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Obsidian Throne #2
The Witch Without Memory: An Epic Fantasy of Betrayal, Memory, and the Fight for an Empire, Inspired by Indian Mythology
Not yet published
Expected 10 Mar 26The second epic installment of the Obsidian Throne trilogy, an epic fantasy of betrayal, memory, and the fight for an empire, in which a prince and a witch must find a way to burn the world to the ground in order to raise it up out of the ashes.
An empress with vengeance in her heart
Prince Ashoka’s sister, Aarya, has named herself empress and is determined to reverse her brother’s mercy for the mayakari.
A witch lost in dreams
Shakti is being held by shadowy figures, drugged and forced to commit an unspeakable crime. When she wakes, she finds herself prisoner, but gaps in her memory around the curse she has cast trap her more thoroughly than any cage.
The prince trying to change the world
Ashoka must find allies and quickly if he is to usher in a new dawn for the mayakari, but the tougher the decision he makes, the farther he gets from his true self. He must determine what he is willing to lose in pursuit of his vision of the future.
The first blow has been dealt by Ashoka and Shakti, but the empire not only remains, it appears stronger—and more brutal—than ever. Both must find ways to fight back before nature is deprived of its spirits and guardians, and the reign of the new empress spreads its destruction and oppression to lands beyond.
An empress with vengeance in her heart
Prince Ashoka’s sister, Aarya, has named herself empress and is determined to reverse her brother’s mercy for the mayakari.
A witch lost in dreams
Shakti is being held by shadowy figures, drugged and forced to commit an unspeakable crime. When she wakes, she finds herself prisoner, but gaps in her memory around the curse she has cast trap her more thoroughly than any cage.
The prince trying to change the world
Ashoka must find allies and quickly if he is to usher in a new dawn for the mayakari, but the tougher the decision he makes, the farther he gets from his true self. He must determine what he is willing to lose in pursuit of his vision of the future.
The first blow has been dealt by Ashoka and Shakti, but the empire not only remains, it appears stronger—and more brutal—than ever. Both must find ways to fight back before nature is deprived of its spirits and guardians, and the reign of the new empress spreads its destruction and oppression to lands beyond.
Kindle Edition
Expected publication March 10, 2026
6 people are currently reading
281 people want to read
About the author
Maithree Wijesekara
4 books147 followersMaithree Wijesekara is an Australian-Sri Lankan writer based in Melbourne. Graduating with a Master’s degree in Dentistry in 2021, she splits her time between telling people to please brush their teeth, and writing stories inspired by the fantastical and the real world. When she isn’t writing, you can find her attempting to finish her never-ending TBR pile and ingesting unhealthy amounts of coffee. If given the chance, she will slip in a mention of her dearly departed Labrador during conversation.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 16, 2025
The first few chapters of The Witch Without Memory did, in all honesty, give me some hope that this book would be better. It wasn't. I wasn’t a fan of the first book: the writing style was serviceable but flat and verging on awkward, the plot was dragged along by coincidences rather than ever feeling like it was driving towards an interesting idea, the characters felt very surface-level, and the themes of morality, pacifism, and oppression never came together into an interesting exploration nor a meaningful portrayal. The first few chapters of this book did seem like it was attempting to address some of these ideas: the overuse of awkward metaphors was dialed back, some odd character traits such as Ashoka’s commitment to pacifism despite an upbring steeped in violence seemed like they were getting some explanation, and there was ample room to return to the themes brought up in the first installment. And then…the book just…fell apart. Just like the first one. Unfortunately, the more this book went on, the more it felt as though absolutely nothing mattered, that no consequences or developments couldn’t be immediately unwritten, and both the characters and the themes were underdeveloped and unexplored.
This book follows directly from the first and is split once again between two major narratives of Shakti and Ashoka. Shakti is a prisoner of Aarya, the acting empress, who hates her both on principle for being a mayakari and personally for trying to use the memory of her father to manipulate her. Her narrative centers her conflict as she grapples with something terrible, she did under extreme duress, and trying to unbury Mauryan secrets surrounding the Great Spirit of the holy mountain. Ashoka is trying to maintain his ban on mayakari burnings in Taksila while also navigating the political conflict with his sister, who would like to see him unseated. At the same time, his guard and closest friend Rahil has drawn away from him since he killed in the first book, and he is struggling to rectify the situation.
