Title: The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne #1)
Author: Sara Hashem
Genre: Fantasy, fantasy romance, political fantasy
Publisher: Orbit
Publication Date: 2023
Format: Hardcover, Illumicrate Edition
Length: 480 pages

Read if you like: Egyptian-inspired fantasy, enemies to lovers, significant political intrigue and scheming, forbidden/lost magic, hidden royalty, the ultimate slow burn, morally grey characters

Rating: 

I want to start this review by saying this might be my favourite fantasy of the year. I didn’t know a whole lot about this book when I received it in my Illumicrate subscription, but it exceeded every expectation that I had and completely sucked me in, leaving me feeling like I couldn’t come up for air until the story was finished.

Sara Hashem created a lush, intricately detailed world and political landscape and combined it with the perfect execution of a well-paced plot, beautifully flawed characters, and some of my absolute favourite tropes. She delivered the narrative with a heavy dose of humour and wit, and the banter that volleyed among the loveable cast had me simultaneously laughing and, at one point, sobbing. 

I can’t say enough good things about this inventive debut, I found it compulsively readable and was so invested that I devoured it in just a few days. It’s an incredibly promising start to a series and I’m already desperate to see where Hashem will take things from here. 

Fair warning: there may be minor spoilers in the below review. Proceed with caution.

The Book: The Jasad Heir by Sarah Hashem

The Jasad Heir is a political fantasy that follows Sylvia (also known as Essiya), the rightful Heir to the Jasad Throne. Jasad was a nation of magic-wielding people before it was targeted by surrounding territories in a devastating genocide that left the royal family and its peoples wiped from existence in a series of horrifying attacks. 

Essiya escaped what was known as the Blood Summit at the start of the violence without anyone knowing, but was then immediately captured by a disgraced general from the Jasad army named Hanim. Hanim held her for five years, subjugating her to thinly veiled torture in an attempt to train her to overcome the cuffs that her grandparents placed on her to suppress her magic. Her goal was to have Essiya lead a new nation of Jasadi, serving as Hanim’s puppet and providing her with the power she needed to reunite the Jasadi that remained. Essiya eventually killed Hanim when she simply could not take the torture any longer and adopted the name Sylvia as she attempted to build a new life for herself where she could be free of the Jasadi heritage that always threatened her.

Sylvia attempts to form a life in a small village called Mahair, even accidentally forming friendships despite her aversion to any connections that might hold her in place, but when a series of unfortunate events results in her murdering a Nizahl soldier, her entire world is quickly thrown into a new direction. Nizahl was the nation that drove the height of the violence against Jasad and had been rounding up Jasadi for execution ever since. Sylvia thinks she’s covered her tracks with the help of her friends Marek and Sefa until a panic-inducing situation that sees a small child injured in front of her results in her releasing her magic in front of none other than the Nizahl Heir, Arin, as she stabs the man responsible, who happens to be another Heir. Arin immediately steps forward and claims Sylvia as his champion for the upcoming Alcalah, a grand competition that pits a competitor from each of the four remaining territories against each other in the hopes of fame, riches, and glory. While the announcement saves Sylvia from the other Heir’s wrath, it also requires her to fight for the Supreme who was responsible for the deaths of her entire people. 

After much bargaining, Sylvia accepts Arin’s proposal for her to be his champion in the hopes that in the end, she will finally be free from the hunt she has so desperately evaded since escaping the slaughter of her people. As Arin and his soldiers train her for the coming trials though, she learns more and more about her family and begins to question everything she thought she knew about what led to the massacres in the first place. Before the trials are complete, Sylvia and Arin both will be forced to face the ugly nature of all of the prejudices they have carried, of the political organizations that surrounded them at every turn and what they are and are not willing to do to win.

The Review

I loved everything to do with this book so it’s difficult to even know where to start, but perhaps I’ll dive into the world-building first.

There was a lot to learn when it came to the territories, their peoples, and the political organizations and structures. The Jasad Heir is an Egyptian-inspired fantasy, so there are certainly familiar aspects, but there was also a lot of world-building that created this unique cultural environment that was full of both beauty and oppression. I didn’t find the world-building itself to be overly daunting, it just took a little time to get everything down, but once I did, it felt like a lush universe that I couldn’t wait to explore.

The plot was magnificently designed, and I never really knew where things were headed, which I loved. Everything unfolded slowly and carefully, and as things were revealed I was consistently surprised and enthralled with where things were headed directionally. I felt like there was so much tension about the different paths that could unfold that by the end I literally could not put the book down. There were so many twists I didn’t predict, and I feel like there are still several gaping mysteries that I can’t wait to see explored in the subsequent books.

Essiya and Arin were also some of my absolute favourite characters that I’ve encountered in a long time. Essiya is far from a saint, despite what so many of those around her want her to be. She’s been forged by trauma over and over again, and her inclination towards self-preservation is completely understandable, but seeing her grow to remember who she was, and her willingness to only accept the pieces of herself she’d lost once it was the right move for her was a development that I loved. 

Arin was a unique approach to a MMC in an enemies-to-lovers trope as well. He was actually an enemy, which sounds silly but to be honest, for the overwhelming majority of the book it seemed like he was legitimately going to kill Essiya. Even when his softer sides showed, it never felt like they were on the same side, more just that they had this intangible connection that they couldn’t get past. 

I also loved the way he was painted as a sort of introverted perfectionist and the way that Essiya came to know his quirks and the specific meanings they held. The cold calculation from earlier in the book is translated as she comes to know him, and while he is calculating and eternally scheming, you see the vulnerability that drives those behaviours and just love him even more for it. He was a nicely complex and multidimensional MMC and I loved seeing him slowly unfold. 

The pacing of the action was very well executed, and I loved that there was so much humour and wit woven into the character’s personalities. It felt like the perfect contrast to what was otherwise often very dark and complicated subject matter. I can’t emphasize enough how immersive the reading experience was for this book, it just felt like every single aspect came together so fluidly and perfectly to create this world and story and characters that I simply didn’t want to leave.

In case it isn’t obvious yet, I loved The Jasad Heir. I thought it was a brilliant start to a series, and with such an explosive ending that I absolutely cannot wait until the second book in the series is released. This was one of my favourite books of the year, and one you’ll catch me recommending heavily for quite some time.