Mehta is a new-to-me author and in my opinion that creates some sort of wall around the reader in order to avoid colossal disappointments. Well, fortunately, both Mad Sisters of Esi and Mehta weren't a disappointment. On the contrary, I was truly engaged from the beginning and enjoyed every moment of this story.

This story had a lot of potential. The world was beautiful and concept of this was brilliant but it just didn't pan out in the end. It felt like the author didn't have a solid grasp on what exactly she wanted to say and that made everything feel a bit muddy. She tried to pack a whole lot of story into not a whole lot of pages. I think if she had trimmed this down a bit more and really focused on the aspects of madness and magic and the bond of family this could have been sensational. I will definitely give this author another shot because I think with a bit more practice she could be amazing.

I loved this magical, wonderful book. Especially as a sister...it tugged at my heartstrings and made me think about what a family is, how we search for love. The worldbuilding was incredible!

4.5 stars! i don’t think i’m smart enough to understand everything about this book but the world is so expansive and interesting and the characters are so fun i love all the relationships i just had a good time reading this !!

thank you netgalley for the arc!!

My expectations for this book were non-existent, but that's definitely not the only reason why it proved to be such a delightful read. Bittersweet and magical to the core, it explores the topics of sisterhood, family (found and biological both), stereotypes and even a person's purpose in life, at the same time unleashing a torrent of complex fictional concepts and otherworldly descriptions.

While I don't want to spoil too much about the plot, as I firmly believe this is one of those books best read without knowing too much, I'll say there is a thoughtful cadence to it, so it probably won't work for those looking for fast-paced action-packed adventure. It starts out slow and confusing and continues slow and vaguely less confusing, with readers exposed to various POVs, including among other things snippets of in-universe research and articles. Somehow it doesn't end up being annoying, but rather contributes to the immersion.

It's also perhaps not the best read for those who want all their questions answered and every little detail explained, since here some of it is just of the "mystery of cosmos" variety and you're free to fill in the gaps as you wish. But if you are in the mood for a convoluted, enchanting tale that plays out in the most inexplicable corners of an imaginary universe, this is your stop.

I like to think I read a wider variety of fantasy, but Mad Sisters of Esi made me realize I'm missing more weird, speculative fantasy. This was so strange and wonderful. I've seen the words "fever dream" in quite a few reviews, and that is the perfect description for how I felt reading this book!

This book is surreal, lyrical, and just the right kind of confusing. The worldbuilding is more about vibes, but it works. It's hard for me to let go of needing all the answers, but I was still able to enjoy the ride. I think this is a book that is best gone into blind

I will admit, it took a minute to settle into the rhythm of the writing style. Mehta mixes first person, second person, and even fictional scholarly texts with citations woven in. This adds to that fever dream feeling! It won’t be for everyone, but if you like your fantasy poetic, odd, and a little unhinged, Mad Sisters of Esi is worth the read.

Thank you, NetGalley and DAW, for an early copy in exchange for this honest review.

Rich, imaginative world told through beautiful prose at a languid pace. It took me a bit to get fully invested, but by about 20% I was hooked. You've got to be ready for things to just not make sense. I definitely see the Piranesi comp, and the style reminded me of Amal El-Mohtar as well (I haven't read Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler so I can't speak to that comp). Overall a beautiful that I enjoyed reading. It was a bit long for how slowly it went, so it is a commitment - but one that pays off.

MAD SISTERS OF ESI is an expansive novel of stories nested within stories, character parallels, and sisters doomed to be separated. It suggests that madness, a condition so feared by the people of Magali’s home, is just a label that gets slapped onto anyone who thinks different or sees the world differently. “Madness” is to Esi what “witch” was to women of previous generations who expressed a little too much autonomy for the patriarchy’s liking. The novel explores not just the stories of the two pairs of sisters, but the trajectory and transformation of a story, how it can scatter across the universe and find different forms, different iterations, from a single seed. At times, it was a little trippy, the way timelines converge and different versions of the same character are superimposed on each other, or the way visions bleed across time for only one character to see. That being said, I loved this book—a large chunk of the middle was so trippy that I got muddled, and it seemed almost to overtake the main narrative that was framing it, but once we returned to the “present” timeline of Myung and Laleh, it picked up again and things started to fall into place, putting everything in a slightly more recognisable context.