All in all, my biggest overarching issue with this book is that the exploration of its themes feels toothless, and it doesn’t have a strong or coherent enough plot or characters to make the story stand on its own without its themes. For example, a main plot point early in Ashoka’s story is that he would like to witness the testing of a new kind of weapon which will harm in unexpected ways. For whatever reason, everyone involves dismisses testing this on an animal –even though they just ate a dinner full of meat—and instead they decide to test it on a criminal facing capital punishment. After some, quite frankly, dumb mind game, the weapon is used to kill the prisoner, and everyone decides that this was a good and worthwhile way to test this weapon. For a book all about morality and violence, it was utterly shocking to me that there was no reflection on the use of lethal force on someone who was already imprisoned and presented no danger to anyone else, to the idea of getting testimony from the accused to ensure a fair outcome, or to the idea a person in protective custody is being experimented upon with a weapon capable of causing severe and unnecessary suffering. All of this… for weapons which are inherently unpredictable, meaning that there’s no reason for this to have been done at all because the next weapon will work entirely differently. This is just one example, but it is, quite frankly, an honest representation of the depth that this book achieves. I believe from the synopsis that a main theme of the book is Ashoka is drifting away from his ideals and risking himself in the process, but in the book, I never felt as though there was weight behind his decisions, or an internal struggle he was facing. When Rahil rightfully is perturbed by his actions, the book makes the point that actually Rahil is in the wrong for being upset and more or less just needs to get over it.
Like I said, this would all be more tolerable if the storyline of the book was compelling for its own sake, but it just isn’t. The book frequently relies on what might be called ‘plot-driven decision-making,’ where characters act less like people and more like narrative tools. I am going to be vague here because I don’t want to spoil major pieces of this book, but one realization that a main character has basically yeets any and all consequences they originally thought they were facing for their choices because it turns out those consequences were a lie and they can do whatever they want actually. The enemies of the book continue to be nothing more than cartoon cutouts of villains who are simultaneously 30 steps ahead of our heroes (when the plot wants the characters to fail) or dense as bricks (when the plot wants to characters to succeed—I truly hate to be so blasé about this but their foes truly lack any and all depth and whether the heroes succeed or fail is equally random; ergo, the plot never achieves any weight). Justifications for actions are no more than convenient: for example, Aarya’s obsessed with mining a mountainbecause the plot needs the involve the Great Sprit on that mountain because there’s some rock there that blows up and she wants it for weapons I guess, but her obsession is justified for a short time and then just accepted. Her willingness to sacrifice her own people for a resource with, at best, potential applications and that no one knows how to use is never explained in a way that makes me feel like I understand why this is so important to her. Really, that’s the main throughline I feel about the plot: it’s a series of things happening and choices made such that the characters get to the next scene, not because there’s a strong and driving through-line or meaningful character choices that get us there.
Moreover, the writing style just doesn’t work for me. Sometimes, there are two sentences in a row where the words as written on the page don’t necessarily disagree, but their implications do (for example, one sentence says that for a long moment a character couldn’t do something, which implies that after a long horrible moment there character could do that thing. The next second said that doing that thing continued to elide them. Were they able to do the thing or not? I legitimately don’t know). Some actions of the characters are the same, disagreeing with an action they just took or something they just said. Dialog is often awkward. The actions of characters are awkward—there are two characters repeatedly described as having conversations while way up in each other personal space in a way that is ridiculous, like having a decently long conversations while so close that their noses were brushing, which reads less as two characters being emotionally close and more as unnatural and uncomfortable. A lot of story is told in these weird aside italics—often they are the thoughts of a mentor or important character in a character’s head, and I’m assuming they’re meant to be a character’s consciousness or better judgement, but they read more like a quick way for a character to change their mind or come to a major conclusion without exploring why. Also, characters are able to communicate an absolute ton of information through looks—a lot of plot is told through some version of a character reading another’s expression as clearly and complexly as if they were actually talking, but not in a ‘oh these characters are such good friends’ way, more in a ‘this character is basically reading minds so we can tell rather than show another person’s thoughts and feelings’. Altogether, these result in the kind of book that never let me get lost in the story because I feel alienated by the prose.
On top of all of my other critiques, there comes the things I struggle with because they’re immersion-breaking: the characters frequently openly discussing their borderline treasonous plans in the open or telling random other people about their plans for no reason. Characters and the narrative alike failing to see the most obvious solutions to their problems that are right in front of their noses. Characters making giant assumptions about how something works because there’s no logical way to explain it. A character appears who can just explain the plot to another character at just the right time.
Altogether, the result is a book that just doesn’t carry any weight. The plot favors momentum over coherence, but without coherence the book doesn’t convince me that anything that happens matters. I do truly hope to see the final book in the trilogy pull the story together into something meaningful—I do fully acknowledge that critiquing a book for the themes not coming together is a far less meaningful critique when the series isn’t finished, and I will gladly update my opinions if the final book lands for me. For now, though, this book just did not work for me.
