Title: Star-Touched Stories

Author: Roshani Chokshi

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Publication Date: August 7th, 2018

Those who have read my reviews of The Star-Touched Queen and A Crown of Wishes know that I adored them, so when I found out about Star-Touched Stories, my heart leapt with excitement. Now that I’ve read it, I can say it lived up to my expectations.

Disclaimer: This review is based on the ARC I received from the publisher as part of the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Star-Touched Queen and A Crown of Wishes, so reader discretion is advised. I strongly recommend reading The Star-Touched Queen and A Crown of Wishes before reading Star-Touched Stories.

Each of the three stories blends fantasy and romance and builds upon the world from TSTQ and ACOW.

Death and Night is the swoony tale of courtship between Maya and Amar from The Star-Touched Queen, taking the reader back to when they first met lifetimes ago. The two immortal beings Death and Night are hated and feared by many in the mortal realm and Otherworld alike for their dark natures, but in each other they find beauty, passion, and possibility.

Even knowing how things would end, I still felt the thrill of suspense and tension. I read this story already when it was first released by itself as an e-book novella, and I savored it again on the second read-through. It makes me want to reread The Star-Touched Queen with fresh eyes and attend to the dramatic irony that will appear now that I have the backstory.

Poison and Gold centers on Aasha, the curious and earnest vishakanya from A Crown of Wishes, taking her from supporting role to the forefront. As she is adjusting to her new life in the mortal realm among humans, she is offered a position as Gauri and Vikram’s Spy Mistress. However, the title and responsibility must be earned and approved by the current Spy Mistress of Bharata, Zahril, who is mysterious, proud, and nearly impossible to please. Driven by ambition and the desire to help her friends, Aasha rises to the challenge of training under Zahril, and in the process, finds herself and first love.

If you like puzzles and brain teasers, this story is riddled with them (pun intended). Poison and Gold is a coming-of-age story that gives Aasha satisfying depth and development as she evolves from rough and awkward stone to gleaming polished gem.

Last but not least is Rose and Sword, which alternates between past and present as a young princess of Bharata-Ujijain (alternatively called Bharat-Jain on the back cover, I’m assuming the inconsistency will be corrected in the final version) named Hira listens to her grandmother tell a tale about Gauri’s wedding night, when she discovers Vikram is fated to die that very night. Just as she is about to give up hope, Gauri is presented with a chance to bring Vikram back from the dead, but taking it means braving the dangers of Naraka as well as the faults of the human heart. With great love comes great risk, and Gauri must make a choice about whether the risk is worth the outcome.

Alternating between Hira and Gauri’s points of view creates both distance and immediacy, outsider perspective and embodied subjectivity, revisiting familiar characters with a fresh gaze. The balance between the two makes room for meta-commentary not only on the events of the story but also folkloric storytelling itself as an art and oral tradition. This story is at once bittersweet and hopeful and makes for the perfect goodbye to the world of the Star-Touched stories (if this is indeed the end).

Conclusion: All three stories are written with Roshani Chokshi’s signature gorgeous, evocative prose, rendering the characters’ emotions palpable. When people joke about authors whose grocery lists they would read, Roshani Chokshi is one of the authors who comes to mind for me. If you’ve read TSTQ and ACOW, don’t miss out on Star-Touched Stories.

Content/Trigger Warnings:

• Aromisia: There are a few places where the celebration of romance veers into positioning it as universal for humans/above other kinds of love/relationships, which is probably the most notable flaw about the book.
• Binarism: Although this collection features an f/f romance in Poison and Gold, and queerness is referenced in the stories, it’s still restricted to the context of binary genders, men and women, which was disappointing to me as a non-binary reader.
• Transmisogyny: There’s a scene in Aasha’s story where Vikram dresses up as a harem wife to sneak in because men aren’t allowed in the women’s quarters, and it’s played for laughs like it was in A Crown of Wishes (mentioned it in my review there as well). Although Vikram does argue that dresses are more comfortable, the act of crossdressing is still framed as a humorous and deviant thing to do to scandalize other people. This framing fails to recognize the violence of gender policing/cisnormativity and the danger that trans/non-binary/gender-nonconforming folks face for defying those norms.