Overall I enjoyed this, but it wasn't my favorite in the series. The pacing was all over the place, and there are huge time jumps.

The Blind King's Wrath is the third and final book in Ashok K. Banker's The Burnt Empire Saga trilogy, which began in 2019 with his Upon a Burning Throne and continued with last year's A Dark Queen Rises. This series is the third SF/F adaptation of the Mahābhārata I've read, and honestly, it had through two books left me a bit ambivalent about what I thought. The first book appeared to be adapting straight a lot of the material from the original epic, with a few major changes here and there, most notably the existence of a clear persistent evil antagonist, and it worked and intrigued...but still it was hard to tell what exactly was Banker's vision in changing the original. The second book switched things up entirely to setup other characters and other parts of the world for the story's conclusion....but really lost the story's forward momentum and wasted a lot of time with expendable characters. So I was curious to see what Banker would do with his final book, and what his vision really was now that everything was setup.

Unfortunately, after reading this final book, I'm still not sure what Banker was aiming for in adaptation - because this book condenses the major events of the epic into two parts, spends a lot of time with characters we barely or don't know and don't really matter, and has pretty much every major revelation fall flat. Major characters from the prior books who you'd think - both from their setup there and the source material - would be a factor are entirely absent, the potential conflict between sides who are equally at fault is replaced by a battle of good vs evil, and certain plot twists just never are given time to actually matter before they're then reversed for good. There seem to be two attempts at changes to adjust this work to the modern audience - both in changing the genders/sexualities of various characters and in trying to shoehorn in a theme of the evils of Empire and importance of governance - but both come too late to really make a difference and this book is too short for them to feel like much more than throw-ins. The result is a book that will not impress those with knowledge of the source, and probably won't inspire those new to it either.

More specifics after the jump:


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
The Players in this Epic have been set, and the conclusion begins, with the powerful Avatar Krushni - reincarnation of the daughter of the evil and powerful Jarsun - planning a confrontation to ensnare her father and put an end to his terror once and for all. Now the adopted powerful daughter of the King of Gwannland, she plans a Wedding Contest to draw all the power people on the continent - both from the Burnt Empire and from without - to her....a contest that requires such feats of Martial Ability so as to be impossible for ordinary men and women.

But those attending are not Mortal Men and Women - ranging from Jarsun himself, to the Hundred heirs of the Burnt Empire, to the powerful Guru Dronas, to the Five - the surrogate demigod children of Shvate, all of whom have incredible and wondrous powers. When these powers all compete for one contest, for Krushni's hand, the seeds of a war the likes of which the continent has never seen will be sown.

This devastating war is all part of Krushni's plan to finish off her father....but Jarsun is no fool, and he has plans and allies of his own, including the Krushan Emperor Adri himself, as well as secrets that, once unleashed, will put him exactly where he's always dreamed - on the throne of the Burnt Empire.....
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When authors do retellings and adaptations of classic stories, there's usually some kind of spin done on these stories, such that the stories are changed enough to become something new - to send a new message, or to take place in a different type of setting, etc. So to use the other two retellings/adaptations of the Mahābhārata I've read, you have Sangu Mandanna's Celestial Trilogy, which shifts the story to YA Science Fiction (with some Fantasy elements) and tells a slightly different version of the story of family and cycles of vengeance; or you have Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Palace of Illusions, which tells a feminist version of the tale from the perspective of Draupadi/Panchaali (whose role in this version is played by Krushni).

But Banker's retelling can't quite figure out what type of retelling its going for - with the series at times being near straight retellings of how there are five exiled kids of one heir and a hundred (and one) of another that go on collision courses towards war, among many other things....and at other times, the story being one of these familiar characters being instead placed onto a battle of clearly good (Krushni/Vessa) vs evil (Jarsun). There are two very notable changes: First, the book changesthe mostly male cast of the original to one made up of a mix of men, women, and non-binary cast members (similarly the entirely straight cast of the original features a number of queer characters), something which is very welcome. Second, the story tries to introduce here a story of a Conquering monstrous Empire in the Burnt Empire vs the Caring about the people heroes in The Five....but this theme comes up only in the Five's internal dialogue and comments and comes too late in this trilogy to really make much impact, especially as its swallowed up entirely by the big war and never becomes relevant. There just isn't enough time or pages here for that theme to go anywhere.

And really that's the same for a lot of things in this book, to the point where it feels like a lot of the plot threads of the original that are made to feel important in book 1 are completely dropped, making it seem like the author was in a rush to get to a conclusion. So remember how many pages were devoted to Kern, the first son of Karni by the Sun God, who was clearly fated to fight The Five as prophesied by the God Inadran (and to fight her child Arrow in particular)? No he never shows up here and that whole plot never happens (whereas of course that's a huge tragic part of the original). Remember Adri's unfaithful wife and his duplicitous brother-in-law who scheme to take over his power politically? Yeah they're not here either. Instead we get a book that is devoted to three things - a TON of recap as if you forgot the prior two books, framed as the in-the-know characters getting everyone else up to speed; the Wedding Contest and how that sets up the major conflict; and the major war and battle between all the forces.

