Third Daughter is the first book in the Dharian Series, which is described as Bollywood steampunk.  Please.  Like I’m not going to read a romance that’s advertised as Bollypunk.   This book is uneven in quality, but interesting in concept and it left me eager to read the next two installments (Second Daughter and First Daughter).

Third Daughter takes place in a fantasy universe, on a continent that loosely resembles India.  Aniri, the third daughter of the queen of Dharia, is very excited about her upcoming eighteenth birthday.  As soon as she turns eighteen, Aniri will be free to marry for love, and she has her heart set on the charming courtesan Devesh.  With two weeks to go before the birthday, the prince of the northern country Jungali shows up and asks for Aniri’s hand, hoping that the marriage will secure peace between Dharia and Jungali. By the way, Jungali is a mountainous, snowy land.  No jungles.  The name is a lie.  Meanwhile, there are rumblings of trouble from the island nation of Samir, which happens to be Devesh’s homeland.

Aniri’s mother tells Aniri that she won’t force her to get married, but she wants her to pretend to consent so that she (Aniri) can go to Jungali with the prince and be a spy.  There are rumors that the Jungali are building a flying machine and if this is true then the machine might be a threat to Dharia.  So off Aniri goes, with her maid, her bodyguard, and her fiancée, leaving her lover Devesh behind.

Aniri can’t wait to finish her spying gig and get back to Devesh so she can leave this life of politics.  Aniri is every teenage girl at her worst.  She adored her dad and she can’t wait to run off and avenge his murder instead of studying politics, because politics is SO BORING.  Her mom does not understand her!  Her bodyguard will not let her have any fun!  No one gets her except her boyfriend!  Theirs is a forbidden love, but someday he will take her away from all this and show her the world!

But Aniri is plausibly flawed.  Let’s be honest – we’ve all been there.  I believe in Aniri, but I don’t want to hang out with her.  Meanwhile, Prince Malik is too perfect.  He’s noble, he has emotional wounds that make you want to hug him, he’s supportive of Aniri, he thinks she great even though frankly she’s really not, he’s considerate, and he likes poetry.  Where Devesh oozes charm, Prince Malik exudes sincerity.  It’s pretty obvious how this love triangle is going to play out.

This book is action-packed from the get-go but I didn’t feel like it was truly underway until about half way through the book, when we get a detailed lesson in politics.  The three countries are interdependent.  Dharia is large, mostly flat, and good for growing stuff – it’s the breadbasket.  Jungali has valuable raw materials.  Samir is the center of technical know-how.  Dharia has controlled the situation and been the dominant country for a long time, and it makes sense both that the other two countries would be growing restive, and that Aniri would be clueless about her level of privilege.  One of my hopes for future books is that we can have less “Aniri grows up” and more political intrigue, because the tensions between the three counties were much more interesting than watching a rather selfish, spectacularly naïve girl grow up.

At this point you might be wondering why I’m giving the book a B- given that one main character is hopelessly irritating and the other is a hopeless paragon.  Well, Aniri does grow up.  But more than that, the world building, the visuals, and the action are stunning.  Please make this a movie, or a big budget TV series.  And no whitewashing the cast.  I adore the concept of steampunk that isn’t based in Victorian England.  I love the fight scene on the airship.  I guess that’s a spoiler, but come on.  As soon as the author mentioned an airship, we all knew there would be a fight scene on it, and IT WAS EPIC.  It’s a pretty over-the-top book but that matches the Bollywood aesthetic – everything is very lavish, and emotions run high at all times.  I love that Aniri tries climbing out of her window in seductive clothing, but it’s too cold, so next time she wears her PJs.  I love the banquet with the dancers, and the jewlery that Aniri’s maid makes her wear, and the swordfighting, both practice and real. 

Warning:  The book seems to resolve the romance, but then out of nowhere THERE IS A CLIFFHANGER.  I am so annoyed because now I have to drop everything and read the next two books, which I don’t have time to do.  Damn you, Bollypunk crack!  It will be interesting to see how the next books play out given all the tensions between Aniri and her sisters, Aniri and her mother, and the fact that the romance with Prince Malik is made possible not so much because Malik is great as because Devesh is a scumbag.  No, that’s not a spoiler.  Devesh’s scumbaggery is immediately apparent. 

By the way, on the author’s website she has a link to her pinterest page.  The first images are of her book covers but scroll down, people, scroll down.  Steampunky goodness EVERYWHERE.  I love the corset/sari combinations – gorgeous.

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