Thursday, July 18, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker




Upon a Burning Throne is the second book I've read this year to be an SF/F adaptation of an old Indian/Sanskrit epic, The Mahbharata.  That first book was Sangu Mandanna's SF adaptation, A Spark of White Fire (Review Here), which I enjoyed a great deal, so I was interesting to see how a more fantasy-based adaptation would work.  So Upon a Burning Throne, which is exactly that: an epic fantasy adaptation of the epic, was something I have had on reserve for a while.

And, wow is it something.  I haven't read The Mahbharata, but wikipedia-ing suggests that it is a long and sprawling epic covering multiple generations and the machinations of many aspects of the divine.  And whereas A Spark of White Fire seems to distill a small part of that epic into a more concise beginning of a trilogy, Upon A Burning Throne does the opposite: it uses its background material to form the beginning of its own sprawling epic.  Is the result.....good?  Harder to say: it's certainly always interesting, but you shouldn't go into it expecting an ending that is conclusive in any way whatsoever.

More after the Jump.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
The Burnt Empire is the most powerful Empire in the world, since its founding by its forefather Kr'ush, and its Krushan dynasty has held power, often through the mixing of its blood with that of the gods.  Now, the Burning Throne remains empty, and the Empire is ruled by the Dowager Empress Jilana, with her stepson and demigod Vrath acting as regent....until two grandsons of the former Emperor are born.  But both are born with deformities: Adri is born blind, and Shvate is born as an Albino, giving rise to question whether either can rule.  Yet when the two pass the Test of Fire, which consumes anyone unworthy to the throne, it is declared that they shall grow up to rule the Empire jointly.

But not everyone is satisfied with this, and another suitor submits his daughter to the Test of Fire....and she passes.  But when the girl's father is revealed to be the demonlord Jarsun, an exiled member of the Krushan family, Jilana and Vrath reject her claim.  But Jarsun is very powerful, maybe even as powerful as a demigod like Vrath himself, and vows not to accept this rejection...and is only stopped by his mortal wife's pleas just then and there.

But the results of these actions will be wide in scope, and will drag both the mortals and gods into battle for the fate of the Burnt Empire.  And as mortal schemers scheme, as powerful seers give blessings and curses, and as beings divine in part or whole observe and act, the world will never be the same again.....
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Upon a Burning Throne is split into several parts, most of which are divided into segments that follow a character from a third person perspective - the exception being The Prologue, which doesn't follow a particular character.  Occasionally we will switch perspectives to those of an animal observing from afar without understanding, but for the most part we deal with human characters.  Still, the book isn't afraid to switch perspectives to third parties who we haven't seen before and may never see again just to ensure we get a proper picture of what's going on.  And the book is unafraid to jump decent periods of time between parts, or even at one point to switch the story to following a character in a completely different segment of the world for an entire part, before returning in the following phase of the book.

The result is a book that definitely feels like an adaptation of what seems like from wikipedia to be a really sprawling epic, and Banker makes this work generally pretty well.  Our characters are often fascinating in their inner depths and how they've grown over time, with each reacting to things in often very different ways, and very few of them seem to be the stereotypes you might expect: for example our blind and albino potential rulers do not turn out as the typical tropes would have you, and this is true for characters beyond that as well.  I'm not going to go into particular characters too deeply because there are just so damn many here, but they're generally all pretty darn effective.  If I had to pick a highlight, it would be the princess Karni, who gets the aforementioned Part out of the country all to herself and develops in a very different way than you might expect.

The world is also incredibly well done, with the roles of the gods, demigods, seers, mortals and sorcerers being all both established and mysterious at the same time, leading to great suspense over what could happen next.  The conflicts that the world is consumed by never repeat themselves, with magic taking form in many many different, occasionally horrifying, ways, and how these affect both ordinary people and the higher-class and divine peoples we follow is often fascinating.  It's a hell of a different setting than you may be used to, but it works incredibly well and allows for a plot that goes in some very very surprising and different directions as events move forward.  There are even some moments which are kind of hilarious in terms of how they turn out - one sequence of human-god interactions in particular - and yet the book plays them completely straight and is able to make them work.

Still, this structure of plot as a sprawling epic shares some of the weaknesses of the original form I suspect.  More than a few characters other than our major ones can get lost for pages - often hundreds of pages - at a time, and there are some characters who seem to be important and never come back again - and it's not clear if they'll pop up in the sequel or if they just weren't as important as the narrative suggested at first.  There is no form whatsoever of an ending of this book - it stops on a major cliffhanger, with characters being moved in new directions, but there isn't really an arc for any of those characters that gets any form of completion.  This is not to say that the book is a mess - I've seen plenty of messes in books I've read - but it's trying to do so damn much that it can't really give a satisfying resolution to anything in particular.

Yet there's so much interesting here that I will be back for book 2, frustrating lack of ending aside, to see how things play out for sure.  I favor books that take risks, that try to do things different and keep things interesting, and Upon a Burning Throne is certainly that.  Worth a try for others, I think.


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