# of Pages: 314
Time it took me to read: 2 days
# of pages a day to finish in a week: 45 pgs
Rating: 4 out of 5
Amrita, princess of Shalingar, has lived a charmed life. She lives in a beautiful country where nobody lives in poverty, the people live in peace, and men and women have equal rights to pursue what they want to in their lives. Amrita has a loving father, a nursemaid who has always been like a mother to her, and her childhood best friend, Arjun, who might in fact be more than just her friend. But when the powerful Emperor Sikander of Macedon becomes interested in Shalingar, Amrita is willing to do the unthinkable and become this horrible tyrant’s wife to save her kingdom.
But everything changes when Amrita meets Thala, a young oracle who is a “gift” for Amrita. When the tides quickly turn from political alliance to hostile takeover, Amrita and her new friend must escape the clutches of Sikander to go on a journey that neither of them wants with a destination that will surprise them both.
Okay, I just wanted to start out by saying that the flap of this book focused a lot of the relationship between Thala and Amrita, but also talked about finding new love, and I was super sure that these two were going to end up falling in love. Sorry, spoiler, that doesn’t happen, and I think the book would have earned five stars if they had. Sorry, I just think it would have been pretty cool to see a same sex couple in this fantasy story based on Eastern mythology. But I digress, and will talk about things that actually happened in this book.
First off, I loved how this book was fantasy, but really drew a lot from Eastern tradition and mythology, which I don’t know very much about, but I recognized that Sikander and Macedon were loosely based off of Alexander the Great, which was pretty interesting. I thought that the world that Khorana created was rich and vibrant with colorful descriptions of a lush palace and the contrast of harsh deserts and dark caves.
Another thing that I really enjoyed was how unpredictable this book was. I thought I had some ideas about how the story was going to end, but it really ended up being different than I thought, and perhaps that’s because I really can’t say I’ve read any other books quite like this one before.
Amrita is a great main character, she seemed pretty realistic to me. She grew up privileged, but still smart and capable. She is at the beginning skeptical of the world around her, but also very afraid of being alone and doing the wrong thing. She was a very easy heroine to like and to cheer for. Thala was also a wonderful character, an oracle who has immense power, but has been kept as a slave since she was a child and force-fed a drug to make her premonitions more potent. She is a believer in the magic and spirituality of the world, but she is harsher and fiercer than Amrita, who is much softer in comparison. Two vibrant, unique female main characters that face a number of challenges together, and are the true heroine’s of the story.
Now, I’m going to talk about why I didn’t give this book full marks. While, like I said earlier, I did really like this books unpredictability, I’m not sure I’m fully behind the story’s ending. It’s not a sad ending, but it’s not necessarily a happy one either, and I think that out of all the possible endings the author could have picked, this was the weirdest one, though part of me thinks it’s nice. I’m of two minds about it.
The other thing was that I think this book was pretty rushed story-wise. These two main characters go on a very intense journey that takes place over really only a few days, and I feel like the character development and the plot seemed a little hurried, and I’m not sure that I quite believed that these two characters could have such a transformation over such a short period of time. If the book had been longer, I think I would have believed the developement a little bit more. Though it was a nice, short weekend read, which was nice because I did not have time to read anything longer this week.
Overall, I liked the book and would recommend it for anyone who is a lover of fantasy and mythology who is looking for something a little bit different.
If you liked The Library of Fates, try: The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
Magyk by Angie Sage
And I Darken by Kiersten White
Troy by Adele Geras
Sarah's Shelf 