Thank you to Haper Voyager providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book follows directly from the first and is split once again between two major narratives of Shakti and Ashoka. Shakti is a prisoner of Aarya, the acting empress, who hates her both on principle for being a mayakari and personally for trying to use the memory of her father to manipulate her. Her narrative centers her conflict as she grapples with something terrible, she did under extreme duress, and trying to unbury Mauryan secrets surrounding the Great Spirit of the holy mountain. Ashoka is trying to maintain his ban on mayakari burnings in Taksila while also navigating the political conflict with his sister, who would like to see him unseated. At the same time, his guard and closest friend Rahil has drawn away from him since he killed in the first book, and he is struggling to rectify the situation.
All in all, my biggest overarching issue with this book is that the exploration of its themes feels toothless, and it doesn’t have a strong or coherent enough plot or characters to make the story stand on its own without its themes. For example, a main plot point early in Ashoka’s story is that he would like to witness the testing of a new kind of weapon which will harm in unexpected ways. For whatever reason, everyone involves dismisses testing this on an animal –even though they just ate a dinner full of meat—and instead they decide to test it on a criminal facing capital punishment. After some, quite frankly, dumb mind game, the weapon is used to kill the prisoner, and everyone decides that this was a good and worthwhile way to test this weapon. For a book all about morality and violence, it was utterly shocking to me that there was no reflection on the use of lethal force on someone who was already imprisoned and presented no danger to anyone else, to the idea of getting testimony from the accused to ensure a fair outcome, or to the idea a person in protective custody is being experimented upon with a weapon capable of causing severe and unnecessary suffering. All of this… for weapons which are inherently unpredictable, meaning that there’s no reason for this to have been done at all because the next weapon will work entirely differently. This is just one example, but it is, quite frankly, an honest representation of the depth that this book achieves. I believe from the synopsis that a main theme of the book is Ashoka is drifting away from his ideals and risking himself in the process, but in the book, I never felt as though there was weight behind his decisions, or an internal struggle he was facing. When Rahil rightfully is perturbed by his actions, the book makes the point that actually Rahil is in the wrong for being upset and more or less just needs to get over it.
Like I said, this would all be more tolerable if the storyline of the book was compelling for its own sake, but it just isn’t. The book frequently relies on what might be called ‘plot-driven decision-making,’ where characters act less like people and more like narrative tools. I am going to be vague here because I don’t want to spoil major pieces of this book, but one realization that a main character has basically yeets any and all consequences they originally thought they were facing for their choices because it turns out those consequences were a lie and they can do whatever they want actually. The enemies of the book continue to be nothing more than cartoon cutouts of villains who are simultaneously 30 steps ahead of our heroes (when the plot wants the characters to fail) or dense as bricks (when the plot wants to characters to succeed—I truly hate to be so blasé about this but their foes truly lack any and all depth and whether the heroes succeed or fail is equally random; ergo, the plot never achieves any weight). Justifications for actions are no more than convenient: for example, Aarya’s obsessed with mining a mountain
Moreover, the writing style just doesn’t work for me. Sometimes, there are two sentences in a row where the words as written on the page don’t necessarily disagree, but their implications do (for example, one sentence says that for a long moment a character couldn’t do something, which implies that after a long horrible moment there character could do that thing. The next second said that doing that thing continued to elide them. Were they able to do the thing or not? I legitimately don’t know). Some actions of the characters are the same, disagreeing with an action they just took or something they just said. Dialog is often awkward. The actions of characters are awkward—there are two characters repeatedly described as having conversations while way up in each other personal space in a way that is ridiculous, like having a decently long conversations while so close that their noses were brushing, which reads less as two characters being emotionally close and more as unnatural and uncomfortable. A lot of story is told in these weird aside italics—often they are the thoughts of a mentor or important character in a character’s head, and I’m assuming they’re meant to be a character’s consciousness or better judgement, but they read more like a quick way for a character to change their mind or come to a major conclusion without exploring why. Also, characters are able to communicate an absolute ton of information through looks—a lot of plot is told through some version of a character reading another’s expression as clearly and complexly as if they were actually talking, but not in a ‘oh these characters are such good friends’ way, more in a ‘this character is basically reading minds so we can tell rather than show another person’s thoughts and feelings’. Altogether, these result in the kind of book that never let me get lost in the story because I feel alienated by the prose.
On top of all of my other critiques, there comes the things I struggle with because they’re immersion-breaking: the characters frequently openly discussing their borderline treasonous plans in the open or telling random other people about their plans for no reason. Characters and the narrative alike failing to see the most obvious solutions to their problems that are right in front of their noses. Characters making giant assumptions about how something works because there’s no logical way to explain it. A character appears who can just explain the plot to another character at just the right time.
