Thank you so much to NetGalley and DAW for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Wickedly creative and viciously enchanting, this story breaks the bounds of time and space.

Though I loved the first half of the book, my favourite part was without a doubt the story of Magali and Wisa - this is so beautifully written, I found myself trapped in the madness of Esi.

This story broke my heart in the best way, and it not being fully healed by the last pages, I know this book has well and truly left its mark on me.

I cannot recommend this book to everyone at anytime, as it is a story that needs to find you when you are ready for it. When you are ready to dive headfirst into the madness, to open space in your brain for these many worlds, then you should read this absurdly wonderful novel.

Read if: You like fever dream books but need them to make some kind of sense in the end or you want to disappear into a million different worlds.

I admit I was a little worried for the first 50ish pages of this book. The story seemed to be expanding exponentially with every chapter and I was instantly attached to the characters so was afraid we would leave them behind. In the rest of the book, I don't think it ever lost this sense of scale but it quickly switched to a smaller narrative about 2 sisters not related by blood, but by choice.

I think this book made it impossible not to care about it's characters. You could feel the love between them as you read, and it made you love them as well. The conversations and relationships between them felt so real. I'm not sure that Esi is a place I would want to live, but it's a place I fell in love with during this book. The descriptions of the locations in this book were so vivid and fantastical and a part of the book that I really loved.

There were probably a lot of themes in this that went way over my head but the strongest theme to me was grief. It's about remembering the ones you loved so they never leave you but also clinging on so tightly to them that you devote yourself and everyone around you to that grief.

The ending of this book was sad but not because anything necessarily bad happened to the characters. It simply evoked familiar feelings of leaving home, leaving loved ones behind, not because you don't love them, but simply because you have grown and need space to grow more. It's about accepting that things change, time moves forward, and no matter how tightly you hold on to the things or people you love, eventually they will change too.

This was a book full of love, madness, joy, and grief and I loved every second of it.

My favourite quote from this book 'I believe that when we read we are searching for a smooth and polished mirror so that we may better see our reflections...but I believe it is not just mirrors that we seek-it is magic mirrors. We don't only want reflections of ourselves; we want to know if there is the possibility of change in our future, whether there is more to this reality than we can touch and smell, more to ourselves'

Thank you to Netgalley, DAW Books and Tashan Mehta for the ARC. Review posted on Goodreads and rating posted on storygraph

As I had hoped, this book was a bit like a fever dream and poignant. In fact, I am not sure how to talk about this book, not without flattening it or spoiling.
There is a lot going on, but not like a classic epic fantasy. It's more personnal, intricate, grander and smaller. A tale about universes and people, especially two sisters. Well, two pair of sisters, in a way. Their love is hard and shifting, but strong and lasting. This is primarily a story about sisterly love, but not only. It comes in different shades, like the pains. It is also a story about madness, told in a very touching way.

Did you guess that it has a very dreamy quality? Not a lack of logic but a stretch in logic? I loved it. But readers who want order and logic in the classical sense won't like this book. Not everything is explained, because the characters don't know everything. The universe(s) we are described don't work on the logic we are used to, and that's exactly the beauty of this story. There is a distinct sense of mystery and onirism, a bit like what I felt with "The spear cuts through water", "The Starless Sea" or "Rakesfall". It's very much the kind of story that, if done well, transports me. It clicks into place with a full universe and atmosphere.

"Mad sisters of Esi" isn't a straightfoward story. It's intermingled, with movement troughout time and space, throughout relationships and isles. Melancoly is present, from the start and growing as we near the end. Nature isn't a separate things, it's a world in itself, inside which the characters evolve and converse.

If I needed a bit of time to settle in, the story sank it's grip into me quickly. It's beautifully written, the kind of book that needs concentration but not in a tiring way. Full of mythic like symbolism, love and pain.

Very good experience, I am glad the book will be available for more people to discover and lose themselves between the pages.

This book truly reads like a fever dream. Fluid, poetic, and deeply immersive. Unfolding in such a mesmerizing rhythm, with imagery that will live rent free in my mind forever. There’s a quiet sadness woven throughout the book I was not expecting. But it’s also balanced by resilience, self discovery, and an otherworldly magic.

At its core, this is a story about perception, madness, and the invisible threads that bind us. The characters feel so rich and real. Each carrying their own fears, hopes, and secrets. This book doesn’t explain everything at times, but I think that’s part of the magic. You find yourself sitting with the mysteries sometimes, rather than having them spelled out. Some stories are meant to be unraveled slowly, and this is one of them.

There’s also something powerful in the way the author captures memory and connection. The writing has a way of making you pause, often times to reread a sentence. Not because it’s difficult, but because it resonates so deeply. I found myself highlighting dozens and dozens of passages. This isn’t just a book you read, it’s a book you feel. And when you reach the final page, you’re left with the quiet certainty that it will stay with you for awhile.

I cannot thank NetGalley and DAW enough for an ARC! What a joy it has been to read this.

MASTERPIECE.

Thank you NetGalley and DAW for the ARC.

This is an amazing book. I knew well before I finished it, that it would become an all-time favorite.

The writing is impeccably, uncannily perfect. Elements of weird fiction, fever dreams, cosmic awareness/inexplicability, deep family ties of blood and fictive kin, and environmental legacy combine to create this amazing narrative. The characters are deep and significant. The author’s ability to describe landscapes and make them palatable even though much of it is open to interpretation, illuminates.

