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Maya #1
MAYA: Seed Takes Root
"An exceptional story" - Kirkus Reviews
A living internet lets you visit the dead. The gods who control it can read your thoughts. For readers of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time and Frank Herbert’s Dune.
Billions will compete in the Divya Trials. One will become a god. Yachay’s grandfather has wagered their entire livelihood on him winning.
On the planet Neh, the roots of the Maya trees form a vast, living internet. Every day, people connect to Maya and enter shared dream worlds where they work, play, and even visit their dead.
The immortal god-rulers use this data to predict and shape the future. Everyone is connected. Everyone is tracked. Everyone is controlled.
Everyone except Yachay.
Raised in isolation by his ailing grandfather, the nineteen-year-old has never connected to Maya. He is invisible to the gods of data, and he wants no part of their competition.
But his grandfather’s secrets reveal an ancient resistance and a lifetime of training Yachay never knew he’d received. To enter the Trials is to step into a world he has never known, with everything they have at stake.
And the gods have already predicted the winner.
MAYA: Seed Takes Root, the first novel in the expansive MAYA universe, fuses science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy into an epic of thrilling adventure and urgent allegory. Drawing on South Asian mythology, hard science, and sharp social commentary, it asks the questions that define our time: Who controls our stories? Who profits from our data? And in an age of perfect prediction; is freedom still possible?
A living internet lets you visit the dead. The gods who control it can read your thoughts. For readers of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time and Frank Herbert’s Dune.
Billions will compete in the Divya Trials. One will become a god. Yachay’s grandfather has wagered their entire livelihood on him winning.
On the planet Neh, the roots of the Maya trees form a vast, living internet. Every day, people connect to Maya and enter shared dream worlds where they work, play, and even visit their dead.
The immortal god-rulers use this data to predict and shape the future. Everyone is connected. Everyone is tracked. Everyone is controlled.
Everyone except Yachay.
Raised in isolation by his ailing grandfather, the nineteen-year-old has never connected to Maya. He is invisible to the gods of data, and he wants no part of their competition.
But his grandfather’s secrets reveal an ancient resistance and a lifetime of training Yachay never knew he’d received. To enter the Trials is to step into a world he has never known, with everything they have at stake.
And the gods have already predicted the winner.
MAYA: Seed Takes Root, the first novel in the expansive MAYA universe, fuses science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy into an epic of thrilling adventure and urgent allegory. Drawing on South Asian mythology, hard science, and sharp social commentary, it asks the questions that define our time: Who controls our stories? Who profits from our data? And in an age of perfect prediction; is freedom still possible?
416 pages, Hardcover
First published August 25, 2026
About the author
Anand Gandhi
1 book159 followersAnand Gandhi is a polymath filmmaker and public intellectual credited with ushering India’s new wave of cinema. He has created culture-shaping projects across media.
His debut feature Ship of Theseus won India's National Award for Best Film (the country's highest honor, often likened to the Academy Award for Best Picture) and was hailed by the UK Critics' Circle as "life-changing," collecting major prizes at festivals including Transilvania, Tokyo, and BFI London. His mythological horror epic Tumbbad, now regarded as a contemporary classic, opened Venice Critics' Week, and won Filmfare and Sitges awards. As producer, he championed groundbreaking works such as An Insignificant Man, recognized by IDFA and Doc Impact Hi-5 for its measurable civic influence, and Disney+'s sci-fi comedy series OK Computer, which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Gandhi has consistently pioneered emerging narrative forms: from VR journalism (ElseVR) to award-winning board games. His empathetic short-form storytelling has won multiple Cannes Lions and Spikes Asia awards. His intellectual contributions have been recognized with the Contribution to Jain Philosophy Prize by Mumbai University. He has co-created the speculative architecture pedagogy at CEPT University.
As both practitioner and thought leader, Gandhi stands as a defining influence in contemporary Indian storytelling.
His debut feature Ship of Theseus won India's National Award for Best Film (the country's highest honor, often likened to the Academy Award for Best Picture) and was hailed by the UK Critics' Circle as "life-changing," collecting major prizes at festivals including Transilvania, Tokyo, and BFI London. His mythological horror epic Tumbbad, now regarded as a contemporary classic, opened Venice Critics' Week, and won Filmfare and Sitges awards. As producer, he championed groundbreaking works such as An Insignificant Man, recognized by IDFA and Doc Impact Hi-5 for its measurable civic influence, and Disney+'s sci-fi comedy series OK Computer, which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Gandhi has consistently pioneered emerging narrative forms: from VR journalism (ElseVR) to award-winning board games. His empathetic short-form storytelling has won multiple Cannes Lions and Spikes Asia awards. His intellectual contributions have been recognized with the Contribution to Jain Philosophy Prize by Mumbai University. He has co-created the speculative architecture pedagogy at CEPT University.
As both practitioner and thought leader, Gandhi stands as a defining influence in contemporary Indian storytelling.
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Review of advance copy
This is the most audacious book I have had the pleasure of reading in years. MAYA: Seed Takes Root cannot be easily categorized or confined to any one genre or identity. Right from the first page, the book begins firing on all cylinders, moves seamlessly between genres, and never stops until the end.
The opening arc entails the most sophisticated assassination I’ve ever seen in fiction. Kshar, a serpentine “naag”, needs to find a way to orchestrate the death of the bird demigod Tarkash. The whole thing needs to be invisible because everything that will happen on that day, or any given day for that matter, is also seen by the omniscient Maya trees.
When we meet Kshar, he has been simulating the actual day of the assassination again and again. It feels like a video game as much as it does science-fiction. It reminded me of Hitman in the best way possible. The true definition of a master assassin is to dip in and out, target neutralized, without anyone suspecting foul play to begin with. Kshar’s solution is ingenious, and something even Agent 47 would be proud of. He uses a fruit to simultaneously exploit a child’s hunger for food, a shopkeeper’s hunger for money, and a downtrodden community’s hunger for revenge. After his carefully rehearsed sequence comes to fruition (pun intended) the city is ablaze, the child is dead, but most importantly, so is Tarkash.
The important thing to note is that this hasn’t happened yet. The plan has been made in a powerful simulation that superimposes all probabilities. It’s an extremely trippy sequence, and another brilliant idea, visualized in a way that I’ve never seen before. The chapter is a beautiful meeting point of math, politics, and just good old fashioned action.
This book is bursting with such ideas. Immediately after this plan is figured out, Kshar has an unforgettable conversation with a gandarva character called Tiresia-sanjay. Gandarvas, by the way, are one of the most memorable new species in the fantasy space. They’re sentient mushrooms with two heads and conflicting personalities. Anyway, this adorable fuzzy-looking Tiresia-Sanjay proceeds to drop philosophical banger after banger in a post-run conversation with Kshar. The naag asks him a poignant question, the very same question that had been bubbling in my mind at the time. How can the future be predicted with certainty? I expected the usual SFF psychobabble about fate, prophecy, quantum determinism etc. I was stunned by his actual response.
Tiresia-Sanjay has Kshar trace the journey of a fruit he keeps seeing in the future market simulation, all the way back to its origin. He does this through logical deduction. He knows where the fruit is native to, so he can estimate where it originated from. He knows the size of the fruit’s wings, and the wind conditions of the region, so he can estimate how long it took to travel to the market. By making this causal chain, they essentially travel back in time with the fruit. Then Tiresi-Sanjay inverts this logic and asserts that “seeing the future is not so different.” If you can see all that is, you can see all that will be. And remember the Maya trees I mentioned before? Yeah, they can see everything. Chills.
Moments like this made me feel like I was reading James Gleick but for a fantasy world. Is it at these moments that Maya is at its most breathtaking. And there are so, so many. I would love nothing more than to list them all out down. But I have already been spamming my group chat non-stop since I began reading, and I don’t want to rob you of all the discovery that lies ahead.
A world brimming with VR trees, probability-politics, divine amortals, and a lovable hero awaits.
The opening arc entails the most sophisticated assassination I’ve ever seen in fiction. Kshar, a serpentine “naag”, needs to find a way to orchestrate the death of the bird demigod Tarkash. The whole thing needs to be invisible because everything that will happen on that day, or any given day for that matter, is also seen by the omniscient Maya trees.
When we meet Kshar, he has been simulating the actual day of the assassination again and again. It feels like a video game as much as it does science-fiction. It reminded me of Hitman in the best way possible. The true definition of a master assassin is to dip in and out, target neutralized, without anyone suspecting foul play to begin with. Kshar’s solution is ingenious, and something even Agent 47 would be proud of. He uses a fruit to simultaneously exploit a child’s hunger for food, a shopkeeper’s hunger for money, and a downtrodden community’s hunger for revenge. After his carefully rehearsed sequence comes to fruition (pun intended) the city is ablaze, the child is dead, but most importantly, so is Tarkash.
The important thing to note is that this hasn’t happened yet. The plan has been made in a powerful simulation that superimposes all probabilities. It’s an extremely trippy sequence, and another brilliant idea, visualized in a way that I’ve never seen before. The chapter is a beautiful meeting point of math, politics, and just good old fashioned action.
This book is bursting with such ideas. Immediately after this plan is figured out, Kshar has an unforgettable conversation with a gandarva character called Tiresia-sanjay. Gandarvas, by the way, are one of the most memorable new species in the fantasy space. They’re sentient mushrooms with two heads and conflicting personalities. Anyway, this adorable fuzzy-looking Tiresia-Sanjay proceeds to drop philosophical banger after banger in a post-run conversation with Kshar. The naag asks him a poignant question, the very same question that had been bubbling in my mind at the time. How can the future be predicted with certainty? I expected the usual SFF psychobabble about fate, prophecy, quantum determinism etc. I was stunned by his actual response.
Tiresia-Sanjay has Kshar trace the journey of a fruit he keeps seeing in the future market simulation, all the way back to its origin. He does this through logical deduction. He knows where the fruit is native to, so he can estimate where it originated from. He knows the size of the fruit’s wings, and the wind conditions of the region, so he can estimate how long it took to travel to the market. By making this causal chain, they essentially travel back in time with the fruit. Then Tiresi-Sanjay inverts this logic and asserts that “seeing the future is not so different.” If you can see all that is, you can see all that will be. And remember the Maya trees I mentioned before? Yeah, they can see everything. Chills.