And while those things have their moments - and Banker makes them suitably dramatic and epic, with massive heroes and villains doing incredible feats throughout - there just aren't the characters or plot twists to make those moments meaningful. Of the new characters, The Five are excellently done, and I enjoyed them immensely, but their opposite number, the Hundred, are just spoiled brat assholes....who never actually do anything relevant in the end. Moreover, all the plot twists that occur here are ones that are either obvious or just incredibly underwhelming - for example Jarsun's major plans are based upon secrets that are not only known to the reader since book 1....but have also been blatantly known by the protagonists since book 1, so I just kept expecting there must have been something else because the reveal was such a let down. Similarly, the way Jarsun's plans are foiled is by him openly admitting his schemes in front of the characters' he has bamboozled with them, which is just incredibly stupid, so of course it falls apart. And even the final confrontation between Jarsun and Krushni, which should be super dramatic, is just incredibly anticlimactic.

The first book in this series set up a major conflict between the children of Adri and Shvate, the Hundred and the Five, with Kern supporting Adri's children, just as in the original epic - with the major addition being that of Jarsun as a malevolent side force with his own schemes. This book shows that Banker lost interest in that idea and was more interested in Krushni vs Jarsun, which is fine...except that it made most of book 1, and most of book 2 (everything featuring Tyrak) utterly superfluous and pointless. It's as if Banker wanted to retell the entire epic, and then decided halfway through he wanted only to focus on this one small conflict, except he'd already set up the entire epic and had to ditch it all. Which just makes this series feel utterly pointless and I really just cannot recommend it.

Alas.

**Content/trigger warnings will be listed at the end**

The star ratings on this are a bit of a mess for me. I would rank it somewhere between "didn't like it and it was ok" which is a 2.5 for me (but bumped it to a 3).

So this is the last book in a trilogy (where I thoroughly enjoyed books 1 & 2) and it somehow very much felt like a middle book. It's all re-cap and set-up and almost no action or resolution. I mostly spent the whole book thinking, "ok, but when is something going to happen?!" There is a time-jump in the beginning of 15 years but the only thing that really changes is that some of the children from book 2 are now teenagers and ready to fight.

I will say the bad guy (Jarsun) was giving me all the Jafar vibes and that was actually amusing. He's described as having "hatchet-sharp" features, tall & thin, and with a forked tongue and slit pupils. If you know, you know. I was fully expecting a cool snake staff, but alas.

The characters were all fine, but the POV (10+) switched every chapter, so I wouldn't say this was character driven because you really didn't get a chance to connect with a character before the POV was switched. Quite a few characters were avatars of gods but that wasn't really explored and powers that could have been awesome were barely used.

There was quite a bit of LGBTQIA+ representation, which was just part of the world, and I thought that was cool.

Possibly nitpicky, but for a book called "The Blind King's Wrath," the blind king (Adri) was barely in it. He shows up exactly 4 times, 3 of them POV chapters and once at the very end to make some decrees (I guess this was his wrath?).

The last 100 pages are the big battle scene, but the ending still feels very abrupt. There's a resolution to the immediate problem but doesn't explore it at all, it was more "from now on, we will be a better empire." I wouldn't have minded an epilogue with a bit more fleshing out of how things went on from there and some more characters' lives and how they turned out.

I'm not mad at this book, I'm just disappointed.

CW/TW: death, suicide, loss of a parent, violence, blood & gore, battle scenes

War and revenge come together in the conclusion to The Burnt Empire Saga. This novel melds the two previous books together with a buildup to an action packed finale!
First let me just say that this is the only fantasy series I have ever finished! I’m very bad at reading series. I never complete them. But I read all three of these novels back to back. This world is so captivating to delve into and I really hope we get more books in this series. Maybe a second trilogy? Fingers crossed!
This book took a very long time for any action to start though. It was literally 70% build up through drawn out scenes and unnecessary dialogue. But the end was very entertaining! It was worth the wait. The descriptions of the battle were so vivid! That’s one of the things I love about the author’s writing, it’s so very engrossing. Once you start reading it’s hard to stop! I also loved all of the queer rep in this book!
One of my problems was that there were characters that were important in the first book that I would’ve loved to have seen in the conclusion. It doesn’t sit right with me that I have no idea what ever happened to certain characters like Geldry, Vida, or Kern. Also, I didn’t get enough Adri in this book. It’s called The Blind King’s Wrath and yet The Blind King only got three pov chapters. One more thing, I thought that the book could’ve benefited from an epilogue. I’d like to know how things are going after the dust settled.
Although I was left with some questions at the end, I enjoyed the conclusion to my favorite series! I hope to read more by Ashok K Banker! And my fingers will stay crossed for more books set in Arthaloka!

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for this arc. My opinions are all my own.

TW: murder, graphic animal death

This was my most anticipated read of the year and unfortunately I didn't love it the way I loved the first book. Apparently this was supposed to be a much longer series and it had to be condensed. I think that I would have enjoyed it if it had been able to go the way the author intended. It felt like there was a lot crammed into this last book but at the same time it felt like it took forever to get to the event that we were waiting for. While the ending was satisfying in one way, there were also some things that were left open ended in a way that felt incomplete because there were so many things mentioned at the end that were not explored and that would have been nice to see.
I still love Upon a Burning Throne and will still keep making my friends read it!