(It’s an amazingly rich and lived landscape, is what I’m saying.) Set in a fully realized magical world inspired by ancient India, its sprawling, complex story features half a dozen major POV characters and multiple distinct kingdoms with their own clearly defined cultural histories, political hierarchy, and religious practices. Suri’s The Jasmine Throne was hands-down one of the best fantasy releases to hit shelves in 2021, a doorstopper of a series opener that immediately set up her Burning Kingdoms trilogy as one to keep a close eye on in the fantasy genre space. Such is the case with Tasha Suri’s The Oleander Sword, a complex, immersive follow-up that’s packed with surprises, sacrifices, and characters that are easy to root for even when they are often difficult to like. This is why it’s especially satisfying when a sequel arrives that not only exceeds our expectations but blows them out of the water entirely, holding on to the things we loved about the original novel but adding compelling new pieces that make the story even richer and more compelling than it was before.

Someone coined the term “sophomore slump” for a reason, after all, and most of us who read a lot of fantasy can easily name more than one series whose middle installment was….let’s just say did not turn out to be everything we hoped it could be. To question whether there’s any chance that its sequel could ever live up to the heights of its predecessor, or if it’s doomed to always pale in comparison. Whenever you read a really good series opener, it’s fairly easy to start wondering if the quality of that first book was somehow a fluke.

The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri