A review by nujibuji
The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

3.0

The writer has a knack for descriptive language, but this book needed a few more rounds of edits to get it into tip-top shape. Too much flowery writing can overwhelm the story after a while. It was really enjoyable to read the colorful prose in the beginning, but then it just got to be too much in every sentence. It took away from the main plot, which clearly got lost in the pretty language. There were so many cool elements to the story that were never fully developed, like the night bazaar, the tapestry with threads, and the horoscopes. Kamala (the demon horse) was amazing, and the story needed more focus on a few elements just like that. When she came into the story, there was actually more structure to the plot and the language settled down a bit. But overall too much was going on at all times in the book, and things kept happening without a whole lot of explanation. There were so many mentions of things that felt like they were important or would develop into something more, but they were just that - mentions. One minute Mayavati is in one place and then she's whisked off to another without the reader understanding how and when the setting changed. One minute Mayavati hates Amar and then the next scene she's so enamored without us truly understanding how and why the shift occurred.

It seems a South Asian narrator was selected to narrate the audiobook, but she did not pronounce certain words correctly, which was an injustice to the author’s purposeful use of those words (ie. Ghungroo). Other than the mispronunciations, the narrator did a great job. I loved her voice for Kamala.