Tasha Suri’s The Burning Kingdoms finale, The Lotus Empire came out on November 12th this year. Ending a story rich with lore, religion, politics, and love, it did not disappoint. With a strong five out of five rating from me, I enjoyed Suri’s trilogy to its fullest with this last book.
Having reread The Jasmine Throne earlier this year (originally released in 2021) and The Oleander Sword for the first time (originally released in 2022) before this trilogy finished, I was well-equipped to understand how the story picked up and continued. While I was obsessed with the first book on my first and second read, I found the second a little confusing and slow. Though it took me a hundred or so pages to get back into the storyline, I was ecstatic to see that the action picked up in The Lotus Empire. I found myself devouring the pages, as any great fantasy book calls me to do.
This review contains spoilers for The Burning Kingdom series as a whole. I try not to spoil any big points, but content from The Lotus Empire is discussed.
To start, I will say the prologue didn’t feel necessary. I liked getting the perspective of Divyanshi, but it didn’t give me any ah-ha moments later on like I thought it would (plus it was super short). It connected to the story as a whole, but I would’ve been fine jumping right into those first chapters following Priya, Malini, Rao, and Bhumika.
After the ending of the second book, it was no surprise that grief suffused the introductions back into our main characters. It was heavy, with the first three of them being sorrowful and broken. It was a great way for TLE to begin, preparing the reader for both upswings and downswings in the narrative. As for Bhumika, because of the amnesia trope she lives with for the majority of this book, her journey isn’t full of grief until the end.
The start itself was slow, even though it was good. I wondered if part of my slow reading was the constant POV switches. As genius as it is, it takes me longer to absorb. I have to slow down to remind myself where the current character is and what they’re doing. Yet, the slowness of action is something to marvel at too. There are quick switches, like Bhumika showing how to kill a yaksa or Priya running to Malini, but it’s nothing unplanned. Nothing feels out of place. The seeds are always planted, and I can still remember what kicks most plots off.
Plus, I could sing endless praises of Suri’s writing of characters. All of them feel distinct and varied. They’re real in their reactions, emotions, and motivations. From Malini’s fair but simple violence to Priya’s open, bleeding heart or even Varsha’s naivety, their personalities are easy to track. It makes the story so much more believable to me.
One thing she also writes excellently is the price of power. Malini always pays with something to be Empress and Priya pays with everything to be what the yaksa want (and then what they don’t). When Mani Ari revealed how she and Priya would become one being, I felt as much panic as Priya did. It made sense for this, and all the other actions and deaths, to build towards an almost bittersweet ending. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It was happy for most, at the very least the countries were settled. Yet, the time-skip to the epilogue made me ache for how much pain some of the characters were in for a long period.
Perhaps it was the greater good that won in the end, even as individual characters’ lives were changed forever. I struggle to call it good or bad for all of them simply because it was so complex. Did Malini and Priya end up happy? I think so, in the grand scheme. Bhumika certainly did. Rao and Sima, maybe in some ways. As much as found family is integral to this story, it’s interesting how they all end up separate.
The epilogue was the cherry on top of the story; showing what became of so many beloved characters made the hurt from the ending soothe. I was extremely pleased to hear about Rukh by the end too. He was my favorite of Priya’s found family, and it made me happy that Suri didn’t leave him–or others–a mystery. It also closed out Priya and Malini’s arc. It was both heart-wrenching to see how they all moved on, but beautiful in their continued lives.
At the end of the day, this is a story about different kinds of faith, what they and their worshippers do, and what happens when it’s good or bad. Every religion in the story has its downfalls and its highs. Suri’s creativity when it came to how the religions worked was amazing, not anything I’d ever read before. Faith can make people do miracles or cruel, twisted things. It wasn’t only religion that faith circled either; it was also about faith in your abilities, in your family, and the love of a partner. The strength of Malini and Priya’s relationship made my heart pound. In a crazy world, sometimes all you need is your person and family.
Tasha Suri’s novels can be ordered from the Amazon links in the first couple of paragraphs.