Moments like this made me feel like I was reading James Gleick but for a fantasy world. Is it at these moments that Maya is at its most breathtaking. And there are so, so many. I would love nothing more than to list them all out down. But I have already been spamming my group chat non-stop since I began reading, and I don’t want to rob you of all the discovery that lies ahead.
A world brimming with VR trees, probability-politics, divine amortals, and a lovable hero awaits.
September 3, 2026
This is a review of ALC that I received from Netgalley, AE Titles / S&S Audio and an ARC I received from the author Anand Gandhi. My thoughts are mine alone.
Five stars, but with the very real possibility that this will become a six-star series for me.
I finished Maya: Seed Takes Root feeling like I had experienced something. That sounds dramatic, but I genuinely don't know how else to describe it. This isn't the kind of book I would recommend picking up for twenty minutes while the kids are playing in the background. It demands more from you than that. In return, it gives you so much more. I know I am going to carry parts of this book with me for the rest of my life, and knowing this is only the beginning makes me ridiculously excited for what comes next.
I was lucky enough to receive both the ARC and ALC, which meant I could Immersive Read it, and I am SO glad I did. If there was ever a book made for immersive reading, it might be this one. Hugo Weaving does a fantastic job narrating. There were, however, quite a few times when my audiobook brain went, “I have absolutely no idea what word I just heard. Help.", which brings me to something I need to applaud: the team behind Maya has made a glossary that works on Kindle. 👏👏👏 Seriously. More of this.
The first time I tried Maya purely as an audiobook, Weaving kept saying palanquin in a way my brain interpreted as something along the lines of “palan-queen,” and for an embarrassingly long time I thought this was some kind of queen in Neh. It made no sense. When I later received the ARC as well, and restarted the entire book, I felt utterly embarrassed and suddenly all the pieces fell into place. Later in the book, Weaving actually pronounced it closer to “palan-keen”, and I did a double take because I was so used to the other pronunciation. Strong Cumberbatch-vs-penguins energy. I loved it, and it turned out to be another memorable thing about the experience.
And honestly, the unfamiliar language is part of what makes the world work so well. Because the world-building in this book is INSANE. Everything feels connected. Religion, politics, history, class, culture, technology, family, power, philosophy! Pieces are constantly clicking into place, sometimes long after you first encounter them. The book is absolutely peppered with words, concepts and names that were unfamiliar to me, and I loved that it never felt like the world was being simplified for me. I was allowed to enter it and learn. It felt daunting in the beginning, but heck... If my THREE YEAR OLD can learn that Aragorn is also known as Strider, is Isildur's heir and the son of Arathorn, that his mother is named Gilraen, his horse is named Brego and his sword is named Andúril... Come on.
But that is also why I wouldn't recommend multitasking with this one. Pay attention. Let it build.
The characters work in a similar way. When we first meet some of them, they can almost seem surprisingly simple. Then the book just keeps adding layers. And layers. And layers. By the end, I wanted half the cast to have their own backstory novels.
As a mother, I fell completely for Ayn. As a daughter, Daddu got me. As a sister, I spent an unreasonable amount of time wanting to protect Yachay from absolutely everything. And there are so many others I desperately want to understand better.
But even those characters aren't half of what makes Maya: Seed Takes Root so fascinating, because underneath the fantasy is something that feels uncomfortably relevant to the world we live in now. I know the creators behind Maya set out to build a huge fantasy universe rooted in Indian culture, beliefs, and philosophies, something capable of standing alongside the enormous speculative worlds people have spent generations disappearing into. I think they may actually have done it.
I'm hesitant to throw Tolkien into any comparison because comparing fantasy worlds like that quickly becomes apples and oranges. But what I can say is that the politics, power structures and social dynamics of Maya: Seed Takes Root gave me chills. It isn't just a fantasy story about another society. It makes you think about ours. About who controls information. Who shapes the stories societies tell themselves. How people are divided. How beliefs become structures, structures become power, and power becomes something people stop questioning. How easily we can be influenced while believing we're thinking entirely for ourselves. I already distrust generative AI and think all of us should be paying considerably more attention to who — and what — is influencing us. (Can we take back the em dashes, please?)
Maya: Seed Takes Root did absolutely nothing to make me feel better about that. And I mean that as a compliment. As Sheshan puts it: "In a world woven from dreams, waking up is an act of great rebellion."
This is a five-star book for me. But more importantly, it feels like the beginning of something that might eventually become much bigger than one five-star book. I cannot wait to experience the rest of it. (Also fangirling over how pretty the planned trilogy LOOKS...👀)
Five stars, but with the very real possibility that this will become a six-star series for me.
I finished Maya: Seed Takes Root feeling like I had experienced something. That sounds dramatic, but I genuinely don't know how else to describe it. This isn't the kind of book I would recommend picking up for twenty minutes while the kids are playing in the background. It demands more from you than that. In return, it gives you so much more. I know I am going to carry parts of this book with me for the rest of my life, and knowing this is only the beginning makes me ridiculously excited for what comes next.
I was lucky enough to receive both the ARC and ALC, which meant I could Immersive Read it, and I am SO glad I did. If there was ever a book made for immersive reading, it might be this one. Hugo Weaving does a fantastic job narrating. There were, however, quite a few times when my audiobook brain went, “I have absolutely no idea what word I just heard. Help.", which brings me to something I need to applaud: the team behind Maya has made a glossary that works on Kindle. 👏👏👏 Seriously. More of this.
The first time I tried Maya purely as an audiobook, Weaving kept saying palanquin in a way my brain interpreted as something along the lines of “palan-queen,” and for an embarrassingly long time I thought this was some kind of queen in Neh. It made no sense. When I later received the ARC as well, and restarted the entire book, I felt utterly embarrassed and suddenly all the pieces fell into place. Later in the book, Weaving actually pronounced it closer to “palan-keen”, and I did a double take because I was so used to the other pronunciation. Strong Cumberbatch-vs-penguins energy. I loved it, and it turned out to be another memorable thing about the experience.
And honestly, the unfamiliar language is part of what makes the world work so well. Because the world-building in this book is INSANE. Everything feels connected. Religion, politics, history, class, culture, technology, family, power, philosophy! Pieces are constantly clicking into place, sometimes long after you first encounter them. The book is absolutely peppered with words, concepts and names that were unfamiliar to me, and I loved that it never felt like the world was being simplified for me. I was allowed to enter it and learn. It felt daunting in the beginning, but heck... If my THREE YEAR OLD can learn that Aragorn is also known as Strider, is Isildur's heir and the son of Arathorn, that his mother is named Gilraen, his horse is named Brego and his sword is named Andúril... Come on.
But that is also why I wouldn't recommend multitasking with this one. Pay attention. Let it build.
The characters work in a similar way. When we first meet some of them, they can almost seem surprisingly simple. Then the book just keeps adding layers. And layers. And layers. By the end, I wanted half the cast to have their own backstory novels.
As a mother, I fell completely for Ayn. As a daughter, Daddu got me. As a sister, I spent an unreasonable amount of time wanting to protect Yachay from absolutely everything. And there are so many others I desperately want to understand better.
But even those characters aren't half of what makes Maya: Seed Takes Root so fascinating, because underneath the fantasy is something that feels uncomfortably relevant to the world we live in now. I know the creators behind Maya set out to build a huge fantasy universe rooted in Indian culture, beliefs, and philosophies, something capable of standing alongside the enormous speculative worlds people have spent generations disappearing into. I think they may actually have done it.
I'm hesitant to throw Tolkien into any comparison because comparing fantasy worlds like that quickly becomes apples and oranges. But what I can say is that the politics, power structures and social dynamics of Maya: Seed Takes Root gave me chills. It isn't just a fantasy story about another society. It makes you think about ours. About who controls information. Who shapes the stories societies tell themselves. How people are divided. How beliefs become structures, structures become power, and power becomes something people stop questioning. How easily we can be influenced while believing we're thinking entirely for ourselves. I already distrust generative AI and think all of us should be paying considerably more attention to who — and what — is influencing us. (Can we take back the em dashes, please?)
Maya: Seed Takes Root did absolutely nothing to make me feel better about that. And I mean that as a compliment. As Sheshan puts it: "In a world woven from dreams, waking up is an act of great rebellion."
This is a five-star book for me. But more importantly, it feels like the beginning of something that might eventually become much bigger than one five-star book. I cannot wait to experience the rest of it. (Also fangirling over how pretty the planned trilogy LOOKS...👀)
June 2, 2026
If Hugo Weaving could continue narrating for the series that would be great. His voice added a whole other level to this book.
June 15, 2026
I was so hyped for this, but man… goes nowhere, and swallows itself in world building at the expense of any of it actually sticking or… a plot. By the end you’re reading endless nonsense words, meeting characters you immediately forget, and waiting for ANYTHING to happen. Whomp whomp
August 26, 2026
MAYA had first caught my eye as a freshly started crowdfunded project, and it immediately felt dangerously ambitious, but also insanely complex and original.
With big ideas like that, I'm always wary if they will deliver on said ambitions, and by the time of finishing book one, I think that MAYA has many intriguing bits to offer for hard sci-fantasy readers that make it a worthy read, with only a few critiques and potential warnings from my side.
First off, the writers of this series have created a vast world with a deep love that blends their interests in biology, tech, philosophy, and socio-politics. The worldbuilding is so rich that I can't recall encountering one like it in a while. There are classes, races, divinities, tech, politics, philosophy, riddles, and most of these are given unique names, so be ready to be confused at first, and learn fast. Since I was listening to the audiobook, the book's website was of immense help, because the character drawings helped me get used to all the weird new names thrown at me at first, and imagine all these new creatures that appear in this world. I also simply went back and relistened to the first few chapters with a bit more focus, and I am grateful that I had the patience to stick with this book because I've enjoyed the ideas shared in it.
