Dustria
by Madhurika Sankar
Enter a world of fantasy, forbidden love, political intrigue and magic with Dustria.
Sula, a gifted, young surgeon, makes a terrible mistake and flees to Dustria, a land of monsters and broken things, to punish herself. But she doesn’t learn from her mistakes until she is presented with a situation where she must choose between confronting her past or continuing down an unexamined path.
Set within a vibrant world of warring Kingdoms, backstabbing Immortals and the tension between love and magic, Dustria is an intense intertwined mania wrapped around the cerulean blue liquid which changed the world.
Dustria is for the questioning reader, examining themes in unrequited love, substance abuse, sexual diversity, and enduring friendships. It’s set against the backdrop of a constant exploration of the question: Can we redeem ourselves from terrible mistakes made in our younger years or do we, sometimes, need to find alternate ways to frame our lives in order to grow as individuals and forgive ourselves?
4 out of 5 fairies
This was an interesting story, with a unique world, rich world-building, and a variety of characters and storylines entwined within. There is an extensive list of characters at the start, but if that’s not your thing, you can easily skip over it. My biggest complaint is that there are a lot of characters that you need to keep track of, as well as their corresponding story lines. After reading the list of characters, I initially felt overwhelmed, and it wasn’t until I was quite deep in the story that I felt comfortable with everyone I needed to remember. I appreciated that each chapter told you which character you’d be following, but it could get a little overwhelming at times to keep track of everyone, who they were, and their place in the hierarchy of the world. That said, my favorite part was probably the magic system and the world that Sankar has created. Although it’s a bit dystopian, it has strong fantasy vibes.
Amazon | BookBub | Apple Books | Goodreads
Madhurika Sankar is an impact investor and writer whose work appears in The Hindu, India’s leading national newspaper, in the Op Ed. She’s an engineer with a Master’s in Biotechnology from Columbia University, New York.
Madhurika’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals and magazines such as Litro, The Bangalore Review, Rock & Sling, The Avenue, The Bombay Review, Visible, Firewords and the Landing Zone, among others.
Her debut novel, Dustria, a fantasy, is forthcoming in the Fall of 2024 from the Canadian publisher of speculative fiction, Vraeyda Literary. She lives in Chennai, India.
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