The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: April 26th, 2016
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SUMMARY:
THE STAR-TOUCHED QUEEN (St. Martin’s Griffin; April 26, 2016) is a lush and vivid standalone debut young adult
fantasy that seamlessly weaves the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone with Indian folklore. Featuring a smart,
independent anti-princess who must take her place as queen and a forbidden romance that defies the odds, debut author Roshani Chokshi pairs beautiful writing with a thrilling pace and compulsive plot, using her own Filipino and
Indian heritage to create a culturally diverse and vividly imagined world.
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.
From an incredibly fresh voice, Roshani Chokski’s THE STAR-TOUCHED QUEEN is a beautifully written standalone novel
that will enchant young adult and fantasy readers until the last page.
EXCERPT:
•»2«•
LESSONS IN SILENCE
The archives were cut like honeycombs and golden light
clung to them, dousing every tome, painting, treatise and
poem the soft gold of ghee freshly skimmed from boiling
butter. I was only allowed to visit once a week—to meet with my
weekly tutor before I inevitably scared him away. Every time I left
the archival room, my arms brimmed with parchment paper. I
loved the feeling of discovery, of not knowing how much I wanted
something until I had discovered its absence.
The week before, I had lost myself in the folktales of Bharata.
Stories of elephants who spun clouds, shaking tremors loose from
ancient trunks gnarled with the rime of lost cyclones, whirlwinds
and thunderstorms. Myths of frank-eyed naga women twisting ser-
pentine, flashing smiles full of uncut gemstones. Legends of a
world beneath, above, beside the one I knew—where trees bore edible gems and no one would think twice about a girl with dark
skin and a darker horoscope. I wanted it to be real so badly that
sometimes I thought I could see the Otherworld. Sometimes, if I
closed my eyes and pressed my toes into the ground, I could al-
most sense them sinking into the loam of some other land, a
dream demesne where the sky cleaved in two and the earth was
sutured with a magic that could heal hearts, mend bones, change
lives.
It was a dream I didn’t want to part with, but I had to settle for
what magic I could create on my own. I could read more. Learn
more. Make new dreams. But the best part wasn’t hoarding those
wishes to myself. It was sharing everything I learned with Gauri,
my half-sister. She was the only one I couldn’t scare away . . . the
only one I didn’t want to.
Thinking of Gauri always made me smile. But as soon as I
caught sight of my tutor of the week, the smile disappeared. He
stood between two pillars of the archive section marking the king-
dom’s history. Beyond the sheer number of things to read in the
archive room, what I loved most was its ceiling. It was empty, wide
enough to crawl through and conveniently linked to my father’s in-
ner sanctum.
The tutor, as luck would have it, stood directly below my hiding
spot.
At least Father’s announcement hadn’t started. The courtiers
still murmured and the footfall of tardiness fell on my ears like
music. But if I was ever going to get to hear that meeting, I had to
get rid of the tutor first.
“Punctuality is a prize among women,” said the tutor.
I bit back a cringe. His voice was sticky. The words drawn out
like they would morph into a noose and slip around you in the dark.
I stepped back, only to see his eyes sharpen into a glare.
He was heavyset and tall. Soft-rounded jowls faded into a non-
chin and thick neck. Greasy black eyes dragged across my body.
In the past, my tutors had all been the same—a little doughy, a
little nervous. Always superstitious. This new tutor held my gaze
evenly. That was unexpected. None of my other tutors had ever
met my eye. Sometimes the tutors sidled against the dark of the
archival chambers, hands trembling as they pushed a set of notes
toward me. History lessons, they said. Why did they always start
with history? Show me a dream unrealized. Don’t show me un-
changeable paths.
The tutor cleared his throat. “I have no intention to teach you
history or letters or speech. I intend to teach you silence. Stillness.”
This time I didn’t even try to hide my scowl. I did not like this
replacement. Tutors generally left me alone. I never had to raise
my voice. I never had to scowl. I didn’t even need words. What
scared them most was much simpler and sweeter than that—a
smile. The moment I smiled—not a real one, of course, but a slow,
crocodile reveal of teeth and a practiced manic gleam—the tutor
would make an excuse, edge along the wall and flee out of the ar-
chive rooms.
