Review The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Finally! The epic fantasy book I have been searching all year for. I love fantasy and there is nothing I would rather read than some sapphic fantasy. While I have read some okay and even some good fantasy books this year, there has not been anything I thought was great… well that is until now. I had high expectations for this book and it was exactly the type of fantasy that I want to read. I hope it comes out in audio soon as I would love to go on this adventure again.

I do have to mention that it takes a little bit to get into this book. There are a lot of names and places and the book starts a little slow. This is very common for epic fantasy books and by the 15% mark, I was completely hooked anyway. This is a long book, almost three times as long as say an average romance book, but I easily finished it in two nights. I was so immersed in the story that once it had its hooks in me, the pages just flew by.

Suri writes so well and she took her time to really build up the characters, and then really launched the story. The first half is very character-driven, where the second half is much more about the plot. This just clicked so well for the type of reader I am and is a big reason why this was such a winner for me. This book has multiple POV’s, although there are two obvious mains, but it was a pleasant surprise about how much I enjoyed all the POV’s. I’m not normally a fan of more than two POV’s but they all worked here for me. Even if I didn’t like a character, I wanted to know what was going on with them. All the characters were really well written and they easily stuck with me. I’m not one to always remember names but in this book I remembered this whole large cast quickly.

Of course, the heart of the book is really about the two main, morally grey, sapphic ladies. I was so happy with these two mains. I hate when characters in fantasy are passive and things just happened to them. Not these ladies who are willing to do, what they think is right, no matter what it takes. I enjoyed both characters so much that I was extra happy when they started to catch feels. There is not a lot of romance in this book, and what is there is a very slow burn, but it completely worked for me. At one point, I just knew that they were truly meant to be together. In life or death, we will have to see, but I loved their connection.

I have so much else I would love to talk about but I don’t want to accidentally spoil anything for new readers. This is a book I absolutely recommend. If you are a fantasy fan and a fan of strong, kickass women, get this book. This is adult fantasy at its best and I could not be happier. This is the first book in the series, but the book ends on a good stopping point. It feels like the first part is complete and doesn’t end on a crappy cliffhanger feeling. I still cannot wait to see what happens to the characters next and I hope Suri writes fast.

An ARC was given to me for a review.