This book captured the art and magic of storytelling in a way that i haven't ever read before. Lush, emotional, and soulful, I loved each and every character that Mehta wrote out, and the way that you could feel everything the book had to offer. Most impactful, in my opinion, were the depictions of sisterhood, as they were not painted as perfect but always trying to be better.

I tend to be stingy with my 5-star reviews and this book earned it. It almost made me cry. The love the two pairs of sisters (Myung and Laleh) and (Magali and Wisa) have is so vast. At times the story was so heartbreaking, I felt like I wasn't just a reader, but a listener leaning my ear against the door as these stories are told. I felt drawn in and I had genuine compassion for the loneliness and empathy for the otherness. Also, the way Tashan describes space as a black sea and planets are just islands, brava! I loved this analogy, and it honestly made the book easier to understand.

We start the book in the belly of a whale, a cosmic whale that contains it's own world. There are two sisters, Laleh and Myung. Laleh is practical and Myung yearns for something more. They don't truly know anything of life outside the whale, other than they were created by the Great Wisa. When Myung leaves to explore the Black Sea and find the Great Wisa, the story really takes off. The narrative is told spread out amongst different POVs, journal articles, and journal entries. We mostly follow Myung as she searches for a way back to the whale and her sister. But what Myung finds is a story spanning centuries and how the love of two sisters created a universe.

I feel like I could rave about this book, but I really don't want to give away spoilers. Magali and Wisa are sisters by desire, not by blood. The found family aspect is done so well in this book. Wisa is presumably an orphan on Esi when Magali's grandfather takes her in. From there we learn about the madness of Esi and the festival of madness. Magali's community is what the book calls luddites, they don't condone the madness of Esi and cast out or even kill people who succumb to the madness. But is the madness truly bad or is it simply people who don't conform to the societal ideal of normal? I felt like Tashan really does a good job of wrapping complex topics into the narrative of the story.

If you like heartfelt science fiction and an interesting take on worldbuilding, I think you'll love this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and DAW publishing for the advanced copy, all opinions are my own.

I received this book from NetGalley for a review. I must disclose I didn’t finish this book, I got 74% through it before I stopped reading. This book is beautifully written, the story is moving, and normally I’d love something like this, but I couldn’t connect with it. I spent two weeks trying to get through it, which is an eternity in reading for me.

Like I said above, this book is beautifully written, I just couldn’t get into it. It reminded me of Piranesi and Cloud Cuckoo Land. The main character starts off in a huge, mysterious land, and we’re not sure how they got there or what is going on. I think if I read this at another time, I’d love it! I’m not sure what’s going on with me that this book didn’t move me.

Good Sci-Fi has the nifty skill of holding up a mirror to the human experience while the reader peers around the edges to the dark, unexposed places behind.

Mad Sisters is good sci-fi.

This is a twisty, mind bending tale of fables and family and what makes them. My entire time reading was spent with the disorienting sensation of clinging to the edge of the mirror. Understanding by the very tips of my fingers.

Critics of the Surrealist movement claimed that even the most bizarre artworks were still a product of being filtered through consciousness. That the thumbprint of the artist remained indelible on the surface of the canvas. Mehta tries hard here to erase these traces and the result is a beautifully rich and utterly alien universe.

Interspersed with the more character driven plot, world-building is provided by almost epistolary fictional academia. Little love letters of context to the reader in the form of journal articles and papers. If you were a fan of Susanna Clarke's 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell' then you will certainly appreciate this narrative style.

Quite apart from the wonderfully weird universe they inhabit (dream, create, mold), the characters themselves are achingly human. Their frustrations, losses and triumphs feel genuine and real.

Mad Sisters is a contradiction of a novel that just *works*. If you need your mind expanded, but to also feel held, feel seen, then you should read this book.