Altogether, the result is a book that just doesn’t carry any weight. The plot favors momentum over coherence, but without coherence the book doesn’t convince me that anything that happens matters. I do truly hope to see the final book in the trilogy pull the story together into something meaningful—I do fully acknowledge that critiquing a book for the themes not coming together is a far less meaningful critique when the series isn’t finished, and I will gladly update my opinions if the final book lands for me. For now, though, this book just did not work for me.
Thank you to Haper Voyager providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
December 2, 2025
Thank you NetGalley and the Publisher for the ARC.
DNF at 33%
I wanted to enjoy this so much. The fantasy aspects, the witches, spirits, and animals are all described beautifully and so unique from the typical fantasy worlds of western culture. However the writing really was too frustrating to enjoy the book.
The author really beats the reader over the head with belief system and morals, and yet they’re all over the place. One minute curses are atrocious and shameful, the next they’re acceptable if there is good intent, then they’re back to awful. And Akosha’s dilemma of to kill or not to kill is eye-roll inducing. I just don’t buy that someone who refuses to even hunt or eat meat is suddenly justifying killing and curses, this character shift happens almost overnight.
The story line is there, the world is there, but the writing is just too chaotic. For example, “Killing someone who wasn’t afraid of death seemed senseless.” What?? What does that even mean??
This book needs a better editor who can go through the story and clean up the writing and inner monologues so that they’re more consistent throughout. Without that editing, this book and its characters just don’t make sense.
DNF at 33%
I wanted to enjoy this so much. The fantasy aspects, the witches, spirits, and animals are all described beautifully and so unique from the typical fantasy worlds of western culture. However the writing really was too frustrating to enjoy the book.
The author really beats the reader over the head with belief system and morals, and yet they’re all over the place. One minute curses are atrocious and shameful, the next they’re acceptable if there is good intent, then they’re back to awful. And Akosha’s dilemma of to kill or not to kill is eye-roll inducing. I just don’t buy that someone who refuses to even hunt or eat meat is suddenly justifying killing and curses, this character shift happens almost overnight.
The story line is there, the world is there, but the writing is just too chaotic. For example, “Killing someone who wasn’t afraid of death seemed senseless.” What?? What does that even mean??
This book needs a better editor who can go through the story and clean up the writing and inner monologues so that they’re more consistent throughout. Without that editing, this book and its characters just don’t make sense.
November 16, 2025
This book does not know what it is about.
The themes are all over the place, the characters are inconsistent, the writing is meh, and the plot is not satisfying or coherent. I would not recommend this book to anyone. Despite this and the many things I want to complain about, I am going to try very hard to be objective and not just fill this review with incoherent screaming.
Themes: The Prince Without Sorrow sets up a clear conflict between the ideas of pacifism and violence, where each side is championed by one of the two main characters. Shakti represents the idea of necessary violence, rejecting her pacifist heritage in favor of necessary violence in the face of oppression. On the other side, Ashoka rejects the violent nature of his father and siblings and strives for peace and pacifism. The end of the first book turns this dichotomy on its head when Ashoka also turns away from pacifism to kill a cruel governor in order to save and protect a city of mayakari. When I finished the first book, I was confused by where the author was going with this and what the series would have to say about the idea of ‘necessary violence.’ I had hoped that this book would clarify this theme.
It did not.
While A Witch Without Memory continues to harp on about violence and pacifism, the theme is at best muddy and unclear, and at worse, in clear favor of a violent solution to every problem. Both Ashoka and Shakti continue to employ incredible violence at every turn and face no real consequences for these actions – in fact, the plot seems to reward them for it! And while the mayakari witches are supposed to accrue bad karma for using their magic to harm people, there is no evidence in the book that this is actually true. (The most obvious example of this is, of course, Shakti facing no repercussions for cursing Adil, but this book provides many many more examples). I hesitate to believe that the author truly does believe that unregulated violence is the answer, but the only other explanation at this point is that they have completely failed to interrogate their own writing.
Related to this is the idea of fault and blame. If your actions lead to someone’s death through unpredictable or uncontrollable means – are you at fault? If someone threatens to kill your friend if you do not find a way to do the impossible – can you really be blamed if they’re killed when you fail an impossible task? Personally, I think no. The fault is always with the one holding the sword. However, the characters in this book seem to believe that yes, anyone who dies as a result of your actions, no matter how abstract or tenuous the connection, is your fault. However, the characters feel no remorse for killing people that they consider ‘evil’ or ‘bad.’ This leads to a strange paradox where the characters are full of guilt for actions that are not their fault but have no care for the trail of bodies left in their wake.
Beyond this, the characters seem significantly more focused on punishing the people they hate, rather than helping the people they care about, which just doesn’t sit right with me.