The big science fiction idea here is the tethering of all individuals to the MAYA trees, which are almost all connected to each other through their root systems, and share data in this way. This can be seen both as a need and an addiction, can be turned into games and competitions of avatars within it, but can also provide a kind of afterlife for said avatars for a while after an individual's passing. This reminded me a lot of Ready Player One in its core idea.
However, this series also introduces many species that often look different and take up diverse roles in the works of the socio-political system and ecology of the world.
One thing I've heard the series praised for is a relatable antagonist, a hired killer who went into it all to cure his son, making him pretty hard to hate, as it gives him such strong, noble, and loving motivations for his choices.
Another strength of this book I haven't heard anyone mention is its action sequences, which are numerous! The story is equal parts deep and philosophical and action-packed, so you better love both if you want to jump into it. Book one also doesn't move the storyline much in the grand scheme of things and ends with a major cliffhanger, so be ready for that.
My biggest warning for this series is that there will be many new and weird-sounding terms that can clutter the reading experience, making the story hard to follow and requiring a good amount of commitment and patience. The storyline also, at times, jumps from one action-packed scene to another, with great but short dialogues in between, still somehow not moving the plot forward that much.
The narration is done by Hugo Weaving, who is also playing Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, and his character voice work is excellent! Apart from a few bits where his voice intentionally or unintentionally differs from the rest of the recording, making it sound like it was done separately or on different equipment, which drew me out of the immersive story experience, I have no other complaints.
All in all, as a biologist, I'm amazed by the worldbuilding and amazing species and their interconnectedness done for this series, and with the cliffhanger at the end of this book, I'm pretty curious to continue reading. Already in book one, the series gives us some tense and tragic moments, as well as some great social commentary on surveillance and subtle methods of manipulation and control, so I suspect that the real resistance is yet to come.
I thank Simon & Schuster Audio for sharing an advance listening copy of this book via NetGalley with me, as I have been honored to be chosen to receive early access to this book! All opinions shared in my review are my own, unbiased, and honest.
With big ideas like that, I'm always wary if they will deliver on said ambitions, and by the time of finishing book one, I think that MAYA has many intriguing bits to offer for hard sci-fantasy readers that make it a worthy read, with only a few critiques and potential warnings from my side.
First off, the writers of this series have created a vast world with a deep love that blends their interests in biology, tech, philosophy, and socio-politics. The worldbuilding is so rich that I can't recall encountering one like it in a while. There are classes, races, divinities, tech, politics, philosophy, riddles, and most of these are given unique names, so be ready to be confused at first, and learn fast. Since I was listening to the audiobook, the book's website was of immense help, because the character drawings helped me get used to all the weird new names thrown at me at first, and imagine all these new creatures that appear in this world. I also simply went back and relistened to the first few chapters with a bit more focus, and I am grateful that I had the patience to stick with this book because I've enjoyed the ideas shared in it.
The big science fiction idea here is the tethering of all individuals to the MAYA trees, which are almost all connected to each other through their root systems, and share data in this way. This can be seen both as a need and an addiction, can be turned into games and competitions of avatars within it, but can also provide a kind of afterlife for said avatars for a while after an individual's passing. This reminded me a lot of Ready Player One in its core idea.
However, this series also introduces many species that often look different and take up diverse roles in the works of the socio-political system and ecology of the world.
One thing I've heard the series praised for is a relatable antagonist, a hired killer who went into it all to cure his son, making him pretty hard to hate, as it gives him such strong, noble, and loving motivations for his choices.
Another strength of this book I haven't heard anyone mention is its action sequences, which are numerous! The story is equal parts deep and philosophical and action-packed, so you better love both if you want to jump into it. Book one also doesn't move the storyline much in the grand scheme of things and ends with a major cliffhanger, so be ready for that.
My biggest warning for this series is that there will be many new and weird-sounding terms that can clutter the reading experience, making the story hard to follow and requiring a good amount of commitment and patience. The storyline also, at times, jumps from one action-packed scene to another, with great but short dialogues in between, still somehow not moving the plot forward that much.
The narration is done by Hugo Weaving, who is also playing Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, and his character voice work is excellent! Apart from a few bits where his voice intentionally or unintentionally differs from the rest of the recording, making it sound like it was done separately or on different equipment, which drew me out of the immersive story experience, I have no other complaints.
All in all, as a biologist, I'm amazed by the worldbuilding and amazing species and their interconnectedness done for this series, and with the cliffhanger at the end of this book, I'm pretty curious to continue reading. Already in book one, the series gives us some tense and tragic moments, as well as some great social commentary on surveillance and subtle methods of manipulation and control, so I suspect that the real resistance is yet to come.
I thank Simon & Schuster Audio for sharing an advance listening copy of this book via NetGalley with me, as I have been honored to be chosen to receive early access to this book! All opinions shared in my review are my own, unbiased, and honest.
August 24, 2026
4.5/5 ⭐️
Finding the proper words to describe this book is as difficult a task as I can remember writing a book review. Maya is not for the faint of heart as the names, places, really everything are unfamiliar and not expressly explained. The main character is in a constant state of discovery, giving the reader a learn as they learn kind of reading experience. That said, it’s awesome; it is intricate and complex in all the ways I want from a fantasy series. While its characters in my opinion do fall a little flat at times their dialog doesn’t and the plot carries the day. Do I totally know what’s going on? NOPE! I need the next one pronto.
Finding the proper words to describe this book is as difficult a task as I can remember writing a book review. Maya is not for the faint of heart as the names, places, really everything are unfamiliar and not expressly explained. The main character is in a constant state of discovery, giving the reader a learn as they learn kind of reading experience. That said, it’s awesome; it is intricate and complex in all the ways I want from a fantasy series. While its characters in my opinion do fall a little flat at times their dialog doesn’t and the plot carries the day. Do I totally know what’s going on? NOPE! I need the next one pronto.
Review of advance copy received from Storygraph
Review of ARC received at Locus Awards
Maya: Seed Takes Root has gone straight to the top of my list of all-time favorite science fiction books. This is one cinematic novel with marvelous scenes and some jaw-dropping set pieces. There’s a scene I’ve been thinking about a lot. I glossed right over it on the audiobook, but it hit me hard in print. A book like this demands and rewards rereading. Every page is a rabbit hole. I kept going deeper and deeper into them, then looking up to realize I’d been on the same page for half an hour. I mean this in the best way. Maya made me think about all the things I love thinking about while handing me new ways of looking at them. There’s this moment where several thousand young people line up at a Maya checkpoint to prove they are who they say they are. In this world, the simulation’s ability to predict your future is the only legitimate identity, the local equivalent of a Social Security number. Guess we’re getting there.
Nobody on Neh, the planet this story takes place on, has a last name, nor is one needed, because no two people have the same first name. The central technology of the world is Maya, an arboreal network of 330 million trees, wired together underground by fungal filament, faster than fiber optics. You tether (this world’s equivalent of logging in, of sorts) by letting a tendril of the tree connect to you, through the navel if you’re manushya (human-like species), through the mouth if you’re a cobra-person, etc., and then you’re inside the VR-like Maya, watching stories or playing games with friends and such. When you’re born there’s a ceremony where the tree gives you your true name.
Ayn explains some of this to Yachay, the protagonist. She’s a rakshasi, one of the scavenger peoples who can reshape their own bodies through diet, and she’s effectively the second protagonist of the book. She travels alongside Yachay for most of it while chasing an errand of her own, which I’m guessing is a setup for the next book.
Because the system that confers a name is a centralized worldwide web, each name works as a unique username. And the same tree network that issues your username is maintaining an accurate model of you called a chhavi that gets updated every time you tether. That model is also your afterlife. I picture a chhavi as something like a digital avatar, except because it lives inside a root network, it’s still biological. Fascinating stuff! If you repay the three debts you inherit at birth, your chhavi persists inside Maya for your family to visit and talk to. If you die in arrears, then, well, I guess you just die. The book doesn’t say how you clear the three debts. I want to know. I could use a lesson there.
Registration for the Trials doubles as a data sync. It’s how the system makes sure its picture of everyone is current and predictable. The Trials are the once-in-a-generation contest where billions compete for a single empty seat among the Divyas, the near-immortal rulers of the planet. People get fined for not tethering regularly, and the fines double the longer you slack, but that’s the small stuff. Godhood and afterlife are the carrots that actually make everyone toe the line. If you don’t sync regularly, you lose your one shot at becoming a Divya, and you will most certainly not be getting a chhavi afterlife.
So, thousands of Trials hopefuls line up to register, mostly late teens and early twenties from what I gather. To register, each participant walks up to a two-headed gandharva official tethered to a Maya tree. One head examines the person in front while the other conjures up their chhavi (model/avatar) from the root network.
The design of the scene is just superb, and I could actually see it play out in my head (no wonder one of the authors is a filmmaker and the other a game designer). The tree shows the participant’s chhavi on one of the bio-resin screens stretched between its branches. It looks like the person’s mirror image, except the twist is that the mirror is showing a reflection from a few seconds into the future. The reflection moves first, then the real person follows. The person and the screen are separated by a partition so nobody can cheat by timing their action to the prediction. The chhavi/avatar leads, and the original person catches up.
The chhavi on the bio-screen reaches out, takes a small clay pot, and spills six long bone dice onto a virtual table. A few moments later, the actual person rolls theirs on the other side of the partition. The authors could have done something simpler here. Match the digits and the markings on the dice. Prediction says four and six, the person rolls four and six, model’s accuracy confirmed.
But I love that they go a step further and complicate it. The dice on the crystal-ball-ish Maya screen come up marked with dots and glyphs that form an equation. When the real person rolls, a completely different set of signs and numbers appears on their side. What has to hold is that the equation balances. Left must equal right.
If it balances, the system has predicted you so well that even a random action of yours produces an outcome that matches the prediction in what it means and where it matters. Then a simian guard hands over the entry pass to the pre-Trials (by fastening a seed to their wrist and pouring water on it until the seed sprouts roots that burrow painlessly into skin).
If anyone fails the check, the fix seems trivial. They call it a Maya-dip. A quick login, a round of a game or a story, I suppose, and the system watches your preferences and updates its model of you.
As far as I can tell this is the only place in the entire book where the general public gets an unambiguous view of Maya’s ability to predict their future. And it scares nobody. Much the way most of us accept an algorithm’s ability to predict us and don’t start screaming. Everyone on the planet casually calls the Divya rulers vidhi-vidhaata, makers of destinies, and nobody truly believes it, because otherwise, the horror of it! The horror of accepting that your whole future is being written out before you have any say in it!
That equation is the key to a puzzle the book keeps coming back to, about prediction, chaos theory and complexity science. The neuroscientist Anil Seth plants it in the foreword, where he brings up Lorenz nudging a simulated atmosphere by one part in a thousand and watching the whole simulated world drift into something unrecognizable. The popular heuristic for this idea is the butterfly effect. Tiresia-Sanjay, a two-headed gandharva, gives the counterargument to a naag (cobra-person) intelligence operative named Kshar, and it’s one of my favorite passages in the book.
Kshar then has to literally inhabit that idea, replaying one market morning over and over inside a probabilistic simulation, watching every detail change between runs while the outcome stays exactly where it was. Another astounding cinematic scene that I’d love to write about someday. If this book ever becomes a film, and I hope it does, this would be Maya’s answer to bullet time in The Matrix.
Since we experience all this wonderful magic through the eyes of people who’ve seen it a million times, the magic gets served up as mundane, which is exactly why I suspect plenty of readers might skate past how good some of these scenes really are. Even the hero doesn’t gawk, and he’s the closest thing to a reader proxy we get. He’s busy solving the equations, or busy figuring out the engineering of a death machine that’s about to kill him.
I felt we were being handed a major clue when Yachay mentions that as a kid he had six friends and every single one of them was also called Yachay. Ayn tells him that isn’t possible. Every true name is unique, and at least three exhalations long.
5/5. Best science fiction of the year for me.
Maya: Seed Takes Root has gone straight to the top of my list of all-time favorite science fiction books. This is one cinematic novel with marvelous scenes and some jaw-dropping set pieces. There’s a scene I’ve been thinking about a lot. I glossed right over it on the audiobook, but it hit me hard in print. A book like this demands and rewards rereading. Every page is a rabbit hole. I kept going deeper and deeper into them, then looking up to realize I’d been on the same page for half an hour. I mean this in the best way. Maya made me think about all the things I love thinking about while handing me new ways of looking at them. There’s this moment where several thousand young people line up at a Maya checkpoint to prove they are who they say they are. In this world, the simulation’s ability to predict your future is the only legitimate identity, the local equivalent of a Social Security number. Guess we’re getting there.
Nobody on Neh, the planet this story takes place on, has a last name, nor is one needed, because no two people have the same first name. The central technology of the world is Maya, an arboreal network of 330 million trees, wired together underground by fungal filament, faster than fiber optics. You tether (this world’s equivalent of logging in, of sorts) by letting a tendril of the tree connect to you, through the navel if you’re manushya (human-like species), through the mouth if you’re a cobra-person, etc., and then you’re inside the VR-like Maya, watching stories or playing games with friends and such. When you’re born there’s a ceremony where the tree gives you your true name.
Ayn explains some of this to Yachay, the protagonist. She’s a rakshasi, one of the scavenger peoples who can reshape their own bodies through diet, and she’s effectively the second protagonist of the book. She travels alongside Yachay for most of it while chasing an errand of her own, which I’m guessing is a setup for the next book.
Because the system that confers a name is a centralized worldwide web, each name works as a unique username. And the same tree network that issues your username is maintaining an accurate model of you called a chhavi that gets updated every time you tether. That model is also your afterlife. I picture a chhavi as something like a digital avatar, except because it lives inside a root network, it’s still biological. Fascinating stuff! If you repay the three debts you inherit at birth, your chhavi persists inside Maya for your family to visit and talk to. If you die in arrears, then, well, I guess you just die. The book doesn’t say how you clear the three debts. I want to know. I could use a lesson there.
Registration for the Trials doubles as a data sync. It’s how the system makes sure its picture of everyone is current and predictable. The Trials are the once-in-a-generation contest where billions compete for a single empty seat among the Divyas, the near-immortal rulers of the planet. People get fined for not tethering regularly, and the fines double the longer you slack, but that’s the small stuff. Godhood and afterlife are the carrots that actually make everyone toe the line. If you don’t sync regularly, you lose your one shot at becoming a Divya, and you will most certainly not be getting a chhavi afterlife.
So, thousands of Trials hopefuls line up to register, mostly late teens and early twenties from what I gather. To register, each participant walks up to a two-headed gandharva official tethered to a Maya tree. One head examines the person in front while the other conjures up their chhavi (model/avatar) from the root network.
The design of the scene is just superb, and I could actually see it play out in my head (no wonder one of the authors is a filmmaker and the other a game designer). The tree shows the participant’s chhavi on one of the bio-resin screens stretched between its branches. It looks like the person’s mirror image, except the twist is that the mirror is showing a reflection from a few seconds into the future. The reflection moves first, then the real person follows. The person and the screen are separated by a partition so nobody can cheat by timing their action to the prediction. The chhavi/avatar leads, and the original person catches up.
The chhavi on the bio-screen reaches out, takes a small clay pot, and spills six long bone dice onto a virtual table. A few moments later, the actual person rolls theirs on the other side of the partition. The authors could have done something simpler here. Match the digits and the markings on the dice. Prediction says four and six, the person rolls four and six, model’s accuracy confirmed.
But I love that they go a step further and complicate it. The dice on the crystal-ball-ish Maya screen come up marked with dots and glyphs that form an equation. When the real person rolls, a completely different set of signs and numbers appears on their side. What has to hold is that the equation balances. Left must equal right.
If it balances, the system has predicted you so well that even a random action of yours produces an outcome that matches the prediction in what it means and where it matters. Then a simian guard hands over the entry pass to the pre-Trials (by fastening a seed to their wrist and pouring water on it until the seed sprouts roots that burrow painlessly into skin).
If anyone fails the check, the fix seems trivial. They call it a Maya-dip. A quick login, a round of a game or a story, I suppose, and the system watches your preferences and updates its model of you.
As far as I can tell this is the only place in the entire book where the general public gets an unambiguous view of Maya’s ability to predict their future. And it scares nobody. Much the way most of us accept an algorithm’s ability to predict us and don’t start screaming. Everyone on the planet casually calls the Divya rulers vidhi-vidhaata, makers of destinies, and nobody truly believes it, because otherwise, the horror of it! The horror of accepting that your whole future is being written out before you have any say in it!
That equation is the key to a puzzle the book keeps coming back to, about prediction, chaos theory and complexity science. The neuroscientist Anil Seth plants it in the foreword, where he brings up Lorenz nudging a simulated atmosphere by one part in a thousand and watching the whole simulated world drift into something unrecognizable. The popular heuristic for this idea is the butterfly effect. Tiresia-Sanjay, a two-headed gandharva, gives the counterargument to a naag (cobra-person) intelligence operative named Kshar, and it’s one of my favorite passages in the book.
“Ah,” said the younger head. “Wings may catch the wind, but cannot alter its course. Our actions are stones in time’s river, splitting the current into a tangle of minor streams. Yet even as the flow divides, it seeks reunion, compelled by laws that were old when time was young.”
Kshar then has to literally inhabit that idea, replaying one market morning over and over inside a probabilistic simulation, watching every detail change between runs while the outcome stays exactly where it was. Another astounding cinematic scene that I’d love to write about someday. If this book ever becomes a film, and I hope it does, this would be Maya’s answer to bullet time in The Matrix.
Since we experience all this wonderful magic through the eyes of people who’ve seen it a million times, the magic gets served up as mundane, which is exactly why I suspect plenty of readers might skate past how good some of these scenes really are. Even the hero doesn’t gawk, and he’s the closest thing to a reader proxy we get. He’s busy solving the equations, or busy figuring out the engineering of a death machine that’s about to kill him.
I felt we were being handed a major clue when Yachay mentions that as a kid he had six friends and every single one of them was also called Yachay. Ayn tells him that isn’t possible. Every true name is unique, and at least three exhalations long.
5/5. Best science fiction of the year for me.
September 3, 2026
Take the best parts of James Cameron and Zack Snyder and you might come close to what Gandhi and Memon have started here. Vast world-building, unique and intriguing character design, and a storyline that does just about everything but hold your hand. Maya might be the most intrepid, breathtaking, and challenging experience of my reading life - and I want MORE.
September 13, 2026
There were pages of MAYA where I wasn't entirely sure I knew what was going on, but I knew I wanted to keep reading. Anand Gandhi's prose is gorgeous. Sometimes quietly so, sometimes almost extravagantly. There were passages I went back over simply because I liked the way they had been written, even when I wasn't convinced I'd completely followed what they were telling me. That's an odd experience with a novel: being lost and impressed at roughly the same time. And I was lost fairly often. Gandhi has built an enormously elaborate world here, full of its own histories, cultures, terminology, beliefs and ideas, and he doesn't seem particularly interested in simplifying any of it for the reader. I usually appreciate being dropped into a world and trusted to work things out. Too much explanation can kill the pleasure of discovery very quickly. Here, though, I occasionally wished someone would hand me a map.
The problem wasn't that the world lacked imagination. Quite the opposite. There was almost too much of it competing for my attention. Names, concepts, places and pieces of history kept arriving before earlier ones had fully settled, and after a while I found myself concentrating so much on understanding the architecture of the world that I was losing sight of the people moving through it.
That was probably my biggest difficulty with MAYA. I wanted to connect more strongly with the individual characters, but the novel kept drawing my attention away from them. A character would begin to interest me, then another piece of history or culture or terminology would arrive and I'd find myself mentally rearranging everything I thought I understood again. The world became so prominent that occasionally it seemed to be standing between me and the story. Which is frustrating, because there is clearly a huge amount of thought behind it.