This book was so unique, from its formatting to its story. I loved the different types of writing interspersed throughout. It's a boggling story at times, and feels a bit like a fever dream, but it's also about family.

Oh my goodness, the prose of this book. There were several times I had to reread pages because I'd been paying attention to the words and language and not to actually comprehending them. One of my usual points when I'm discussing books with friends is whether or not the prose "lets you in", and this story lets you in and never pushes you back towards the surface.

The main characters (there are at least four) are also impressively drawn. A character may say to another "you're stubborn" or "she's stubborn", but we already know that because we've seen them being stubborn, in a scene not written only to show us they're stubborn. The characterization is intended to highlight the themes, though, so if you want characters that feel like someone you could know, use your judgment.

This is a book that would really benefit from rereading, in that 'read once for content, again for everything else' way you learn in high school. I picked up on some of the metaphors--and that's probably a deciding point on whether you'll like this book, whether you're okay with a story that's an extended metaphor--but I'm still not entirely sure what the ending is saying.

I did have a minor problem with the structure--I may have preferred switching back and forth between the pairs of sisters rather than spending 1/3 with one and then nearly the rest with the other, but that's personal preference and frankly I'm not sure changing it would have worked.

5 stars for the prose, 4 for everything else.

Life feels like it's been absolutely off the charts lately. Some of that is, of course, because of what's going on globally in politics. But on the other side, is that I've simply been rather unwell since the middle of May. So even though I got the arc for this book from NetGalley many months ago, it's come down to the wire when it comes to actually reading it and getting out my review. But maybe that was actually for the best? Somehow it feels like it was exactly the right time to read this absolutely incredible story by Tashan Mehta.

Mad Sisters of Esi starts by talking about how time and stories are circular rather than linear, and I think that both within the world of the novel and in real life, that this is true. While I do think that the sometimes mundane nature of modern life in a globally connected place space and time may feel linear, it's my view that time is certainly far more circular than most of us have the power to contemplate.

But the fact that we often perceive our time as incredibly linear is what I think lends this story some of its power. We travel through the black sea alongside all of the numerous characters that take shape within the narrative. We are also looking for our sister. We are also looking for the whale of babel. And while we go on that journey together with these characters, much like the characters, time loops around over and over again. We jump forward and backward and sideways in both directions. The reading experience is incredible and I'm not sure that I was expecting to feel this level of catharsis by the time I reached the end.

I love stories that play with character perspective and time in interesting ways, and Mad Sisters of Esi does those things. The author has crafted a situation actually where there isn't even really an end. Because even for us, with the time that we process as linear, death isn't just an end—for some people, it's not an end at all—it's also a beginning.

What an absolutely wonderful novel. I highly recommend it. I am in absolute awe.

Jung said, "The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach."

I could not stop thinking about this Jung quote as I read Tashan Mehta's masterpiece, Mad Sisters of Esi. Have you ever felt that you contained a universe inside you--that your ideas, feelings, and love were so enormous they were an actual universe bursting to be born-- while you simultaneously acknowledging that you are a small fleck of vulnerable tenderness in the vastness of the universe that contains you? No, just me? What about ruminating on the dichotomy of our identities being both individual and the collective concurrently? That we are both our own selves and also, ultimately, part of us only exists in the framework of our connections to our sisters, our parents, our lovers, our homes...

This book is not actually a poem, but it reads like a dream. Both Mehta's prose and her execution of the narrative is expertly constructed. I recommend reading this slowly, leisurely, rolling every sentence around in your mouth, savouring the perplexity and mystery that Mehta slowly unravels. There is a passage in this book about dreams where it as described as feeling "constantly on the cusp of something, just out of reach" and that is how it feels to be plopped down in the passages of the belly of the Whale of Babel, understanding that it is something profound and important but not quite understanding what is happening. The plot follows dream logic, where nothing is quite rooted in linear time or the laws of reality, not in the contents of story itself, nor in the telling. . The dream turns into a myth, which turns into memory, which turns into fairytales, which turn into madness, which turns into universes.