Characters: The main characters in this book don't have any character development and only become more crazy and more violent as time goes on. Both Shakti and Ashoka literally become the thing they swore to stop.
Shakti continues to perceive herself as the victim, despite having accumulated incredibly powerful and dangerous powers. She is accountable to nothing and no one, there are no restrictions on her powers and there is no one to tell her if she’s gone to far (yes, yes she has). No matter how many people she kills or how many minds she invades and turns to her will, she sees her actions as justified and morally correct. She scoffs at the idea that the people she hurts are victims in their own right. I have become more and more convinced that Shakti is a terrible person who just happens to be on the right side of the war.
Ashoka is basically an entirely different person in this book, in comparison to the first book. The man who cried when a deer was killed, murdered a man in cold blood and has only continued to escalate.
Plot: The plot in this book is all over the place. There are many specific plot points I could critique but broadly, the issue is there isn’t a clear structure and you can’t follow the plot logically from one beat to the next. The main plot points of the first third of book barely come up again in the second half, and plot beats in the second half make whole swaths of the first half meaningless.
Additionally, there are a lot of minor plot points that are given a lot of attention in the moment, that are then summarily ignored and forgotten about. It’s like cocking 15 Chekov’s guns and then tossing them all in the trash. This left me waiting for resolution on things that never came and made it difficult to know how much attention to pay anything because it was impossible to tell the difference between actually important plot points and random arbitrary details.
It feels like the author went into this series hoping to represent oppression and racism in a fantasy world, with the mayakari being the fantasy version of Jews during WW2 or witches during the witch trials. Except that parallel breaks down when your oppressed people are also capable of wildly powerful magic. This leads to a weird paradox where the author wants the mayakari to be cool and powerful but cannot let them actually use their magic, otherwise they wouldn’t be on the losing end of this war.
Related to this, I cannot tell if the author wants the hatred of the mayakari to be seen as rational and justified (because of specific actions in the past) or completely irrational and unjustified (as real world racism is). This book provides a lot of explanation for why the emperor hates mayakari and is trying to kill them, in a way that seems to portray him as rational and justified which absolutely does not sit right with me. Added to this is the fact that the mayakari are basically nuclear weapons and it kind of makes sense why a ruler would feel threatened by the presence of an entire people that are basically unregulated vigilante superheros. Yes, they are supposed to be pacifists and protect nature and do no harm, but that is not a guarantee (as is clearly shown by Shakti and the damage she has wrought).
The only plot that brought me enjoyment was the Ashoka/Rahil romance and even that was such a minor part of the story and spread out across everything else like tiny sprinkles.
In my opinion, the only thing that can save this series is some sort of grand reckoning where Ashoka and Shakti realize that their violent methods have in fact made everything much worse and they suffer the consequences of their actions.
Other minor comments:
- The mayakari are unnecessarily and absurdly creative when creating curses. Why not make every curse something like ‘quick death’? If the main argument against curses is that they are unpredictable (which is already crazy, the main issue should be the violence and bad karma), then why would you make them more unpredictable by making them stuff like ‘spread and drown good spirits’
- It didn’t bother me very much in the first book, but I am becoming more unsettled by the conversations surrounding the fact that all mayakari are women. There is an undertone of only women can understand and connect to nature, and all men are bad or worthless that is starting to bother me.
- Everyone comments on the relationship between Ashoka and Rahil, to a completely unreasonable degree.
- It's a little strange how often these people hear other people's voices in their heads. I have never been plagued by "what would my mom think of this decision." Related to this, it is often unclear who’s voice Shakti is hearing in her head, since there’s at least three potential options.
- The writing has a lot of long descriptions of very minor details, like clothing and food and places that are unnecessarily and felt like a waste of time.
- So many very important and secret conversations happen in public where they could easily been overheard. Additionally, characters share secret information willy nilly to their own detriment.
- All of this over magic nitroglycerin?????? Which isn’t even mentioned again after the halfway mark????
I withheld judgement on the first book because I wasn’t sure where the author was going. But I can now say with confidence: no where good.
Thank you to Haper Voyager providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The themes are all over the place, the characters are inconsistent, the writing is meh, and the plot is not satisfying or coherent. I would not recommend this book to anyone. Despite this and the many things I want to complain about, I am going to try very hard to be objective and not just fill this review with incoherent screaming.
Themes: The Prince Without Sorrow sets up a clear conflict between the ideas of pacifism and violence, where each side is championed by one of the two main characters. Shakti represents the idea of necessary violence, rejecting her pacifist heritage in favor of necessary violence in the face of oppression. On the other side, Ashoka rejects the violent nature of his father and siblings and strives for peace and pacifism. The end of the first book turns this dichotomy on its head when Ashoka also turns away from pacifism to kill a cruel governor in order to save and protect a city of mayakari. When I finished the first book, I was confused by where the author was going with this and what the series would have to say about the idea of ‘necessary violence.’ I had hoped that this book would clarify this theme.
