Stab Me Once, Shame on You: A Review of ‘The Jasad Heir’ by Sara Hashem
The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem
Published by Orbit Books
Fantasy, Romance, Enemies to Lovers
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Ten years ago, the kingdom of Jasad burned. Its magic outlawed; its royal family murdered down to the last child. At least, that’s what Sylvia wants people to believe.
The lost Heir of Jasad, Sylvia never wants to be found. She can’t think about how Nizahl’s armies laid waste to her kingdom and continue to hunt its people—not if she wants to stay alive. But when Arin, the Nizahl Heir, tracks a group of Jasadi rebels to her village, staying one step ahead of death gets trickier.
In a moment of anger Sylvia’s magic is exposed, capturing Arin’s attention. Now, to save her life, Sylvia will have to make a deal with her greatest enemy. If she helps him lure the rebels, she’ll escape persecution.
A deadly game begins. Sylvia can’t let Arin discover her identity even as hatred shifts into something more. Soon, Sylvia will have to choose between the life she wants and the one she left behind. The scorched kingdom is rising, and it needs a queen.
In this Egyptian-inspired debut fantasy, a fugitive queen strikes a deadly bargain with her greatest enemy and finds herself embroiled in a complex game that could resurrect her scorched kingdom or leave it in ashes forever.
This book asks whether it’s really enemies to lovers unless they try and stab each other a few times and doesn’t wait for an answer. There are a few difficulties with this trope and I think this novel deals with some of it well and some of it not so well.
The first part which the novel pulls off, in my opinion, is that you have to witness a believable journey from antagonism to love. This works here because it’s an incredibly slow burn and Sylvia, our primary POV character, reaches that point kicking and screaming and largely against her will. Even by the end she’s cheerfully threatening bodily harm against her man, Arin. Toxic? Perhaps. But much preferable to instant lust and total forgetting of their own moral standpoints.
The thing that doesn’t work so well is that I think that the two sides of an Enemies to Lovers conflict have to be on a reasonably even playing field which isn’t the case here. Arin’s people have committed genocide against Sylvia’s people, the Jasad. Arin perpetuates this genocide and does not think it was wrong. There is this strange push to make it seem like Arin’s people were in the right, actually. Because the Jasad rulers were kind of corrupt and Not Great People (like literally every other ruler they encounter in the book), and magic as a whole is Bad which is obviously just a ridiculous sweeping statement. Sylvia does challenge this viewpoint throughout but I think I would have liked to have see a little more acknowledgement from Arin that he is simply wrong for this one.
““We build our reality on the foundation our world sets for us. You entered a world where magic is corrosive and Jasadis are inherently evil. I entered one where turning a shoe into a dove made my mother laugh. Have you considered in that infinite mind of yours, that the truly brilliant people are the ones who understand the realities we build were already built for us?””
As a whole though, I do enjoy the dynamic between Arin and Sylvia. She is hot tempered and impulsive and prone to saying what she thinks. Arin is aloof and calculating and enigmatic. Their conversations often feel like a total battle of wills as they try to out manoeuvre each other in this constant game they are playing. They challenge each other both in their viewpoints but also physically and mentally. I never really found them completely swoony but I found them believable as a couple and they definitely had some moments that were very soft. I particularly enjoyed watching their affection clearly grow out of a grudging sort of respect for each other even if first impressions left a lot to be desired.
“She had the temperament of a deranged goose. Every interaction he’d shared with her had thoroughly convinced him he was not dealing with a stable woman.”
Ah, yes. Sylvia. How do we solve a problem like Sylvia? Sylvia is quite obviously a menace to society and I love her for it. I always enjoy a reluctant hero story and Sylvia really takes this to the extreme of being self serving to the point of frustration. She is the Jasad Heir but was very young when her country was razed and her people murdered. She therefore insists she feels no real kinship with them and has no interest in helping them. You learn a lot about her backstory and about what shaped her into the person she is. She clearly has courage but not the kind that makes her willing to throw her life away for strangers. She find it difficult to get close to people, to trust, and to put down roots. She’s got some street smarts but is otherwise kind of dumb. She’s ~complicated~ and I will always support having complex female characters in stories. I also thought her arc was meaningful and earned.
““There is no such thing as a worthy sacrifice. There are only those who die, and those willing to let them.””
My main issue with this story is the pacing. There’s actually a whole tournament style plot in this story but it takes up less than half the book and then feels like it’s being speed ran. The tasks feel quite glossed over and each one feels more present to make Sylvia face an aspect of her past, which I don’t necessarily hate but the level of introspection really cut through the action scenes and bogged them down.
There was also a huge amount of world building and I found keeping in my head the entire political structure of this land quite difficult. There was a lot of early info dumping and in the early part especially I was struggling to keep track of names and whether they belonged to people or countries or rivers. It’s the sort of information that should be introduced gradually as it becomes relevant and not front loaded, especially in a book that is nearly 500 pages. Also, even with this level of world building there are some aspects that still feel confusing by the end, especially the deal with Sylvia’s magic which is ostensibly blocked but she can somehow learn to control.
I think a lot of these problems are due to the fact that this is a debut novel and I am definitely interested in picking up the next one with the hope that some of these things will have improved.
Some random other things that I liked:
Sylvia is touch averse and her friends often show her affection by touching near her hands rather than touching her directly
Sylvia having a fun dynamic with most of Arin’s guards and them grudgingly finding her drama kind of amusing
The dynamic between the champions of the tournament was fleeting but fun to read
Sylvia being horrified to realise her friends actually love her and having a total internal crisis about it
This is a promising first novel from this author and I look forward to seeing what comes next from them.
Recommended for: fans of political scheming, zutara shippers, unashamed deranged geese.
