, we get the third portion: Maya’s literal fall from grace and her attempt to undo the evil of her own decision. This is where Kamala, the flesh-eating horse demon, comes into the story, and where everything gets stronger. Maya still gets easily distracted from her mission and the timeline is a bit . . . well . . . sloppy, but we have emotion and a bit of cleverness emerging. Our main character is growing up (tears) and risking getting eaten by a demon horse (which is oddly amusing).

The Star-Touched Queen is a diamond in the rough. There are errors, but none of them are fatal, and we’re willing to overlook the moments where the story starts and stops, where the logic gets shaky, where the author doubles back, because the quality of storytelling is still there, the web that is woven entraps us and makes us need to know what happens next. This is the first work of a writer who will later refine her craft, yet it still tells a good story and gets our imaginations going. Extra credit for Priya Ayyar, the audio book narrator, who effortlessly transitioned voices and brought Kamala, my favorite character, to sinister, sarcastic life. I’ll be continuing to read more of Chokshi’s older work and enjoying the refinement of her newer offerings.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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