It did not.
While A Witch Without Memory continues to harp on about violence and pacifism, the theme is at best muddy and unclear, and at worse, in clear favor of a violent solution to every problem. Both Ashoka and Shakti continue to employ incredible violence at every turn and face no real consequences for these actions – in fact, the plot seems to reward them for it! And while the mayakari witches are supposed to accrue bad karma for using their magic to harm people, there is no evidence in the book that this is actually true. (The most obvious example of this is, of course, Shakti facing no repercussions for cursing Adil, but this book provides many many more examples). I hesitate to believe that the author truly does believe that unregulated violence is the answer, but the only other explanation at this point is that they have completely failed to interrogate their own writing.
Related to this is the idea of fault and blame. If your actions lead to someone’s death through unpredictable or uncontrollable means – are you at fault? If someone threatens to kill your friend if you do not find a way to do the impossible – can you really be blamed if they’re killed when you fail an impossible task? Personally, I think no. The fault is always with the one holding the sword. However, the characters in this book seem to believe that yes, anyone who dies as a result of your actions, no matter how abstract or tenuous the connection, is your fault. However, the characters feel no remorse for killing people that they consider ‘evil’ or ‘bad.’ This leads to a strange paradox where the characters are full of guilt for actions that are not their fault but have no care for the trail of bodies left in their wake.
Beyond this, the characters seem significantly more focused on punishing the people they hate, rather than helping the people they care about, which just doesn’t sit right with me.
Characters: The main characters in this book don't have any character development and only become more crazy and more violent as time goes on. Both Shakti and Ashoka literally become the thing they swore to stop.
Shakti continues to perceive herself as the victim, despite having accumulated incredibly powerful and dangerous powers. She is accountable to nothing and no one, there are no restrictions on her powers and there is no one to tell her if she’s gone to far (yes, yes she has). No matter how many people she kills or how many minds she invades and turns to her will, she sees her actions as justified and morally correct. She scoffs at the idea that the people she hurts are victims in their own right. I have become more and more convinced that Shakti is a terrible person who just happens to be on the right side of the war.
Ashoka is basically an entirely different person in this book, in comparison to the first book. The man who cried when a deer was killed, murdered a man in cold blood and has only continued to escalate.
Plot: The plot in this book is all over the place. There are many specific plot points I could critique but broadly, the issue is there isn’t a clear structure and you can’t follow the plot logically from one beat to the next. The main plot points of the first third of book barely come up again in the second half, and plot beats in the second half make whole swaths of the first half meaningless.
Additionally, there are a lot of minor plot points that are given a lot of attention in the moment, that are then summarily ignored and forgotten about. It’s like cocking 15 Chekov’s guns and then tossing them all in the trash. This left me waiting for resolution on things that never came and made it difficult to know how much attention to pay anything because it was impossible to tell the difference between actually important plot points and random arbitrary details.
It feels like the author went into this series hoping to represent oppression and racism in a fantasy world, with the mayakari being the fantasy version of Jews during WW2 or witches during the witch trials. Except that parallel breaks down when your oppressed people are also capable of wildly powerful magic. This leads to a weird paradox where the author wants the mayakari to be cool and powerful but cannot let them actually use their magic, otherwise they wouldn’t be on the losing end of this war.
Related to this, I cannot tell if the author wants the hatred of the mayakari to be seen as rational and justified (because of specific actions in the past) or completely irrational and unjustified (as real world racism is). This book provides a lot of explanation for why the emperor hates mayakari and is trying to kill them, in a way that seems to portray him as rational and justified which absolutely does not sit right with me. Added to this is the fact that the mayakari are basically nuclear weapons and it kind of makes sense why a ruler would feel threatened by the presence of an entire people that are basically unregulated vigilante superheros. Yes, they are supposed to be pacifists and protect nature and do no harm, but that is not a guarantee (as is clearly shown by Shakti and the damage she has wrought).
The only plot that brought me enjoyment was the Ashoka/Rahil romance and even that was such a minor part of the story and spread out across everything else like tiny sprinkles.
In my opinion, the only thing that can save this series is some sort of grand reckoning where Ashoka and Shakti realize that their violent methods have in fact made everything much worse and they suffer the consequences of their actions.
Other minor comments:
- The mayakari are unnecessarily and absurdly creative when creating curses. Why not make every curse something like ‘quick death’? If the main argument against curses is that they are unpredictable (which is already crazy, the main issue should be the violence and bad karma), then why would you make them more unpredictable by making them stuff like ‘spread and drown good spirits’
- It didn’t bother me very much in the first book, but I am becoming more unsettled by the conversations surrounding the fact that all mayakari are women. There is an undertone of only women can understand and connect to nature, and all men are bad or worthless that is starting to bother me.
