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A review by moh
Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri
5.0
4.5 stars
Empire of Sand is the kind of fantasy that makes me feel like I'm living in a different world, full of characters I care deeply about. We really get into the main character's head as she discovers more about her powers and debates how to use them ethically when her options are painfully limited, all of which is totally my bookish catnip. There are a whole lot of marvelous, layered things going on around consent and power. The plot is a little slow to start, but the pay-off is excellent, and the world-building is stunning. I also appreciate that there are exactly zero cliffhangers, even though there is at least one more companion book in the works. (Yay! Many more of these, please.)
Soneela Nankani's narration of the audiobook is excellent. I especially liked the way she voiced Old Ma. Creepy voices in audiobooks usually make me giggle, but this was chillingly perfect. There are a lot of characters introduced early on, which tends to be hard enough for me to follow on audio that I switch to text, but I liked the narration so much I started over and made a cheat sheet of quick and dirty character notes.
Empire of Sand is the kind of fantasy that makes me feel like I'm living in a different world, full of characters I care deeply about. We really get into the main character's head as she discovers more about her powers and debates how to use them ethically when her options are painfully limited, all of which is totally my bookish catnip. There are a whole lot of marvelous, layered things going on around consent and power. The plot is a little slow to start, but the pay-off is excellent, and the world-building is stunning. I also appreciate that there are exactly zero cliffhangers, even though there is at least one more companion book in the works. (Yay! Many more of these, please.)
Soneela Nankani's narration of the audiobook is excellent. I especially liked the way she voiced Old Ma. Creepy voices in audiobooks usually make me giggle, but this was chillingly perfect. There are a lot of characters introduced early on, which tends to be hard enough for me to follow on audio that I switch to text, but I liked the narration so much I started over and made a cheat sheet of quick and dirty character notes.