BLOG TOUR Review: Kavithri by Aman J. Bedi

I received a review copy of this book for free from the publisher via as part of the blog tour organised by TheWriteReads. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

Series: Ghosts of Ethuran #1
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: May 2024
Pages: 448

Synopsis

Meet Kavithri. Outcast. Underdog. Survivor.

Kavi is a Taemu. Her people, once feared berserkers and the spearhead of a continent-spanning invasion, are the dregs of Raayan society. Their spirits crushed. Their swords broken. Their history erased.

But Kavi has a dream and a plan. She will do whatever it takes to earn a place at the secretive mage academy, face the Jinn within its walls, and gain the power to rise above her station and drag her people out of the darkness.

Except power and knowledge come at a cost, and the world no longer needs a Taemu who can fight. So they will break her. Beat her down to her knees. And make her bleed.

But if blood is what they want, Kavi will give them blood. She will give them violence. She will show them a berserker’s fury.

And she will make them remember her name.

An no-holds-barred progression fantasy and empowering South Asian epic – featuring necromancers, djinn and visceral action sequences. An underdog story like no other, Kavithri is perfect for fans of Fonda Lee, Tamsyn Muir and John Gwynne.

My Thoughts…

Recently I’ve been finding it hard to be completely drawn in by a book, fully losing myself in the world and deeply caring about its characters. I’m not sure whether that’s due to this particular period of time in which life feels too full or if I’ve been unlucky in mostly picking up books that left me lukewarm, but I was almost resigned to it happening again. And then I met Kavithri.

Let me start by saying this is absolutely not a book to pick up if you have a hard time with explicit violence as there is a lot of it here. Although it is essential to the story and none of it feels gratuitous, it was hard for me to stomach a few scenes and I definitely had a difficult time with certain passages in the final third. I’ll leave some more detailed content warnings under the spoiler tag below if you wish to check them out.

With that out of the way, I was truly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I went into it knowing very little – having mostly only read the blurb when I applied for the blog tour and, as often happens, promptly forgotten about it. I was really glad for that though because it allowed me to be surprised multiple times as I was reading and slowly getting to know the characters and the world they inhabit.

The world of Kavithri is a brutal, South-Asian inspired fantasy with a dash of dystopia, which I would personally class somewhere between grimdark and epic. The world is complex yet clearly drawn, with information being slowly conveyed in different ways without ever descending into long infodumps. The magic system is particularly intriguing even though it took me a while to wrap my head around it, but I won’t go into any more detail as this slow discovery was an essential part of my enjoyment of this book.

I loved how the author managed to build up towards the explosive ending, carefully balancing worldbuilding, character growth and plot with very satisfying results. I was completely glued to the pages, finding it really hard to put this down. Honestly, I was quite surprised that this was a debut as it shows some really impressive writing skills and maturity – if this is the first, I can’t wait to see what this author does next!

Kavithri is an amazing main character: her resilience and resistance in the face of adversity is truly admirable, determined as she is to achieve her goals through sweat, tears and blood if needed (quite literally) in spite of everything life keeps throwing at her. For Kavithri is not only poor, she is a Taemu – the lowest of the low in this world’s caste system – and for that she is reviled and abused at every turn. The treatment of the Taemu in general is brutal, as they have been consistently dehumanised, subjected to multiple forms of violence and genocide, and used as scapegoats very deliberately by those in power who seek to maintain systems of oppression in place in ways that at this particular historical moment are achingly very familiar.

This is where the book shines particularly for me, as it addresses some very timely themes revolving around inequality, oppression and the legacy of colonialism. Despite everything, Kavi keeps going and she tries desperately to hold onto her values as she does so, to keep the flame of kindness and empathy alive. Yet, there is also space for rightful rage, challenging these systems that annihilate people with no real reason if not the accumulation of power. Even in the most desperate of times, there is hope to be found in community and solidarity and – at the very least – in freely choosing to live and die on one’s own terms for what one believes in. The road to breaking free of social conditioning is long and arduous, and cannot be travelled alone.

Aside from the sometimes excessively explicit violence (which is entirely personal sensitivity), the only other thing I would say is that I would have appreciated having a glossary as there were a lot of unfamiliar terms which I sometimes struggled to keep straight in my mind – not a huge deal, but it would have been helpful!

This is a truly powerful read and one of the best fantasy novels I have read in quite a while. I suspect that Kavithri and the rest of these colourful, complicated, contradictory characters will stay with me for a while yet, and I look forward to seeing how their stories will progress in the next book in the series.

CONTENT WARNINGS

This book contains explicit violence and gore, including mutilations, death and violence against animals. There are also mentions of genocide, classism, discrimination, necromancy, bullying, medical negligence, suicide.