You can feel Gandhi reaching for something ambitious. This isn't a world assembled from a few familiar science-fiction pieces and left to run in the background. It has layers. It has intellectual and cultural weight. It feels like it existed before the reader arrived and will continue existing after we've left. I admire that enormously. I'm just not convinced a first novel needs to show me quite so much of it at once.
The prose complicated my reaction further because every time I felt the story slipping away from me, Gandhi would write something beautiful and pull me back. Even when the plot became difficult to follow, the language had texture and rhythm, and there was a confidence to the writing that made me willing to tolerate considerably more confusion than I normally would.
So I finished MAYA in the slightly ridiculous position of being able to say that I liked it while also admitting that I'm not entirely certain I could explain everything I just read. There is a remarkable world in here, perhaps several remarkable worlds' worth, and a writer whose prose I would happily read again.
The problem wasn't that the world lacked imagination. Quite the opposite. There was almost too much of it competing for my attention. Names, concepts, places and pieces of history kept arriving before earlier ones had fully settled, and after a while I found myself concentrating so much on understanding the architecture of the world that I was losing sight of the people moving through it.
That was probably my biggest difficulty with MAYA. I wanted to connect more strongly with the individual characters, but the novel kept drawing my attention away from them. A character would begin to interest me, then another piece of history or culture or terminology would arrive and I'd find myself mentally rearranging everything I thought I understood again. The world became so prominent that occasionally it seemed to be standing between me and the story. Which is frustrating, because there is clearly a huge amount of thought behind it.
You can feel Gandhi reaching for something ambitious. This isn't a world assembled from a few familiar science-fiction pieces and left to run in the background. It has layers. It has intellectual and cultural weight. It feels like it existed before the reader arrived and will continue existing after we've left. I admire that enormously. I'm just not convinced a first novel needs to show me quite so much of it at once.
The prose complicated my reaction further because every time I felt the story slipping away from me, Gandhi would write something beautiful and pull me back. Even when the plot became difficult to follow, the language had texture and rhythm, and there was a confidence to the writing that made me willing to tolerate considerably more confusion than I normally would.
So I finished MAYA in the slightly ridiculous position of being able to say that I liked it while also admitting that I'm not entirely certain I could explain everything I just read. There is a remarkable world in here, perhaps several remarkable worlds' worth, and a writer whose prose I would happily read again.
August 25, 2026
Book Review: Maya: Seed Takes Root by Anand Gandhi & Zain Memon (audiobook narrated by Hugo Weaving)
5/5 stars. Hugo Weaving is the narrator of this audiobook, which releases on Aug 25 2026, and does an absolutely fantastic job with the voices and depicting the action throughout the tale, as one would expect from such a talented actor. In all honesty, I was unsure about this story at first, particularly if I would mesh with it as a reader/listener. I remember it being immensely popular on Kickstarter a few months ago and debated with myself at the time whether to back it or not. I decided not to back the Kickstarter, but regret that decision now. After listening to this first installment, I am excited to see more of these novels published and I look forward to continuing the story. I have no doubt the physical copy is beautiful!
This fantasy story uses some traditional tropes, but the fresh setting for the story expands the narrative in beautiful ways. The novel has vibes of the world building from James Cameron’s Avatar series without the conflict between cultures. This story does have a conflict between godlike beings (Divyas) controlling the world and humans, with the humans acting as puppets for the gods, simply fulfilling their assigned tasks and roles given to them by the Divyas. Characters like Kshar, Yachay, Daddu, Ayn, Tarkash, and so many others fill this story with unique perspectives and creative species. I absolutely loved learning about the pasts of these characters, what drives each of them in their journeys, and how they interact with one another.
I highly recommend this novel if you like unique world building, beautiful descriptions, a quick-paced story, and fantastic characters! Plus, Hugo Weaving on audiobook!! #NetGalley #MayaSeedTakesRoot
This is a review of the audiobook.
5/5 stars. Hugo Weaving is the narrator of this audiobook, which releases on Aug 25 2026, and does an absolutely fantastic job with the voices and depicting the action throughout the tale, as one would expect from such a talented actor. In all honesty, I was unsure about this story at first, particularly if I would mesh with it as a reader/listener. I remember it being immensely popular on Kickstarter a few months ago and debated with myself at the time whether to back it or not. I decided not to back the Kickstarter, but regret that decision now. After listening to this first installment, I am excited to see more of these novels published and I look forward to continuing the story. I have no doubt the physical copy is beautiful!
This fantasy story uses some traditional tropes, but the fresh setting for the story expands the narrative in beautiful ways. The novel has vibes of the world building from James Cameron’s Avatar series without the conflict between cultures. This story does have a conflict between godlike beings (Divyas) controlling the world and humans, with the humans acting as puppets for the gods, simply fulfilling their assigned tasks and roles given to them by the Divyas. Characters like Kshar, Yachay, Daddu, Ayn, Tarkash, and so many others fill this story with unique perspectives and creative species. I absolutely loved learning about the pasts of these characters, what drives each of them in their journeys, and how they interact with one another.
I highly recommend this novel if you like unique world building, beautiful descriptions, a quick-paced story, and fantastic characters! Plus, Hugo Weaving on audiobook!! #NetGalley #MayaSeedTakesRoot
This is a review of the audiobook.
September 26, 2026
Three and a half stars
This book has magnificent worldbuilding, including a great repertoire of characters, each belonging to a different species in this rich universe. However, because of this, the reading has been very difficult. I had to reread many passages, sometimes even entire chapters, and I constantly found it hard to grasp how the story was developing. I understood it, and I enjoyed it, but I would have preferred to be able to follow and understand it more fluently.
I listened to the Audible version, and maybe this increased the difficulty, but still, I think it was the book, not me.
I will probably read the sequel because Maya has captivated me enough, but I will reread this one first.
This book has magnificent worldbuilding, including a great repertoire of characters, each belonging to a different species in this rich universe. However, because of this, the reading has been very difficult. I had to reread many passages, sometimes even entire chapters, and I constantly found it hard to grasp how the story was developing. I understood it, and I enjoyed it, but I would have preferred to be able to follow and understand it more fluently.
I listened to the Audible version, and maybe this increased the difficulty, but still, I think it was the book, not me.
I will probably read the sequel because Maya has captivated me enough, but I will reread this one first.
September 30, 2026
4.5 stars rounded down!! the sheer amount of ambition, effort and thoughtfulness in this book honestly honestly deserves like 10 stars, and this docking of a 0.5 star is genuinely nothing to do with the book and everything to do with me as a reader who can’t imagine and spent most of the book confused as heck only to realise at the end of it all that there are illustrations LOL.
this was genuinely one of the craziest adventures that i’ve ever read. the worldbuilding is genuinely some of, if not the most extensive and detailed worldbuilding i’ve ever read. and i think this means something coming from me because there was a point in time that i was exclusively reading worldbuilding heavy books. everything is so well thought out and executed, from the geography and geology of neh to the different plant species to maya itself. wowowow.
plotwise, once i figured out what the hell was going on, the book was super thrilling too. the story and the reveals so far have been thoughtfully crafted and it is a really exciting read. i do feel like it moves abit slow, but i also understand that the amount of setup they are doing requires slow moving; that and there probably were a bunch of stuff that i just couldn’t catch and that likely warrants a second read.
this is for lovers of big epic fantasies because this will likely be the big epic fantasy to end them all. really looking forward to rereading this when the next book comes out.
this was genuinely one of the craziest adventures that i’ve ever read. the worldbuilding is genuinely some of, if not the most extensive and detailed worldbuilding i’ve ever read. and i think this means something coming from me because there was a point in time that i was exclusively reading worldbuilding heavy books. everything is so well thought out and executed, from the geography and geology of neh to the different plant species to maya itself. wowowow.
plotwise, once i figured out what the hell was going on, the book was super thrilling too. the story and the reveals so far have been thoughtfully crafted and it is a really exciting read. i do feel like it moves abit slow, but i also understand that the amount of setup they are doing requires slow moving; that and there probably were a bunch of stuff that i just couldn’t catch and that likely warrants a second read.
this is for lovers of big epic fantasies because this will likely be the big epic fantasy to end them all. really looking forward to rereading this when the next book comes out.
August 27, 2026
“Stagnation erases all future progress forever.”
I haven’t been this excited about a random Netgalley request in SO LONG and I need everyone to read this book!
It is just unBELIEVABLY relevant right now. A brilliant commentary on late stage capitalism and our current AI moment.
I’m still processing my thoughts, but if you’re a fan of Sanderson and Jemisin, I think this is absolutely the book for you!
I haven’t been this excited about a random Netgalley request in SO LONG and I need everyone to read this book!
It is just unBELIEVABLY relevant right now. A brilliant commentary on late stage capitalism and our current AI moment.
I’m still processing my thoughts, but if you’re a fan of Sanderson and Jemisin, I think this is absolutely the book for you!
August 31, 2026
First off, this book in my opinion, is largely ambitious, and I believe its push, and sales are riding off those proposed ambitions. As well as paid word of mouth from online book influencers, and its massive funding through kickstarter. Based off reviews, and background for the story/ series, I found out that this is the beginning of a Bollywood filmmakers attempt, at creating a massive south Asian inspired universe similar to Marvel, or Star Wars. With the aspiration of creating expanded worlds, films, games, and all other branches of media for this franchise.
I love fantasy, science fiction, philosophical, and thought provoking literature, and from what I could stand to read of this, it didn't really offer any of that... I had been seeing massive hype for this book a couple weeks all over social media before its launch last week. Whereas the premise, story, and aspect all had intrigued me, I DNF'd the book at around 100 pages, and the whole story is only about 350. I usually give a book up to 50 pages before making the call to call it quits, but this book I pushed a little further in hopes that it would give me more than it did in any way.
I am all about slow burns, and build up, if it's rich in detail, character development, and world building. This book seemingly had none of that. Everything is very vague in terms of character, and world description. Outside of vague history, and explanation of the circumstance in the current moment. The book is full of made up, south asian inspired terminology, and words, that is thankfully accompanied by a name section, and glossary in the back to refer to. Which is great, because again, the book does a terrible job at describing characters, how they look, or even really much about them after their introduction.
