This book had a lot going for me from the get go: epic fantasy, inspired by Indian mythology and cultures, sapphic romance, nature-inspired magical systems. I knew it would likely be 5 stars for me before I even began, but that did not take away from the shock and joy I experienced reading this book! (Also the hunger, my god. I'm going to be eating Indian food for the foreseeable future, at least until I finish this trilogy because my word... among the death and carnage and horror I was ravenous for the food!)

Suri has created one of the best fantasy worlds I've read about in a hot minute. I get a mix of The Ruins, Black Panther, the epic poems of India, and A Song of Ice and Fire vibes all mixed into a brilliantly unique fantasy world. The way Suri ties together body horror into beautifully trippy & visceral atmospheres was a feat I hadn't expected and was unsure about, but it became something I craved the more I read it.

This book is just on another level. The world-building beautiful and otherworldly. The relationships divine. The prose left me breathless. I cannot give it enough praise and I cannot wait to continue this series and see what Suri unveils next.

Favorite quotes (there are so many good ones):
•"As if a choice, carefully bred into your nature by grief and training and hardship, was any choice at all."
•"A child should not be a chain, used to yoke a woman like cattle to a role, a purpose, a life she would not have chosen for herself. And yet she felt then, with an aching resentment, how [he] would use their child to reduce and erase her. She hated him for that, for stealing the quiet and strange intimacy of her and her own flesh and blood and making it a weapon."
•"...there is a subtle pain the conquered feel. Our old language is nearly lost. Our old ways. Even when we try to explain a vision of ourselves to one another—in our poetry, our song, our theater masks—we do so in opposition to you, or by looking to the past. As if we have no future. Parijatdvipa has reshaped us. It is not a conversation, but a rewriting."
•"This was what she had needed. Not forgiveness, not a balm for this strange writhing fury inside her, but the promise of someone to care for—to love—that she could not harm. Even if she had to. Even if she tried."
•"The moment I saw you, I felt a tug. You are the feeling of falling, the tidal waters, the way a living thing will always turn, seeking light. It isn’t that I think you are good or kind, or even that I love you. It is only that, the moment I saw you, I knew I would seek you out. Just as I sought the deathless waters. Just as I sought my brother. Just as I seek all things—without thought, with nothing but want."
•"She thought of heart’s blood, of love and fury and the sweet place in between, where thoughts of [her] dwelled. And the bloom—the sapling—that was her own magic grew and grew, until she knew she was not exactly [herself] anymore. Perhaps she never had been."