Who wanted to be smiled at by the girl that trailed shadows like pets, conjured snakes and waited for Death, her bridegroom,
to steal her from these walls? Never mind that none of it was true.
Never mind that the closest I had come to real magic was making
off with an entire tray of desserts without anyone noticing. The shadow of me always loomed larger than the person who cast it.
And sometimes that had its benefits.
This tutor, however, was not as easily cowed. I strained my
ears, listening for the footfall of more courtiers, but it was silent.
The meeting would start any minute now and here I was, stuck
with some fool who wanted to teach me the virtue of silence.
I grinned at him...
. . . and he grinned back.
“It is unseemly to smile at strangers, Princess.”
He took a step closer to me. Shadows glommed around him,
choking off the honey light of the room. He smelled wrong. Like
he had borrowed the scent of another person. Sweat slicked his
skin and when he walked closer, red shimmered in his eyes—like
coal smoldering in each socket.
“Let me teach you, lovely thing,” he said, taking another step
closer. “Humans always get it wrong, don’t they? They think a bowl
of rice at the front door is strong enough to keep a demon away.
Wrong. What you know is a false promise of strength. Let me show
you weakness.”
The room had never felt this empty, like I was trapped between
the space of an echo and a scream. I couldn’t hear anything. Not
the parrots scuttling on their branches or the court notary dron-
ing his list of the afternoon’s agenda. Silence was a silhouette, some-
thing I could trace.
The tutor’s voice transcended sound, muddying my thoughts.
“Let me teach you the ways of demons and men.”
My knees buckled. His voice echoed with all the desperation
of someone who had not slaked his thirst in eons and had just spied a goblet of water sweating beads of condensation, thick as
planets. His voice lulled me, coated me. I wanted to move, but
found myself rooted to the spot. I glanced up, fighting the drowsi-
ness, and saw his shadow smeared on the wall—horned, furred
belly skating over the floor, shifting into man and beast and back.
Devil. Raksha.
Somewhere in my mind, I knew he wasn’t real. He couldn’t be.
This was the court of Bharata, a city like a bone spur—tacked on
like an afterthought. Its demons were different: harem wives with
jewels in their hair and hate in their heart, courtiers with mouths
full of lies, a father who knew me only as a colored stone around
his neck. Those were the monsters I knew. My world didn’t have
room for more.
The drowsiness slipped off me. When I shook myself free of
it, my smile was bitter smoke, my hackles raised until I thought
my skin had given way to glass. Now, he seemed smaller. Or maybe
I had grown bigger. My surroundings slid away, and all that was
left was fire licking at the earth, the edge of a winter eclipse, stars
whirling in a forest pool and the pulsing beat of something an-
cient running through my veins.
“I don’t care for the ways of men and demons,” I hissed. “Your
lessons are lost on me.”
Whatever darkness my mind had imagined melted. Parrots
singing. Fountains gurgling. The distant voice of a courtier dron-
ing about wars. Sound pushed up between those lost seconds,
blossoming into fierce murmurs, hushed tones. What had I
imagined? I searched for the tutor’s shadow splayed against the
wall. I waited to see something slinking along the ground, darkness stretched long and thin over tomes and cracked tiles, but there
was nothing.
“You,” he hissed in an exhale that ended in a whimper. He
backed into a corner. “It’s you. I thought . . .” He gulped down
the rest of his words. He looked lost.
I blinked at him, shaking off the final remnants of that drows-
iness. I felt groggy, but not with sleep. A moment ago, I thought I
had seen horns limned in shadow. I thought something had coursed
through me in defense—a low note of music, the bass of a thun-
derclap, a pleat of light glinting through a bruised storm cloud. But
that couldn’t be right. The person before me was just . . . a person.
And if I had heard him say something else, saw him morph into
something else, it was all distant and the fingers of my memory
could do nothing but rummage through images, hold them to the
light and wonder if I hadn’t slipped into a waking nightmare.
