The Jasmine Throne

The Jasmine Throne is the first volume of the Burning Kingdoms trilogy by the British author Tasha Suri, published by Orbit in 2021. The world it builds draws on ancient India, and the novel took the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It is the first of three books told from the points of view of the two women it centres on, so the story continues after this volume.

Ahiranya is one of several vassal states under the Parijatdvipan Empire, and its rulers have suppressed the region's language, religion and culture. That suppression has produced instability and rebellion, and a new disease called the rot, which forces plants to sprout out of people's bodies, is adding to the pressure. The empire finds the sickness convenient. The deathless waters are the power that lies inside the Ahiranyi temple known as the Hirana, where a second kind of power was once earned at a price that killed most of the children who tried.

Priya is one of the few people to have survived that trial, having been raised in the temple as a child. Malini, the emperor's sister, refuses a ritual that was meant to kill her and is imprisoned in the Hirana for it, and Priya is sent to serve her. The two of them spend the book inside a building that holds most of the region's history, and each of them is using the other for reasons connected to their own families.

Suri tells the story from several sides at once, so the rebellion runs through both the palace and the temple rather than being fought in one place. The novel establishes Ahiranya, the Hirana, the imperial court and the two women at the centre of it, and the second volume continues the same conflict with the same cast of rulers, rebels and mages.