It is hard to talk about the plot of this story without spoilers, but I can promise that it all comes together beautifully. I fell deeply in love with each character and ached with love for my own sisters (not just the ones related by blood, but the ones who choose to belong to each other, even when paths diverge).

I recommend this book to folks who enjoyed Piranesi and the Night Circus! Thank you with my whole heart to Tashan Mehta and DAW for this ARC, I'm ready to read every single thing Tashan Mehta every writes.

4/5 stars
Recommended if you like: fantasy, lyrical writing, mirrored plotlines

This review has been posted to Goodreads as of 7/5 and will be posted to my review blog on release day!

While the narrative style is quite different, it reminds me a bit of the style in The Spear Cuts Through Water . Both focus heavily on lyricism and involve non-traditional (in the West, at least) narrative styles. The end result is a winding story that weaves between scenes and characters in an artful way. That being said, the book is quite cerebral in terms of tone, narration, and theme, so it can be hard to follow at times.

This story follows two plotlines, one with Myung + Laleh and another with Wisa + Magali. These stories are, in a way, mirrors of each other. Two sisters, one content with where they are and another who yearns for more. In both the sisters are close and any separation results in a strong desire to be together again. But Myung + Laleh are the only two people each other knows, they live in the whale of babel, while Wisa + Magali live on the island of Esi, famed for its festival of madness once every century.

The plot takes a while to get going, and kind of meanders for a bit once things kick of with Myung's adventure. We get to see Laleh and Myung when they're young, and then we get to see what life is like for them independently. Much of their 'youth' involves visiting the various worlds available to them in the whale and exploring the foliage and animals, language seemingly popping into existence as needed. Once Myung finally reaches the island of Ojda, a fabled ever-changing island where Magali is said to have spent the last of her days, we're introduced to a new character, Blajine. Even with a third character in the mix, the writing stays largely focused on the surroundings, so much of the first portion of the book is very descriptive about the characters' surroundings and the mental effects this has on the characters (especially on Ojda).

With Blajine in the mix, we start to see this push-pull tension, where Myung is desperate to get answers and Blajine knows she must cast Myung away from the island. Despite both of their 'quests' the two women are drawn to each other, so that their initial interactions are a cat-and-mouse game where both are the cat and both are the mouse.

Laleh, somehow, is viewing this in a dream, so we also get some of her thoughts and reactions to things. The island of Ojda also has ghosts of Blajine's ancestors, so we get some color commentary from them as well.

Once the second half of the story kicks in, the plot really picks up. Two sisters who grew up alone in a cosmic whale don't really have a lot to say, but two sisters who grew up on the island of Esi do, and that's where the second half of the story focuses. The ghost of Magali weaves her and Wisa's tale for the ghosts + Laleh, Blajine, and Myung. This story-within-a-story is vibrant and full of life and emotion, and really is the core of the book.

Magali grew up an only child raised by her grandfather, the golden child of her village on Esi, a community who shunned the magical 'craft' of the rest of the island, and guarded carefully against madness. Wisa is the younger girl Magali's grandfather adopts one day. While Magali is the golden child, Wisa is the one who runs through the forest and talks to the rivers and insects and birds. She's a wild thing, odd in the village, but so full of exuberance and honesty that she doesn't seem to care. I enjoyed seeing Magali and Wisa's relationship develop. The two become quite close to one another and end up exploring in ways that open the senses and mind. Jinn, a boy from town and Magali's ex-best-friend, also joins them and they become a trio. Magali is fiercely protective of her sister and would do anything to ensure she's safe and happy.

The story of Magali, Wisa, and Jinn is probably my favorite part of the book. It has a much more concrete plot, so it provides a bit of a brain break, and it's so full of color and thought and excitement it's hard to not want to know what comes next. That being said, we know from the start that the ending is tragic, or at least semi-tragic, Magali is a ghost, after all, and Ojda exists as a beacon for Wisa. So we know from the get-go that the two were separated and never reunited, at least in life. There is, after all, the afterlife to contend with.