The tutor trembled. Gone was the blocky figure choking out
the light and lecturing me on silence. Or had he said something
else in those lost moments? Something about weakness and de-
mons. I couldn’t remember. I clutched a table, my knuckles white.
“I must go,” he said, his face pale, like blood had drained from
him. “I didn’t know. Truly. I didn’t. I thought you were someone
else.”
I stared at him. What did he mean? How could he not know
who I was? Someone must have told him that I was the princess
he would be tutoring this afternoon. But I was wasting time. He
was just another tutor scared by a reputation pronounced by far-
away lights in the sky. Curse the stars.
PRAISE:
Listed as one of 2016’s Most Anticipated Novels by:
Barnes & Noble Teen Blog We Need Diverse Books Paste Magazine Goodreads Buzzfeed Popsugar BookRiot Parade “A setting drawn from ancient India, romance with feminist sensibilities, and a unique magic system reminiscent of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone make this a novel sure to appeal to fans of Renée Ahdieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn. A stunning debut filled with lush writing, smart characters, and a mysterious plot that provides as many twists as it does swoons.” |
—School Library Journal, STARRED Review
“Chokshi's rich, descriptive writing weaves a lush web...a swoony romance, betrayal, and a journey to power and self-affirmation, with a slightly wicked, slightly funny animal sidekick in the best tradition (think Garth Nix's Mogget as a crimson-eyed horse), work together to create a spell that many readers will willingly succumb to. Richly imagined, deeply mythic, filled with lovely language with violet overtones: this is an author to watch.” —Kirkus Reviews “This gorgeous debut promises big things to come from Chokshi, who at barely 25 has decades ahead to dazzle us.” — Cosmopolitan.com on “8 Life-Changing Novels by Twentysomething Women” “Chokshi’s first novel is filled to the brim with gorgeous, scintillating writing that easily draws readers into its new take on traditional tales. A unique fantasy that is epic myth and beautiful fairy tale combined.” —Booklist “A heady blend of mythology and metaphor, THE STAR-TOUCHED QUEEN is sure to appeal to fans of Laini Taylor and Leigh Bardugo. Maya is a great character, full of promise and patience, even as the odds are stacked against her.” —Romantic Times Book Reviews “Magic is woven into every word of The Star-Touched Queen. Vibrantly imaginative and gracefully written, I was spellbound from the first line. A dazzling, sensuous feast of world-building, romance, and mythology.” —Sarah J. Maas, New York Times bestselling author of The Throne of Glass series “A richly detailed world and a story filled with twists and turns, The Star-Touched Queen had me breathless right up until the final, stunning conclusion. It is a bewitching tale with a setting so vivid and unique, I wished I could step right through the pages.” —Amy Ewing, New York Times bestselling author of The Jewel |
“Gorgeously poetic writing gives vibrant, sensuous life to the worlds of The Star-Touched Queen. Chokshi never shies away from
forcing her characters to make hard choices, and I was captivated by Princess Maya’s cleverness and determination as she struggles
against fate and betrayal.”
—Kate Elliot, New York Times bestselling author of the Court of Five series “A luscious, bloodthirsty fairy tale with all the romance, magic, and gorgeous mythology I could ask for, plus the greatest flesh- eating, talking demon horse I never knew I wanted.” —Tessa Gratton, author of The United States of Asgard series “The Star-Touched Queen enthralls with mystery and romance. Chokshi's storytelling glimmers like magic on every page—a novel meant to be savored.” —Cindy Pon, author of Serpentine and Silver Phoenix |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
ROSHANI CHOKSHI comes from a small town in Georgia where she collected a Southern
accent, but does not use it unless under duress. She grew up in a blue house with a perpetually
napping bear-dog. At Emory University, she dabbled with journalism, attended some classes in
pajamas, forgot to buy winter boots and majored in 14th century British literature. She spent a
year after graduation working and traveling and writing. After that, she started law school at
the University of Georgia where she's learning a new kind of storytelling. More information on
the author can be found at www.roshanichokshi.com.
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