Review: The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

The Star-Touched Queen

Roshani Chokshi

(The Star-Touched Queen #1)

Publication Date: April 16, 2016

Hardcover, 576 pages, St. Martin’s Griffin

Genres: YA, Fantasy

Goodreads

Fate and fortune. Power and passion. What does it take to be the queen of a kingdom when you’re only seventeen?

Maya is cursed. With a horoscope that promises a marriage of death and destruction, she has earned only the scorn and fear of her father’s kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her whole world is torn apart when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. Soon Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Neither roles are what she expected: As Akaran’s queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar’s wife, she finds something else entirely: Compassion. Protection. Desire…

But Akaran has its own secrets—thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Soon, Maya suspects her life is in danger. Yet who, besides her husband, can she trust? With the fate of the human and Otherworldly realms hanging in the balance, Maya must unravel an ancient mystery that spans reincarnated lives to save those she loves the most…including herself.

My Review

The beginning of The Star-Touched Queen makes it seem like this will be a tale similar to The Wrath and the Dawn or Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand. But it very much isn’t. Honestly, this story has a Beauty and the Beast vibe to it, as well as the Hindu mythology aspects. There are also some Greek myth comparisons, if you’re into that kind of thing—though I don’t want to give too much away by explaining which myth.

Honestly, I was disappointed in this one. The story went in a weird direction around page 80. I thought about DNF-ing there, but I kept going. A fun twist managed to recapture my interest, only for the story to take another weird turn. The Star-Touched Queen basically flip-flops between being a grounded and sort-of-realistic-fantasy story, to being some sort of fever dream. There’s even a talking demon horse. (I really don’t like talking animals in books unless they’re done super well.) In my opinion, the good parts of the story were the Bharata scenes and the Akaran twist, while the bad was everything in between.

Unfortunately, none of the characters were interesting. The plot is what made Maya and Amar even remotely intriguing. They had almost no personality otherwise. At least Maya loves her little sister and has a bad horoscope; Amar just loves Maya. And that’s all we really know about him outside of his role. Around halfway through the book, I realized I simply didn’t care what happened to either of them. That’s rare for me. Even when I don’t like a book, I typically care about the characters a little bit.

I will say that Chokshi has an ability to write beautiful sentences. It was a very lyrical book. However, this writing style got annoying at times. It was almost too lyrical and metaphorical. To the point I wanted to shake the book and yell at it: “What does that even mean?!” Despite my frustrations, I did tab some lines. If you love romantic language, you might want to read this one for the quotes alone.

When I first finished this story, I thought I might pick up the sequel. Book two follows characters who actually seem interesting—they were all more grounded and realistic than Maya and Amar—but as time passes, I realize I’m just not invested in Chokshi’s world. It’s simply a story that wasn’t meant for me and my tastes.

*Note: I received a copy of this book as a gift. This in no way affected my opinion/review.