The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
My Rating: ★★★★
Cursed with a horoscope that predicts death and devastation left in her wake, Maya is well loathed and feared throughout her father’s kingdom where birth horoscopes are taken seriously by most. Maya doesn’t mind though. It means that she’s mostly left to her own devices and has as much control that a princess could possibly have over her own life. At least, that’s what she thought until the day her father tasks her with a secret command: meet potential husbands and then kill herself to prevent war from ravishing the kingdom. However, her dad’s plan doesn’t pan out and she’s rescued by Amar and becomes the queen of Akaran. In Akaran, she finds freedom, love, power… and a lot of whispers and secrets.
I absolutely love this story. The writing is beautiful, the imagery is stunning, and the characters are interesting to follow. There are two sides to this world: the living and the dead, and that’s part of what makes it interesting. When the story starts, we follow Maya in the mortal world where magic is heard of but never seen. There are hints that Maya possesses at least magic, but even she doesn’t believe it herself. As the story continues, we discovered that she much more powerful than she could’ve ever imagined and that there’s a whole other world that accepts her unlike the mortal world she grew up in.
There’s a great cast of characters ranging from magical, evil, sad, and just outright mean. It was great to see all these characters and I love that even the mean or evil ones had a backstory that showed us how they came to be the people that Maya knows. They weren’t one dimensional even when we didn’t know their full stories. Each of the characters are vibrant in their own way.
The story started to lose me for a bit toward the end. Maya went from being too naive to this determined and almost all knowing. Thankfully, my favorite character, Kamala, entered the picture during this time so I still enjoyed it during this time. The ending did leave me unsatisfied after how wonderful the entire opening and first half of the novel was. The final chapters seemed rushed and I’m left feeling like the ending didn’t fully pan out the way it was probably meant to. It just feels rushed and it almost feels like something is missing. All in all, I really enjoyed it and I look forward to checking out the sequel.
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