While the story is about two pairs of sisters, mirrored stories, as I said above, it's also about memory and truth and remembrance. What's true in a cosmic whale that opens into an untold number of universes? On an island that descends into madness for one week every century? On an island that is ever-changing and with a painted sun? What is truth to the person who has their own narrative? To the person who can talk to the lizards and the trees just as well as to people? What is remembrance when anyone can reach the cosmic museum of memory, but every person's path is different? When not all memories are recorded?

Wow, this was absolutely stunning. Mad Sisters of Esi is high fantasy, and it’s mystical and lyrical and magical and ethereal. It's also like very few other modern books I’ve read (it gives me ancient mythology vibes though, tellings of how the world and its people came to be, interspersed with research that supports this), and honestly, it’s a work of art.

The story follows sisters, Myung and Laleh who inhabit the Whale of Babel, a universe in itself that floats through the black sea. Laleh is content to explore the many chambers of their universe, but Myung feels there is more out there, so she leaves the whale to find the people she dreams of. In doing so, she comes across the island of Ojda where we learn about another pairing of sisters, an island shrouded in madness once a century, and eventually, the secrets of the whale.

It is, as others have described, an absolute fever dream, but the most glorious, gorgeous fever dream you’ve ever experienced. You’re carried by the descriptions and the prose through a fathomless universe. Tashan’s imagination truly has no bounds and I was so happy to be along for the ride.

This isn’t exactly a disclaimer as I would have given the same review had anyone written this, but to give more context to the review, the author is my best friend’s best friend; she actually gets a very prominent mention in the acknowledgements. Knowing this and knowing them does give this so much additional depth to me, especially given the nature and subject of the novel - sisterhood, but not through blood. You can feel the bond and the love and the beauty and the intricate nature of these relationships that's not linear but is so real.

The pace is not fast, as you’d imagine it would be when a girl is trying to find her sister who has escaped from their whale universe, but it doesn’t drag. Instead your attention is demanded at every turn of the page by snippets of articles and research that build a wider world than the perspectives we’ve been given, while the chapters from the women’s perspectives are so rich and complex, but like floating through a dream.

"The space they are in is limitless and has boundaries, a feeling that is indescribable except to say that the edges of this space are mirrors-the space ripples endlessly through it, but you cannot."

There are times where, thanks to what is happening in the book, the reader joins the collective "we", you feel totally immersed in the narrative and part of something bigger than yourself.

"We pause here.
We sit down. We rest. We've spent lifetimes in this story-it is not so easy to leave.
Stay.
Breathe.
There is no rush."

I'm not going to forget this book any time soon; now I just need to get my hands on a physical copy as the stunning words inside are matched only by the gorgeous cover!

I highlighted so many passages for both their pure beauty and the simple truths hidden among the words. I'll leave you with a couple more to help convince you to read this book:

"Esi is opening up. It is a pomegranate, tearing to reveal millions of ruby worlds within it."

"Sister is a careful word. That's what we say in the family. It is a special relationship. You have to love and hate each other. Want to drown them but also burn the world if it threatens them...You have to be slightly mad to love like that."

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for a review copy of this book.

No words will suffice in explaining how much I love this book. It requires savoring; the universe is vast, the lore is deep, and the emotions are complicated. The writing flows beautifully and the structure of the story sucks you in. There are many lines and concepts that make you pause because they're simple and powerful.

It's a story not only about living with our choices, but also the choices of those who came before us, for better or for worse. Because of Mehta's masterful storytelling, I know Mad Sisters of Esi will stick with me for a long time. Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC!

A wild ride of a read. It's challenging, it's thoughtful, incredibly lyrical, and I really enjoyed my time reading it. Some parts got a little convoluted for me and were harder to grasp, but I loved those parts anyway. The structure of the novel was incredibly unique and I loved that so much because a lot of novels don't play with their structure much. I had no idea what I was getting into when I began reading this (the cover was cool and the title was neat and that's why I wanted to read it), but I am glad I gave it a chance.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!