The Garden of Delights by Amal Singh
I would like to thank Flame Tree Press and Random Things Tours for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Flame Tree Press
Published – Out Now
Price – £12.95 paperback £4.95 Kindle eBook
In the city of Sirvassa, where petals are currency and flowers are magic, the Caretaker tends to the Garden of Delights. He imparts temporary magical abilities to the citizens of Sirvassa, while battling a curse of eternal old age. No Delight could uplift his curse, and so he must seek out a mythical figure. A god.
When a Delight allows a young girl an ability to change reality, the Caretaker believes he’s at the end of his search. But soon a magical rot takes root in his Garden, and the Caretaker must join forces with the girl and stop it from spreading.
Even as he battles a different rot that plagues Sirvassa, he learns that Delights are always a precursor to Sorrows.
Fantasy is an interesting genre, it has a foot in the pasts of folklore, legends and the type of stories told around a campfire by storytellers. At the same time and has always been the case stories are in dialogue with our own world, evolving, exploring issues of today but often subtly. This mix of classic and modern writing comes to mine when I’m reading Amal Singh’s elegant and engrossing fantasy novel The Garden of Delights which combines lyrical storytelling a with a refreshingly different type of fantasy world to explore.
The powerful and often independent city of Sirvassa is well known for the Garden of Delights. The Caretaker of which every day helps bring a touch of magic to the inhabitants of the city – flight, speed, healing and many more powers can be briefly sampled by the exotic mixes of special flowers this Garden offers. The Caretaker has done this for centuries ever since a war cursed him to be an old man everyday but the garden is suddenly experiencing a magical rot that corrupts those who take its wares. Into the city has also come the daughter of a powerful politician Iyena Mastafar follows in her father’s footsteps and is having to work her way around Sirvassa she has one desire she asks the Caretaker – the ability to fight monsters. Neither the Caretaker or Iyena know how much danger the Garden and themselves will be in.
The best way to describe why this book worked for me was it recalled the feeling of when I’d pick a book of myths and legends in the library and although the stories were a little too old for me, I felt I’d glimpsed a magical ancient world. Singh pulls the same feeling of with a secondary world with its own unique gods, history, politics, and cultures that carries a depth. Its an Earth adjacent type of world with ships, airships, picture houses, schools but also Gods in centuries of slumber, mysterious magical beings named Champions, magical automatons, the Garden and monsters that attack Sirvassa every day. Singh doesn’t explain this all in technical detail or simple exposition, instead it’s a more organic world that the reader has to put together. The Garden, The Caretaker, Iyena and many of the plot strands are culminations of all these unread stories. A 400-page book that carries that weight lightly but the more you hear about things the more you want to explore and understand the mysteries. By the end we understand local politics, the magic of the world and its beliefs. It is incredibly well told.
In terms of core characters, they feel quite classical in nature but offer surprises. The Caretaker we find is a Florral someone particularly in tune with using the magic of the Garden’s flowers to perform incredible magic. He once fought a huge war, beat mighty Champions and ultimately still despite all the good deeds got cursed to be an old man every day when he wakes up. The Caretaker is fascinating – wise, kind-hearted, a little impatient and has had his fingers burnt interfering with the magical world so he often holds back. His chapters concentrate on the intrigue and magic of Sirvassa and his challenge is how the town turns when the magic appears more curse than blessing. There is a great relationship with his erstwhile trainee Trulio – the classic too keen apprentice but the bonds feel genuine between them and most of all we sense The Caretaker is holding his power back. What happens when he releases it is a prize we keep waiting to see and its worth it when it happens!
With Iyena we have a fifteen-year-old girl arriving into the city from another culture. There will no doubt be a kind of reader saying oh so YA but no I feel Iyena instead feels a more classical young heroine of fantasy coming to face the world on her own turns, Funny, intelligent and yet a little naïve about the wider world. Her chapters help us explore the politics of Sirvassa in terms of cultures and colonization. The main powers that govern Sirvassa are keen to clip the city’s wings and we see how schools become weapons, laws are used to divide, and political games and dangerous tricks are at work. There is a subtle piece of storytelling exploring how powerful forces will often work hard to break up peaceful institutions change the law to suit certain sides and make huge promises in the pursuit of power. The parents of her school perhaps see the old dangers of colonial power being used to oppress starting again and prepare accordingly. While Iyena also discovers magic via the power of the Garden it’s the way her story is part of the bigger game afoot that really works to flesh out the more human side if the tale and her reactions to events always feel genuine. She very much stands on her own two feet which works very well to make you care about the outcomes.
The one drawback with a classical take is you do sense all things will succeed eventually. Singh does throw many unexpected elements into the story. This story doesn’t use stereotypes too often seen in simple fantasy but there is still a certain shape to such stories and a little more danger and threat may have helped add a bit more uncertainty to the outcome. I didn’t mind though that much as the storytelling, language and unusual world kept me reading as I still wanted to know exactly how all the plot elements come together and that was not very predictable.
Like the titular The Garden of Delights this is a book that offers different experiences to normal fantasy with gorgeous worldbuilding and lyrical storytelling to immerse yourself in. This book knows how to drive an emotional reaction from the reader and does it very impressively, the stakes for a single city and a peaceful way of life are just high enough for us to invest in and the characters are ones you want to root for. There is room for more tales in the same world, so I am very interested in what future stories Singh has in store for us in the future.