- Everyone comments on the relationship between Ashoka and Rahil, to a completely unreasonable degree.
- It's a little strange how often these people hear other people's voices in their heads. I have never been plagued by "what would my mom think of this decision." Related to this, it is often unclear who’s voice Shakti is hearing in her head, since there’s at least three potential options.
- The writing has a lot of long descriptions of very minor details, like clothing and food and places that are unnecessarily and felt like a waste of time.
- So many very important and secret conversations happen in public where they could easily been overheard. Additionally, characters share secret information willy nilly to their own detriment.
- All of this over magic nitroglycerin?????? Which isn’t even mentioned again after the halfway mark????
I withheld judgement on the first book because I wasn’t sure where the author was going. But I can now say with confidence: no where good.
Thank you to Haper Voyager providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I think my gut instinct was right that I'd eventually be shoving this series at everyone and going "LOOK! It gets better!!" because this sequel was a marked improvement from the first. HOWEVER, I do have notable issues that keep this book, like the first, hovering around the 3 star mark for me. But first, the good:
-The Witch Without Memory successfully resolves many issues from The Prince Without Sorrow. Namely, we delve more into Emperor Adil's and Ashoka's backstories, which explains why the emperor was so against the mayakari and why Ashoka is so pacifistic while the rest of his family is not. In doing so, I think this closes quite a few plot holes that the series may have had. These feel like planned out fixes rather than hastily added ones, so I suspect the trilogy was always going this way, which is always a good feeling to have
-The writing has gotten better. I am not sure if this is because this ARC was better edited or because the author herself honed her craft (or perhaps both?), but I struggled less frequently than I did in the first book. Because of this, emotional beats hit with more intensity and in the desired ways.
-Ashoka's arc in particular is very strong. I think his turn from pacifism to a desire to seize the throne is quite logical and well-crafted
-In the first book, I kinda thought we were going to make Shakti/Aarya a super toxic relationship. Think The Wicked and The Willing. It didn't go that way, and I'm actually glad that it didn't, given the way the plot transpired. I am happy we're only juggling one romantic subplot here and that it's not Shakti's
-As in the first book, the second half is quite good, with entangled politics coming to a head and creating a satisfying finale. Also as in the first book, I greatly enjoyed the way the cliffhanger went: it left me wanting more while also getting a complete(ish) story.
THAT BEING SAID, I had still issues:
-Like in the first book, Shakti has the potential to be such a compelling character, but she is kept literally and metaphorically shackled for a good portion of the plot. The first half progresses because of the actions of Aarya, the acting Empress, who uses Shakti as a puppet. When Shakti herself finally takes action, it feels illogical.
-The demands of the plot determine the moral alignment of the mayakari. SPOILER!! A large subplot is that Ashoka is taught how to craft cursed weapons by another country's mayakari, so that the mayakari resistance may be able to arm themselves and their allies. We are told (in the first book and this) that cursing is an act of great consequence to the mayakari, and that it has massive karmic significance so they will not do it unless necessary. I am on board with the idea of revolutionaries risking their own rebirth for the greater good, but I am not onboard with the mayakari of the other country making weapons for the good of their empire. Another example is how Shakti makes a big deal of killing, because of how it impacts karma, and yet has racked up quite the body count - some of these are explained away while others are not.
-Some of the transitions between chapters feel super clunky. One example is a romantic subplot which finally comes to fruition right when the lovers kiss; the next time we pop back to this POV, we go to the throne room and to a political plotline with no mention of the lovers until it's convenient. I'm all for a good romance, but this one's adding nothing for the romance girlies AND nothing for the plot girlies??
So, all in all, I had a different beef with this book than I did with Book 1. But seeing it resolves a lot of my issues from the first book makes me really want to read Book 3, because maybe it'll resolve my beef with Book 2? I know the whole point of a review is to be like "do I recommend this book?" and my answer is: I have no clue. I want to see how the trilogy ends. I want to see if Wijesekara can pull it off, because I like what the Obsidian Throne trilogy is doing, and I think I need to see the big picture. I just don't know if I like each particular piece of this puzzle yet.
Many thanks to NetGalley, Avon and Harper Voyager, and Maithree Wijesekara for gifting me this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!
