Exclusive: Tasha Suri tells us about writing The Oleander Sword
By Daniel Roman
August has been a great month for fantasy books, and it’s about to get even better. Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne was a standout fantasy release of 2021, combining a South Asian inspired fantasy world with a sweeping sapphic romance story, nature magic spiced with body horror, and a tale of imperial rebellion. It was a great book. and now Suri is back with the sequel, The Oleander Sword.
Born in London to Punjabi parents, Tasha Suri studied English and creative writing at Warwick University and is now a cat-owning librarian in London. A love of period Bollywood films, history, and mythology led her to write South Asian–influenced fantasy. After releasing the standalone Wuthering Heights remix What Souls Are Made Of in early July, Suri is returning to the world she created in The Jasmine Throne with book 2 in her epic fantasy series The Burning Kingdoms. The Oleander Sword is a romantic epic that pulls no punches; you can check out our review of the book here.
To mark the release of The Oleander Sword, Tasha Suri stopped by WinterIsComing to talk about The Oleander Sword, her work, favorite books, and more.
DANIEL ROMAN: How would you introduce The Burning Kingdoms to readers who’ve never heard of your books before?
TASHA SURI: I often describe The Burning Kingdoms as a South Asian history inspired series about two morally grey lesbians who work together to set an empire ablaze. But a longer way of describing it might be to call it a multi-point of view epic fantasy with South Asian historical worldbuilding, creepy-beautiful plant magic, prophetic names, sacrifice, and a multitude of women carving their own paths out of blood and magic and ambition in a brutal patriarchal world.
DR: Can you talk a little bit about how Priya and Malini came into your life? What was the genesis for The Burning Kingdoms?
TS: I began by wanting to write another story in the same world as my previous series THE BOOKS OF AMBHA duology, so in a way I started with Malini and Priya and their love story. I wanted to explore power in fantasy, so it made sense to reach for the archetype of the imprisoned princess – who isn’t as weak as she appears – and the apparently uninteresting maidservant who carries a boatload of secrets with her. Of course, the plot quickly swept out of my control into something vaster and stranger than I’d intended it to be. When I told my publisher about my idea, my editors picked up on that and encouraged me to make a bigger, more epic, wilder story… and I thought hey if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this. And I went all out, creating a new world and a new trilogy.
DR: The Jasmine Throne featured its fair share of both fantasy and romance, but the romantic vibes are dialed up to a whole other level in The Oleander Sword. Without getting into spoilers…the letters. Can you talk a little about how you decided to include those?
TS: I’ll also try and avoid spoilers but… frankly, I wanted to bring Malini and Priya’s yearning to the forefront, even when a significant amount of Plot ™ was happening that stopped me from focusing on them. The letters allowed me to delve into that.
Love letters are also a well established part of lesbian history, a form of sapphic self-expression. It felt right to weave them into Malini and Priya’s love story.
DR: There’s a strong undercurrent in the various magics in the world of The Burning Kingdoms that a hard sacrifice is required for them to work, often one that’s not initially obvious. Can you talk a little about this idea, and how you layered it into the different kinds of magic in your world?
TS: Magic requiring sacrifice is an established concept in so much fantasy fiction, so I admit I’m borrowing from the hard work of writers who’ve come before me. In terms of how I layered in sacrifice – I’ll simply say that all the magic systems reflect some form of my complicated feelings on faith and religion and what they often demand from their believes. I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions on the intent, there.
DR: So I know we can’t talk about them too much, because spoilers. But we learned a bit more about the yaksa in The Oleander Sword, with a few pretty mind-blowing twists. Was the history of the yaksa and the Age of Flowers something you laid out before working on the series? (And will we learn more about them in book 3?)
TS: I definitely planned a lot of details around the yaksa and the Age of Flowers before diving into writing The Burning Kingdoms. No spoilers, but we’ll certainly learn a bit more about the yaksa in book 3!
DR: Before writing The Burning Kingdoms, you published a different series: The Books of Ambha duology. How has working on The Burning Kingdoms been different from your last series?
TS: The Books of Ambha duology drew from the Mughal Empire for inspiration, and was also tightly focused in a lot of ways – on romance, on good people, on trying to be good in a difficult world. The Burning Kingdoms drew more broadly from history and mythology, and has a lot more characters – it’s felt like a harder project in a lot of ways, and very ambitious for me, but it’s also been really rewarding.
DR: The Oleander Sword isn’t the only book you’ve had come out in 2022 – there’s also What Souls Are Made Of, your Wuthering Heights remix. What made you decide to write a retelling of Wuthering Heights, and what was the process like of doing it while you were still in the middle of writing this other huge series?
TS: I love Wuthering Heights, and remixing it in What Souls Are Made Of gave me the chance to use it as a vehicle to talk about a lot of things that matter to me: the complex, important multicultural history of Britain and of South Asians in Britain; the atrocities of the nascent British Empire; and the difficulties of overcoming familial trauma that’s exacerbated by geopolitical forces outside of your control. It was fun!
It was actually really fun to put my brain on a different creative track, so to speak. I’m not sure I’d like to juggle two different projects at the same time again, but I definitely think I benefited from letting my brain ‘breathe’.
DR: You’ve talked before about how The Oleander Sword was difficult to write partially due to pandemic stress. Are you now into the writing on The Burning Kingdoms #3? And if so, how are you feeling about nearing the end of the trilogy?
TS: I am writing the third book! I’m afraid pandemic stress hasn’t entirely released my brain, but I love this series and it’s really been a comfort (as well as a source of stress in its own special way).
DR: What books have you read and loved lately? (Extra points if they’re new releases!)
TS: So many! The gothic horror Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid and the wonderful sapphic epic The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi were particularly wonderful, though.
DR: If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three books, what would they be?
TS: Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey, A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore and The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan. I realise between the epic fantasy, the horror-infused literary fiction and the historical romance that’s an odd mix, but it’d keep me well entertained!
DR: Tasha, thank you so much for joining us to talk about your work!
The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri is out now from Orbit Books! You can find our full spoiler-free review here:
Next. The Oleander Sword is a sweeping sapphic fantasy epic. dark
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