The science fiction stands out as well. New ideas and concepts are well thought out, very clear and concise, but also open to many interpretations and revelations upon reflection. I think you could read this book many times and discover unique insights every single time.

Grief and pain as a part of any life and learning to cope is explored from beginning to end and is very philosophic.

I was introduced to this author in a collection of short stories entitled “Magical Women” and believed I had found my next favorite author. I was fortunate enough for this book to show up as an ARC for me. It proved my theory correct. I am adding this to my favorites shelf.

I did not realize this was not written in a typical writing style. It uses a type of poetic verse it seems, and it is as others have described, like a fever dream. Unfortunately that is not a book my brain is going to enjoy reading, as the writing style in a book is important for my enjoyment, and I found myself grasping for more understanding of what was happening and feeling frustrated. I know this book is amazing, it just is not for me and I am not the reader for it, but LOOK AT THE COVER. The story itself is also unique. I loved the concept of people living in a whale?!



Thank you for the opportunity to sample this eARC. I am leaving this honest feedback voluntarily.

This book was so weird, intriguing, beautifully written, heartbreaking and confusing. The world was so strange and interesting. I loved the themes of family and shared stories throughout this.

A magical universe in a whale, a traveller tracking down myths and peeling away all the layers to fund the truth, and a museum you can visit by tapping you ear. This is the Mad Sisters of Esi, and it is truly magical. And mad. Completely mad. I loved it.

Mad Sisters of Esi does have a really ambitious world building and multiple story lines spread over time and place. At first it's almost a bit daunting, but everything comes together nicely in the end. Tashan Mehta manages to pull it of without a stone left unturned. Because mad, anrgy islands will do that for you. Turn stones I mean. And grow flowers. And try to push your house off a cliff.

Mad Sisters of Esi was the book I didn't know I needed right now. I dont want to write wo much about the story itself. It's better explored first hand. But Mad Sisters of Esi cover a range of topics, loss, friendship, found family and love. It's about being different. It's about searching for something more. Being curious with the world around you. It's about being brave. And scared. And loved. It's a book about sisters.

This is one of the few cases where I wholely understand and subscribe to the comparison to another well-known novel: "Mad Sisters of Esi" by Tashan Mehta is indeed a fitting recommendation for anyone who enjoyed "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke, I think. And yet it is very much its own thing that doesn't need to borrow graces or glories from others.

I will keep my review as vague, contentwise, as possible so as not to spoil the magic for anyone.

The world, or rather worlds of the story are as mysterious and enchanting as the characters themselves - because you could say there are (at least) three: the world of the Whale, the world of the Library, and the World of the Black Sea. They overlap and intertwine and sometimes seem to be contained in one another, but in the end I'd say they are quite separate things. And in each world you encounter characters that you, as a reader, can explore these worlds with. But the world-building has another aspect that I found extremely interesting: This book not only contains the central storyline and stories told in that story - it also contains, lets say, clippings from scientific and philosophical texts about the world(s) of the book that relate to the parts of the story preceding them, but also refer and recur to each other, excerpts from diaries and stories from a fairytale collection published in one of the worlds. This may sound complicated, but actually adds layers and depth to the world-building as well as the characters.

Without telling too much, I think I can say that the central motif of this novel is love - but not the romantic variety. It's about the kind of platonic love that makes people family as much as (if not more than) blood. The love that allows you to be yourself in front of others, knowing that they will love you no less without expecting things of you in return. Even if that means following you into what others think madness.
It's a story of sisters, by love, not blood, who are willing to part from each other for the other's sake but also ready to tear apart the universe to get to each other just to hold them again. And it's also a story about the magic of imagination, of magical worlds and creatures that can be dreamed into existence, sentient islands, and barriers of time that get flimsy and permeable at times.

"Mad Sisters of Esi" is to come out on August 5th, 2025 - and I highly recommend to keep an eye out for it to anyone who likes their fantastical reads a bit more experimental, unusual, and maybe just a hint surreal.

I'm still not sure what I just read, this is one of those books where you have to ignore logic and let your imagination run wild! Great story and characters, I can see this becoming a movie someday!

Review copy provided by the publisher.

I like books that don't follow a standard hero's journey or quest narrative, and wow, is this in that category. This one has--and this by itself should tell you a large part of whether you want to read it--a gigantic whale of space--in space? but also comprising space? and multiple worlds inside the whale, that part is certain. Doors into unfolding different worlds, all inside the whale.

The whale used to be something else, but *what* else is a spoiler.

So there is more worldmaking than worldhopping here, and the titular sisters--there are two pairs of candidates for the title--are trying to figure out what madness means in their context. It is not a book that is trying to make a commentary on mental health in our own context, or if it is, it's being very roundabout and obscure about it. But there is a lot about how cultures construe madness, sanity, fitting in and not.

And there are indeed sisterhoods, very strong sororal relationships. And also space whale. Which you might like, and if so, step right up, here it is.

Thanks to DAW for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I was hooked by the whale world, and reeled in by in-world academic articles with footnotes. But the real highlights were the gorgeous imagery all throughout the book and the love and longing of the characters. The shifting perspectives, the power of creation and story, the family and friendships - so much love and beauty, even when it's bittersweet. Highly recommend for fans of more literary, slow and reflective fantasy.