There's more description in the actions, and movements of the characters, than the actual characters, or the developments of the characters themselves. The only decent thing I feel like this book did in the 100 pages I read, was setup the events of the proposed trials. Outside of that, I was literally forcing my self to continue on, in hopes that the story was going to get better, or if it
would actually make me feel anything for the characters. This book is like Avatar, wrapped around a proposed big brother, technology, see all, surveilance shell.
Im not really sure who this book is for, but for someone who loves all the proposed themes of the book, Sci Fi, and Fantasy, as well as philosophy, and any bit of thought provoking qualities, this book just didn't do it for me. I give it 2/5 stars based solely off book cover and premise alone.
I love fantasy, science fiction, philosophical, and thought provoking literature, and from what I could stand to read of this, it didn't really offer any of that... I had been seeing massive hype for this book a couple weeks all over social media before its launch last week. Whereas the premise, story, and aspect all had intrigued me, I DNF'd the book at around 100 pages, and the whole story is only about 350. I usually give a book up to 50 pages before making the call to call it quits, but this book I pushed a little further in hopes that it would give me more than it did in any way.
I am all about slow burns, and build up, if it's rich in detail, character development, and world building. This book seemingly had none of that. Everything is very vague in terms of character, and world description. Outside of vague history, and explanation of the circumstance in the current moment. The book is full of made up, south asian inspired terminology, and words, that is thankfully accompanied by a name section, and glossary in the back to refer to. Which is great, because again, the book does a terrible job at describing characters, how they look, or even really much about them after their introduction.
There's more description in the actions, and movements of the characters, than the actual characters, or the developments of the characters themselves. The only decent thing I feel like this book did in the 100 pages I read, was setup the events of the proposed trials. Outside of that, I was literally forcing my self to continue on, in hopes that the story was going to get better, or if it
would actually make me feel anything for the characters. This book is like Avatar, wrapped around a proposed big brother, technology, see all, surveilance shell.
Im not really sure who this book is for, but for someone who loves all the proposed themes of the book, Sci Fi, and Fantasy, as well as philosophy, and any bit of thought provoking qualities, this book just didn't do it for me. I give it 2/5 stars based solely off book cover and premise alone.
August 29, 2026
DNF @ 25%.
I couldn’t tell you who, what, when, where, or why. Literally nothing about this books characters, plot, or world, because it was just so confusing!
I did get an alc and the narrator was phenomenal. I would listen to him read a grocery receipt. I highly recommend doing an immersive read of this story, should you choose to pick it up. I think a written copy is a must for the glossary that’s hopefully included!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance listener copy in exchange for an honest review.
I couldn’t tell you who, what, when, where, or why. Literally nothing about this books characters, plot, or world, because it was just so confusing!
I did get an alc and the narrator was phenomenal. I would listen to him read a grocery receipt. I highly recommend doing an immersive read of this story, should you choose to pick it up. I think a written copy is a must for the glossary that’s hopefully included!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance listener copy in exchange for an honest review.
August 6, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy. This world is hard to get the hang of at first but so worth it! Vivid descriptions, an exciting story, time travel, mystery, philosophy, social commentary. I will definitely be keeping up with this series and will want to reread this when the next one comes out as well! Hugo Weavings narration was perfect!
March 2, 2026
I deeply enjoyed how this novel combines technofeudalism with epic fantasy, and how it creates its own science around predicting the future. My first read was a blaze through a wild, new world. My second read was about discovering all the layered ideas I'd missed. Not sure which was more fun.
July 27, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster Audio, and the authors for this advanced listening copy.
First of all, how could it end like that??? Second, so much happened in this book, and yet it flew by. There’s still so much more that *needs* to happen that it felt like no time went by at all. There is a chance that listening to it (vs reading visually) made it feel like a breeze. Third, the downside of listening is that I didn’t get a glossary. The authors did a beautiful job of throwing you into this universe and building the world around you as if you’d been there all along. The upside to this is that you feel fully immersed in the story. The downside is that there are no explanations for their world’s terminology. I wish I could have read this immersively, referring to the glossary when needed. I also wish that I knew how to spell any of the words the authors have conjured into being.
That being said, I absolutely loved listening to this story. Hugo Weaving’s voice is absolute perfection! I want him to read every fantasy and sci fi book to me from now on. The clear narration! The emotion! The gravitas! His voice is a beautiful instrument that he wields masterfully.
I could tell after only a few chapters that I was going to want to read book 2, but the way it ended really solidified that for me. I need answers! I need to know what happens next! The authors created characters who are so vividly different from one another, but are brought together by seemingly chance encounters that build upon each other until we start to see the bigger picture. As I listened, I felt like I was just taking the story in rather than being aware of connecting to the characters. When things started to happen to them, I found myself feeling for them more than I expected. The authors did a wonderful job of crafting characters you want to root for, and root for them I did until the end. It’s killing me that book 1 hasn’t officially been released yet and I’m already yearning for book 2. Not to mention, I have no idea how many books will be in this series! If each book goes through as much as this one, I imagine it will be at least 3 books total.
Dear authors, please keep these books coming as quickly as you can! And please list all of them on NetGalley so that I can read them even quicker!
🎧 narrated by Hugo Weaving
First of all, how could it end like that??? Second, so much happened in this book, and yet it flew by. There’s still so much more that *needs* to happen that it felt like no time went by at all. There is a chance that listening to it (vs reading visually) made it feel like a breeze. Third, the downside of listening is that I didn’t get a glossary. The authors did a beautiful job of throwing you into this universe and building the world around you as if you’d been there all along. The upside to this is that you feel fully immersed in the story. The downside is that there are no explanations for their world’s terminology. I wish I could have read this immersively, referring to the glossary when needed. I also wish that I knew how to spell any of the words the authors have conjured into being.
That being said, I absolutely loved listening to this story. Hugo Weaving’s voice is absolute perfection! I want him to read every fantasy and sci fi book to me from now on. The clear narration! The emotion! The gravitas! His voice is a beautiful instrument that he wields masterfully.
I could tell after only a few chapters that I was going to want to read book 2, but the way it ended really solidified that for me. I need answers! I need to know what happens next! The authors created characters who are so vividly different from one another, but are brought together by seemingly chance encounters that build upon each other until we start to see the bigger picture. As I listened, I felt like I was just taking the story in rather than being aware of connecting to the characters. When things started to happen to them, I found myself feeling for them more than I expected. The authors did a wonderful job of crafting characters you want to root for, and root for them I did until the end. It’s killing me that book 1 hasn’t officially been released yet and I’m already yearning for book 2. Not to mention, I have no idea how many books will be in this series! If each book goes through as much as this one, I imagine it will be at least 3 books total.
Dear authors, please keep these books coming as quickly as you can! And please list all of them on NetGalley so that I can read them even quicker!
🎧 narrated by Hugo Weaving
September 2, 2026
Wowie Kazow. Shabash. High art!!!
Edit: did a second read Sept 2-8, 2026
I had no idea what was happening before but i think I got most of it on read #2. This book and universe are fucking genius. It’s a feat of every level of art to pull off a book like this. GRRM level brain. Wow wow wow. Desi people are the best.
Edit: did a second read Sept 2-8, 2026
I had no idea what was happening before but i think I got most of it on read #2. This book and universe are fucking genius. It’s a feat of every level of art to pull off a book like this. GRRM level brain. Wow wow wow. Desi people are the best.
August 26, 2026
This fusion of science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy is quite the unique tale. I had the pleasure of listening to Hugo Weaving's narration and enjoyed it immensely. His voice and the storytelling captivated me. This is a thought provoking story I won't soon forget and will definitely listen to again. I look forward to what's in store next.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
September 2, 2026
I can agree with reviews on both sides. On the pro side reviews that call this the most audacious bit of world building they have read. On the con side, the story collapses under it's own weight.
I appreciate the complex and very relevant questions this book asks. My biggest issue is the action-movie sequences that are scattered throughout. IMHO, these sequences are overdone and more important, are not required and in fact act to distract from the importance of the questions being posed.
I appreciate the complex and very relevant questions this book asks. My biggest issue is the action-movie sequences that are scattered throughout. IMHO, these sequences are overdone and more important, are not required and in fact act to distract from the importance of the questions being posed.
August 8, 2026
Rating: 2.5 / 5
Format: eARC and ALC via NetGalley
MAYA: Seed Takes Root is a sci-fi fantasy story with very deep world building, brimming with politics and unique species. Although I enjoyed the world, this was a very challenging read because of the amount of new terminology. The authors have a note at the beginning to expect this, but I did not expect to have an accompanying glossary with over 160 entries. This slowed down the story for me and my progress in the book because I had to constantly lookup words to clearup my own confusion.
I was able to access the book’s website, which had more detail, such as visuals of the species and world. While this was very helpful, this is the first time I’ve ever needed to do this for a book to get a better experience from it. This story was too ambitious by building a world and terminology to the point of complicating things so much it became distracting and stalled the story progression.
I think the authors wanted this to be not just a book from the beginning, but a franchise. This is evident with plans to expand MAYA into film, games, and graphic novels while the first book is still not fully released. I believe having those large ambitions lead to constantly expanding the world by thinking it would make it worth all those ventures. Unfortunately the constant expanding did not improve the story enough for me and overall it was a deterrent from my experience.
This was just the first book in this universe though, so I’m hopeful the future books focus more on the story and progressing it, rather than further expanding this already bloated terminology. While I had access to both the eARC and ALC, because of the challenges I experienced with the book, I mostly used the eARC. The narration I did listen to though was done well.
Thank you, Authors Equity and Simon & Schuster Audio, for providing me with this book and audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Format: eARC and ALC via NetGalley
MAYA: Seed Takes Root is a sci-fi fantasy story with very deep world building, brimming with politics and unique species. Although I enjoyed the world, this was a very challenging read because of the amount of new terminology. The authors have a note at the beginning to expect this, but I did not expect to have an accompanying glossary with over 160 entries. This slowed down the story for me and my progress in the book because I had to constantly lookup words to clearup my own confusion.
