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.

Review: The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

Magic and myth, life and death, fate and love—Roshani Chokshi enchants with a beautifully written narrative of one girl’s quest for freedom and true love. Inspired by Indian mythology, the story unravels in a vividly imagined world where stars dictate fate. Sixteen-year-old Mayavati (Maya) has been cursed by a horoscope that promises a marriage of Death and Destruction. Scorned and shunned, Maya has grown up without love, even without the comfort and support of the women in her father’s harem.

When her father, the Raja, forces her to marry to appease rising rebellions, her world is upended, especially after unforeseen events propel her into the arms of a mysterious man.

“When I looked at him, something stirred inside of me. It felt like recognition sifted through dreams; like the moment before waking—when sleep blurred the true world, when beasts with sharp teeth and beautiful, winged things flew along the edges of your mind.”

Maya becomes the wife of Amar and queen of Akaran—a land of which she’s never heard. Soon, she’s traveling through mythical places with a man whose unexpected tenderness disarms.

Once in Akaran, her home is both majestic and chillingly barren. Magic doors conceal more secrets, death and life tangle in threads, and she learns just how easily she can disrupt the fragile balance between realms.

“You and I are the ground and ceiling of our empire.”

As days and weeks pass, with rousing words and unfeigned affection, Maya falls for the enigmatic Amar. Despite the many secrets he harbors, the sentiments feel real and emotions intensify.

“Neither the secret whirring song of the stars nor the sonorous canticles of the earth knew the language that sprang up in the space between us. It was a dialect of heartbeats, strung together with the lilt of long suffering and the incandescent hope of an infinite future.”

But then she discovers he knows more about her past than he let on. Worse yet, the more she digs, the more she realizes just how tangled his secrets are, how far they go.

The love she’d felt splinters when truths about Amar are finally revealed… but even then, truths and lies blur together and she must figure out what really happened—secrets that hide in her previous lives. Before too long, Maya finds herself desperately fighting to save those she loves the most.

Chokshi’s lyrical style warmly envelops the reader, drawing them into a deeply mythical world where anything can happen. I loved her writing, loved the secrets and characters… in fact, I would have loved to see even deeper character explorations. The world just teemed with possibility. The Star-Touched Queen is an impressive, spellbinding debut which is sure to set the fantasy readership abuzz.