Book-Thirsty Thursday: Markswoman, Rati Mehrotra

Rati Mehrotra’s Markswoman ends up as an engaging, well-built world with an intriguing new heroine as well as some timely plot points.

Full disclosure here: most of the time when I get sent books, like Markswoman from Harper Voyager, I basically skim the plot points presented to me and mostly focus on the top line, figuring that I’ll get the general gist from there and can go on from there. On the back cover of my advance copy, I saw the words “An Order of magical-knife-wielding female assassins” and effectively said “Say no more, I’m in.” I have my biases just like anyone else, and Markswoman hits a lot of those biases: interesting world, interesting heroine and an oddly timely story.

First up, we have the world. Had I read further on the back cover, I would have learned before diving straight in that Markswoman is, in fact, “postapocalyptic” (and yes, that’s a direct quote from the back cover). Without that foreknowledge, though, the book’s successive reveals about about the nature of Asiana actually work better. You can probably make your guesses just based on the name of the world we’re in, but you don’t know for certain. Moreover, I enjoy Mehrotra’s willingness to have her characters question her world. Things don’t exactly work the same, and there isn’t a consistent narrative about how the world came to be. The story doesn’t explain too much, but it doesn’t explain everything, either. Somehow, I expect that we’ll find out still more in the anticipated second book.

Second, Kyra ends up being interesting — not just because she struggles with some huge losses, but because those huge losses do not solely define her. She doesn’t have a family for a specific reason, and that still affects her years later, but she’s able to do things outside that. She actively influences the events of the story instead of letting them happen to her. And she’s not incredibly and inexplicably competent despite her youth. Good, not great is more how I’d describe her when it comes to combat skills. Since she’s a teenager, that actually works. Does her storyline play out in a fairly formulaic manner? Absolutely. But because Kyra herself is a thought-out character, she is still compelling enough to carry it through.

Third comes the timeliness. Without spoiling as much as I can, there’s a specific part in which there’s almost, but not quite, a love triangle, and Kyra has to deal with some unwanted advances that escalate quickly. In the era of Time’s Up and #MeToo, it feels relevant that being a powerful character — for all her need of training, Kyra still wields a magical knife and can fight people pretty well — doesn’t magically mean she’s exempt from any issues of patriarchy.

I briefly mentioned before that most of the plot beats are quite familiar. The book basically centers around the orphan who loses her mother-figure, only to be replaced with the equivalent wicked stepmother, who must be defeated. But hey, there’s also sci-fi involved, and the variants on how everything plays out make it still a fascinating, quick read. (This reviewer knocked it out in less than 24 hours and may have said “where’s the next one, please?” to herself and the book.)

Next: 30 books to read in the first half of 2018

If you’ve been finding yourself a little bereft of fantasy lately, then give Markswoman a try.