I was able to access the book’s website, which had more detail, such as visuals of the species and world. While this was very helpful, this is the first time I’ve ever needed to do this for a book to get a better experience from it. This story was too ambitious by building a world and terminology to the point of complicating things so much it became distracting and stalled the story progression.
I think the authors wanted this to be not just a book from the beginning, but a franchise. This is evident with plans to expand MAYA into film, games, and graphic novels while the first book is still not fully released. I believe having those large ambitions lead to constantly expanding the world by thinking it would make it worth all those ventures. Unfortunately the constant expanding did not improve the story enough for me and overall it was a deterrent from my experience.
This was just the first book in this universe though, so I’m hopeful the future books focus more on the story and progressing it, rather than further expanding this already bloated terminology. While I had access to both the eARC and ALC, because of the challenges I experienced with the book, I mostly used the eARC. The narration I did listen to though was done well.
Thank you, Authors Equity and Simon & Schuster Audio, for providing me with this book and audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
August 9, 2026(soft) DNF @ 30%
The narrator is fantastic, and I think that's what kept me going for as long as I did. I also thought the action was well done, and the underlying story was interesting, but there was simply too much to process. I think this is the type of story that is best read rather than listened to (and also the kind of story where a glossary would be fantastic). I restarted this 3 times (all while listening at 1X), and still couldn't get a handle on all the names and terms.
I will likely reread this once the book is out because the story is super interesting. But the amount of world-building and jargon thrown at you is too much for me to process auditorily, even with such an enchanting narrator.
I received this audiobook from NetGalley; all opinions are my own.
The narrator is fantastic, and I think that's what kept me going for as long as I did. I also thought the action was well done, and the underlying story was interesting, but there was simply too much to process. I think this is the type of story that is best read rather than listened to (and also the kind of story where a glossary would be fantastic). I restarted this 3 times (all while listening at 1X), and still couldn't get a handle on all the names and terms.
I will likely reread this once the book is out because the story is super interesting. But the amount of world-building and jargon thrown at you is too much for me to process auditorily, even with such an enchanting narrator.
I received this audiobook from NetGalley; all opinions are my own.
July 1, 2026
“A spark ignites a flame. A flame starts a fire, a fire becomes an inferno. A chain reaction is beautiful, but even more so is the spark’s innocence.”
An extremely ambitious book and future series! Philosophically heavy in a good way.
”An unsettling truth coiled around his heart: somewhere, the flutter of a wing had, indeed, altered the direction of the wind.”
Things I liked: The middle third of the book is where the meat of the story takes place! I really enjoyed it and appreciate the huge scope and world building shown. The story was interesting and kept me wanting more and more answers about the strange world.
”His heart seized. There was no Daddu.”
Things I didn’t like: The beginning of the book was a little weak and made getting into the story a little difficult. I feel like the concept of Maya wasn’t explored as well as I’d like but I’m sure it’ll be developed a lot better in the coming books.
”All he had seen was the shape of life on Neh. It did not have to be the only shape. It could be better.”
In all, I think this series will shape up to be really good or really bad. The scope of the story is massive and very ambitious, I just hope it isn’t overly so. Looking forward to what comes next. On to the next!
An extremely ambitious book and future series! Philosophically heavy in a good way.
”An unsettling truth coiled around his heart: somewhere, the flutter of a wing had, indeed, altered the direction of the wind.”
Things I liked: The middle third of the book is where the meat of the story takes place! I really enjoyed it and appreciate the huge scope and world building shown. The story was interesting and kept me wanting more and more answers about the strange world.
”His heart seized. There was no Daddu.”
Things I didn’t like: The beginning of the book was a little weak and made getting into the story a little difficult. I feel like the concept of Maya wasn’t explored as well as I’d like but I’m sure it’ll be developed a lot better in the coming books.
”All he had seen was the shape of life on Neh. It did not have to be the only shape. It could be better.”
In all, I think this series will shape up to be really good or really bad. The scope of the story is massive and very ambitious, I just hope it isn’t overly so. Looking forward to what comes next. On to the next!
March 25, 2026
A meticulously constructed world that I can't wait to dive further into! As suggested, the words through repetition, took a shape of their own. A second read will likely make me love it more! I will happily follow wherever Zain and Anand take us, both, within Maya and outside of it.
May 26, 2026
Five stars, obviously. I say this knowing this is the kind of claim that ages badly. But right now, it is the best novel I have ever read.
I spoke to my friend Sarah, who had also read it, and we pretty much agreed on all our favorite scenes, passages and ideas. And boy, there are hundreds.
This is a book with an insane number of ideas. Every page has a scene, a moment, a creature, a sentence that I know I am going to remember for years to come. Like Rick and Morty, but serious and intense as if The Hitchhiker’s Guide were written by Dostoevsky.
Most literature is about the seven sins. It is about the forces that pull us apart from within. The ones we aspire to, the ideas larger than us, and the ones we carry in our bodies and minds from the time we were apes or fish. Maya is about these kinds of truths. It makes some of the most amazing ideas I have ever come across visceral, like something physical.
I absolutely loved how Zen parables meet cutting-edge science and classical philosophy inside a restless, breathless story. I did wish it slowed down more, because I loved it each time it took a breath. Or three breaths. I don’t mean this as a criticism exactly. Or maybe I do. I kept wanting to stay inside some of these pauses longer. Many times I felt like the book had just handed me a whole novel’s worth of awe in a page or a scene, and then the very next moment, dragged me by the wrist into the next one.
The first couple of chapters made me think that was what the novel was about. I had skipped summaries and all the noise around it on social media, etc., because I didn’t want it to bias my reading. Which is what I wish everyone could get: the pleasure of revelation and surprise. Sarah already knew what the book was about because she had done a lot of “research” before backing it.
Spoilers and ruined surprises don’t annoy her as much as they annoy me. And the way the book is structured, every few pages, there’s at least a small revelation, if not a full-fledged twist.
So anyway, the next part might contain a few spoilers.
The moment when the winged fruit’s journey is broken by Yachay! What a cool idea. How subtly it is laid out. What a beautiful entry for the hero.
I’d say the same about Ayn’s entry. When Yachay runs into her in the forest for the first time and ends up giving her up to the vanaars. So atmospheric. What a kickass entry for the book’s best character. Blood on her mouth. Gave me goosebumps. I’d love to ask the authors if that’s a deliberate homage to Princess Mononoke, which, as different as it is from Maya, feels like a spiritual cousin.
And before someone gets mad at that comparison, I don’t mean it in the lazy “Asian influence” way. I mean they both understand that nature is terrifying and sacred and that people are nature too, but can be more. Maya just gets there through an alien point of view, which makes it feel even more human. Ayn is the character I would have followed into a completely different book. I kept waiting for her to come back whenever she was gone, so I really hope there will be more of her in the next installment.
I used the gloss a lot for the first chapter, less and less by the second, and by chapter three I'd basically stopped. Turns out you don't need it at all. The meanings land as you go, and the slow figuring-out is part of what makes the world feel alien in the first place. I'd never seen any of these words before, which was probably a good thing. The one exception was rakshasa, from D&D and Magic. Here it is rakshasi and it means something pretty different. Skip the gloss. Just read.
I have too many favorite scenes to write about here, and I am too blown away, too overwhelmed, too jumpy from all the ideas still firing in my head to start listing my scenes out and “reflecting” on them. Just so that others here can tell me how much their list overlaps with mine (and Sarah’s), here’s a quick list in no particular order: Kshar interrogating Yachay under the influence of venom, Moha saying she wants to be a city, Ayn waiting at the cop station for days quietly, every time Baluta shows up, the three breaths prediction mechanism, Johnji finding the lotus (because he loves blue), the writ of aadri thing on the elevator, all the banter between Tarkash and Ayn, and obviously, Fulcrum.
The other idea I am absolutely in love with is the people-and-environment Rube Goldberg logic through the novel. What is the word for deliberately choreographed dominoes made of people and consequences that take years to show up? A few significant scenes in the book are about the bad guys, who are uniquely bad, predicting outcomes and engineering perfect cascades that lead to the desired result by basically using people as parts of their Rube Goldberg machines. This is not what the book is about, though.
The book is about the fact that we are vulnerable to being captured by doomscrolls and desires. You could say the book is about nature and narrative, and those who have so much data that they don’t need to deploy armies to make people behave the way they want them to. They can invisibly alter beliefs and then alter behavior at scale. Wait, I am compressing too much.
I need to sit with this longer. I am writing this messy first-impressions review as a kind of commitment to myself to return later and write out a more careful review. I will read the book again, obviously. I hope the second time is just as good.
I think it is going to be better.
I spoke to my friend Sarah, who had also read it, and we pretty much agreed on all our favorite scenes, passages and ideas. And boy, there are hundreds.
This is a book with an insane number of ideas. Every page has a scene, a moment, a creature, a sentence that I know I am going to remember for years to come. Like Rick and Morty, but serious and intense as if The Hitchhiker’s Guide were written by Dostoevsky.
Most literature is about the seven sins. It is about the forces that pull us apart from within. The ones we aspire to, the ideas larger than us, and the ones we carry in our bodies and minds from the time we were apes or fish. Maya is about these kinds of truths. It makes some of the most amazing ideas I have ever come across visceral, like something physical.
I absolutely loved how Zen parables meet cutting-edge science and classical philosophy inside a restless, breathless story. I did wish it slowed down more, because I loved it each time it took a breath. Or three breaths. I don’t mean this as a criticism exactly. Or maybe I do. I kept wanting to stay inside some of these pauses longer. Many times I felt like the book had just handed me a whole novel’s worth of awe in a page or a scene, and then the very next moment, dragged me by the wrist into the next one.
The first couple of chapters made me think that was what the novel was about. I had skipped summaries and all the noise around it on social media, etc., because I didn’t want it to bias my reading. Which is what I wish everyone could get: the pleasure of revelation and surprise. Sarah already knew what the book was about because she had done a lot of “research” before backing it.