-The Witch Without Memory successfully resolves many issues from The Prince Without Sorrow. Namely, we delve more into Emperor Adil's and Ashoka's backstories, which explains why the emperor was so against the mayakari and why Ashoka is so pacifistic while the rest of his family is not. In doing so, I think this closes quite a few plot holes that the series may have had. These feel like planned out fixes rather than hastily added ones, so I suspect the trilogy was always going this way, which is always a good feeling to have
-The writing has gotten better. I am not sure if this is because this ARC was better edited or because the author herself honed her craft (or perhaps both?), but I struggled less frequently than I did in the first book. Because of this, emotional beats hit with more intensity and in the desired ways.
-Ashoka's arc in particular is very strong. I think his turn from pacifism to a desire to seize the throne is quite logical and well-crafted
-In the first book, I kinda thought we were going to make Shakti/Aarya a super toxic relationship. Think The Wicked and The Willing. It didn't go that way, and I'm actually glad that it didn't, given the way the plot transpired. I am happy we're only juggling one romantic subplot here and that it's not Shakti's
-As in the first book, the second half is quite good, with entangled politics coming to a head and creating a satisfying finale. Also as in the first book, I greatly enjoyed the way the cliffhanger went: it left me wanting more while also getting a complete(ish) story.
THAT BEING SAID, I had still issues:
-Like in the first book, Shakti has the potential to be such a compelling character, but she is kept literally and metaphorically shackled for a good portion of the plot. The first half progresses because of the actions of Aarya, the acting Empress, who uses Shakti as a puppet. When Shakti herself finally takes action, it feels illogical.
-The demands of the plot determine the moral alignment of the mayakari. SPOILER!! A large subplot is that Ashoka is taught how to craft cursed weapons by another country's mayakari, so that the mayakari resistance may be able to arm themselves and their allies. We are told (in the first book and this) that cursing is an act of great consequence to the mayakari, and that it has massive karmic significance so they will not do it unless necessary. I am on board with the idea of revolutionaries risking their own rebirth for the greater good, but I am not onboard with the mayakari of the other country making weapons for the good of their empire. Another example is how Shakti makes a big deal of killing, because of how it impacts karma, and yet has racked up quite the body count - some of these are explained away while others are not.
-Some of the transitions between chapters feel super clunky. One example is a romantic subplot which finally comes to fruition right when the lovers kiss; the next time we pop back to this POV, we go to the throne room and to a political plotline with no mention of the lovers until it's convenient. I'm all for a good romance, but this one's adding nothing for the romance girlies AND nothing for the plot girlies??
So, all in all, I had a different beef with this book than I did with Book 1. But seeing it resolves a lot of my issues from the first book makes me really want to read Book 3, because maybe it'll resolve my beef with Book 2? I know the whole point of a review is to be like "do I recommend this book?" and my answer is: I have no clue. I want to see how the trilogy ends. I want to see if Wijesekara can pull it off, because I like what the Obsidian Throne trilogy is doing, and I think I need to see the big picture. I just don't know if I like each particular piece of this puzzle yet.
Many thanks to NetGalley, Avon and Harper Voyager, and Maithree Wijesekara for gifting me this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
The writing is beautiful, the author has a fantastic way of setting the scene and creating a story. There were aspect missing in this book that originally drew me in the first book. The beginning of the book started strong but began to shift halfway. I felt the ending was a bit rushed, I need maybe 30 or forty more pages. The ending itself was great it’s just I needed… more.
I’m going to continue the series because I did ENJOY this. The moral dilemma that faces all the characters are interesting to read about. The twists and discoveries of this book were incredibly fun and I’m excited to see where these pieces leave us. This book is good I just wanted some more of a little of everything.
Thank you so much to the author and Harper Collins for the early opportunity to read and review.
I’m going to continue the series because I did ENJOY this. The moral dilemma that faces all the characters are interesting to read about. The twists and discoveries of this book were incredibly fun and I’m excited to see where these pieces leave us. This book is good I just wanted some more of a little of everything.
Thank you so much to the author and Harper Collins for the early opportunity to read and review.
November 15, 2025
GIRLLLLL NO SOPHOMORE SLUMP IN SIGHT WITH THIS ONEEEE HOLYYYY!!!! This one totally rocked my world. Every page had me by the throat!! Loved loved the character development, the court intrigue, the QUESTIONABLE decisions, the MAJOR CONSEQUENCES of those choices. What a whirlwind!!! also I was APPALLED TO REALIZE THE BOOK WAS FINISHED WHEN I TURNED THE LAST PAGE!!??? Book three now!!!!!
Maithree popped offffff!!!
I’m sorry I can’t give a comprehensive review right now I’m too shook.
Also I hate Aarya so much xoxox <3
Maithree popped offffff!!!
I’m sorry I can’t give a comprehensive review right now I’m too shook.
Also I hate Aarya so much xoxox <3
not-released
November 10, 2025Review coming at Gabic Reads. eARC received from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
full thoughts to come!
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