Spoilers and ruined surprises don’t annoy her as much as they annoy me. And the way the book is structured, every few pages, there’s at least a small revelation, if not a full-fledged twist.
So anyway, the next part might contain a few spoilers.
The moment when the winged fruit’s journey is broken by Yachay! What a cool idea. How subtly it is laid out. What a beautiful entry for the hero.
I’d say the same about Ayn’s entry. When Yachay runs into her in the forest for the first time and ends up giving her up to the vanaars. So atmospheric. What a kickass entry for the book’s best character. Blood on her mouth. Gave me goosebumps. I’d love to ask the authors if that’s a deliberate homage to Princess Mononoke, which, as different as it is from Maya, feels like a spiritual cousin.
And before someone gets mad at that comparison, I don’t mean it in the lazy “Asian influence” way. I mean they both understand that nature is terrifying and sacred and that people are nature too, but can be more. Maya just gets there through an alien point of view, which makes it feel even more human. Ayn is the character I would have followed into a completely different book. I kept waiting for her to come back whenever she was gone, so I really hope there will be more of her in the next installment.
I used the gloss a lot for the first chapter, less and less by the second, and by chapter three I'd basically stopped. Turns out you don't need it at all. The meanings land as you go, and the slow figuring-out is part of what makes the world feel alien in the first place. I'd never seen any of these words before, which was probably a good thing. The one exception was rakshasa, from D&D and Magic. Here it is rakshasi and it means something pretty different. Skip the gloss. Just read.
I have too many favorite scenes to write about here, and I am too blown away, too overwhelmed, too jumpy from all the ideas still firing in my head to start listing my scenes out and “reflecting” on them. Just so that others here can tell me how much their list overlaps with mine (and Sarah’s), here’s a quick list in no particular order: Kshar interrogating Yachay under the influence of venom, Moha saying she wants to be a city, Ayn waiting at the cop station for days quietly, every time Baluta shows up, the three breaths prediction mechanism, Johnji finding the lotus (because he loves blue), the writ of aadri thing on the elevator, all the banter between Tarkash and Ayn, and obviously, Fulcrum.
The other idea I am absolutely in love with is the people-and-environment Rube Goldberg logic through the novel. What is the word for deliberately choreographed dominoes made of people and consequences that take years to show up? A few significant scenes in the book are about the bad guys, who are uniquely bad, predicting outcomes and engineering perfect cascades that lead to the desired result by basically using people as parts of their Rube Goldberg machines. This is not what the book is about, though.
The book is about the fact that we are vulnerable to being captured by doomscrolls and desires. You could say the book is about nature and narrative, and those who have so much data that they don’t need to deploy armies to make people behave the way they want them to. They can invisibly alter beliefs and then alter behavior at scale. Wait, I am compressing too much.
I need to sit with this longer. I am writing this messy first-impressions review as a kind of commitment to myself to return later and write out a more careful review. I will read the book again, obviously. I hope the second time is just as good.
I think it is going to be better.
October 2, 2026
4.5/5 stars:
Wow. I think it’s going to take me a long time to fully wrap my head around the masterpiece of a novel that is MAYA. MAYA somehow managed to build one of the most complex, beautiful worlds I’ve ever read while giving the reader a window in what our own future holds.
MAYA, is this world’s version of super AI. It is a vast expanse of special trees that people tether to for work, entertainment, escape, personal endeavors, etc…. Every person is required to tether to MAYA at least once a day, or they risk terrible illness and withdrawal. MAYA is so powerful it can predict the future years and years in advance, and determine how one small change in the present moment can alter the course of history. The Divya, or the high council in charge of these changes, have the present and future in the palm of their hands. To become a Divya, people perform in the Divya trials. Anyone who enters them does not remember what happens within, and only one winner is announced.
This book is full of profound storytelling, some of the best worlds-building I’ve ever found, action, bad ass sci-fi technology, and likable characters. It is an intense dialogue on the power of AI, prediction, and the power we hold when we are not slaved to technological advances. As I read the book, I found myself struggling to determine how I would categorize this book, but there is no one specific genre or style that can fully encapsulate this world.
If someone were to read this book, I would warn them that the world takes some time to be built, and that names of places, people, and things will take some time to become familiar. It is well worth it to fight through the initial confusion.
The only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 is because this book is set up to be a trilogy, and the book came out a month ago, so there is a lot of loose ends that will be left hanging for a good while longer. Will definitely re-read closer to the release of book 2.
Wow. I think it’s going to take me a long time to fully wrap my head around the masterpiece of a novel that is MAYA. MAYA somehow managed to build one of the most complex, beautiful worlds I’ve ever read while giving the reader a window in what our own future holds.
MAYA, is this world’s version of super AI. It is a vast expanse of special trees that people tether to for work, entertainment, escape, personal endeavors, etc…. Every person is required to tether to MAYA at least once a day, or they risk terrible illness and withdrawal. MAYA is so powerful it can predict the future years and years in advance, and determine how one small change in the present moment can alter the course of history. The Divya, or the high council in charge of these changes, have the present and future in the palm of their hands. To become a Divya, people perform in the Divya trials. Anyone who enters them does not remember what happens within, and only one winner is announced.
This book is full of profound storytelling, some of the best worlds-building I’ve ever found, action, bad ass sci-fi technology, and likable characters. It is an intense dialogue on the power of AI, prediction, and the power we hold when we are not slaved to technological advances. As I read the book, I found myself struggling to determine how I would categorize this book, but there is no one specific genre or style that can fully encapsulate this world.
If someone were to read this book, I would warn them that the world takes some time to be built, and that names of places, people, and things will take some time to become familiar. It is well worth it to fight through the initial confusion.
The only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 is because this book is set up to be a trilogy, and the book came out a month ago, so there is a lot of loose ends that will be left hanging for a good while longer. Will definitely re-read closer to the release of book 2.
August 4, 2026
I listened to the audiobook of this and I must say: Hugo Weaving was the perfect choice for narrator. He is both soothing and captivating, and breathes life into the story and lends to its richness and complexity.
It takes about 45ish minutes of listening time to get a true grasp of what is happening, and even then the book has a lot of details that feel like they will be important further along in the series but do not necessarily have much meaning in this book.
The novel itself is poetic. It is part mythical, part sci-fi… and entirely original and imaginative. I loved the world-building of the social structure, invented terminology, philosophical ideology, and tech of this society. It was honestly immersive and I felt like I could see it all vividly in my mind. Doing something on this scale in only 416 pages is mindblowingly impressive and I tip my hat to the authors.
Be sure to grab a copy when it’s released on August 25, 2026!
Thank you to Anand Gandhi, Zain Memon, AE Titles, and Simon & Schuster Audio for providing this ALC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
It takes about 45ish minutes of listening time to get a true grasp of what is happening, and even then the book has a lot of details that feel like they will be important further along in the series but do not necessarily have much meaning in this book.
The novel itself is poetic. It is part mythical, part sci-fi… and entirely original and imaginative. I loved the world-building of the social structure, invented terminology, philosophical ideology, and tech of this society. It was honestly immersive and I felt like I could see it all vividly in my mind. Doing something on this scale in only 416 pages is mindblowingly impressive and I tip my hat to the authors.
Be sure to grab a copy when it’s released on August 25, 2026!
Thank you to Anand Gandhi, Zain Memon, AE Titles, and Simon & Schuster Audio for providing this ALC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
September 3, 2026
✨✨BOOK REVIEW✨✨
Maya Seed takes root perfectly blends Sci-fi and Fantasy! I am a sucker for a sci-fi book and the creatures in this book a unique and nothing like I’ve seen in any recent books I’ve read!
I also really enjoyed the world building it is very expansive! And there is a map at the beginning of the book so you can always figure out where the characters are which I appreciate! I also loved the ammount of illustrations throughout the book!
My heart broke for the MC Yachay witnessing him lose his grandfather and figure out a lot of things about his life were a lie really hit hard.
If you are looking for a beautifully written book with games and trials, an all seeing tree and creatures that will have you reminiscing on the Star Wars books then you will enjoy Maya Seed Takes Root!
Maya Seed takes root perfectly blends Sci-fi and Fantasy! I am a sucker for a sci-fi book and the creatures in this book a unique and nothing like I’ve seen in any recent books I’ve read!
I also really enjoyed the world building it is very expansive! And there is a map at the beginning of the book so you can always figure out where the characters are which I appreciate! I also loved the ammount of illustrations throughout the book!
My heart broke for the MC Yachay witnessing him lose his grandfather and figure out a lot of things about his life were a lie really hit hard.
If you are looking for a beautifully written book with games and trials, an all seeing tree and creatures that will have you reminiscing on the Star Wars books then you will enjoy Maya Seed Takes Root!
Read
August 16, 2026📚 If you love prose heavy, lit fic and want a sci-fi setting, this might be a book for you. This read like season one of a miniseries, there was so much prose, world building and description to establish the the stage the characters and plot are a little lost for me.
🗯️ ‘Oh, you trust me, but you seldom listen to me’
🗯️ ‘Chaos is the natural state of the universe’
🗯️ “Laughter can sound like mockery when trust hasn’t set its roots”
🗯️ ‘A spark ignites a flame. A flame starts a fire. A fire becomes an inferno. A chain reaction is beautiful, but even more so is the sparks innocence’
🗯️ 'If dreams inspire hope, nightmares inform vigilance'
🎙️Hugo Weaving ⏳ 11 hours + 58 min
In the end, I just don't think this book is for me.
🗯️ ‘Oh, you trust me, but you seldom listen to me’
🗯️ ‘Chaos is the natural state of the universe’
🗯️ “Laughter can sound like mockery when trust hasn’t set its roots”
🗯️ ‘A spark ignites a flame. A flame starts a fire. A fire becomes an inferno. A chain reaction is beautiful, but even more so is the sparks innocence’
🗯️ 'If dreams inspire hope, nightmares inform vigilance'
🎙️Hugo Weaving ⏳ 11 hours + 58 min
In the end, I just don't think this book is for me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 192 reviews