I would like to thank the author for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Gollancz

Published – out now

Price – £22 hardback £6.99 Kindle ebook

Meet Kavithri. Outcast. Underdog. Survivor.

Kavi is a Taemu. Her people, once feared berserkers and the spearhead of a continent-spanning invasion, are the dregs of Raayan society. Their spirits crushed. Their swords broken. Their history erased.

But Kavi has a dream and a plan. She will do whatever it takes to earn a place at the secretive mage academy, face the Jinn within its walls, and gain the power to rise above her station and drag her people out of the darkness.

Except power and knowledge come at a cost, and the world no longer needs a Taemu who can fight. So they will break her. Beat her down to her knees. And make her bleed.

But if blood is what they want, Kavi will give them blood. She will give them violence. She will show them a berserker's fury.

And she will make them remember her name.

We love seeing the underdog pulling through in stories. Be they Dickensian orphans, farm boys in galaxies far far away or young girls told that marriage is their only hope of a good life. We have a sense of fairness that we want to see in the world. In science fiction – special magic and technology may help fix the balance which some may call cheating, but I just call using all available resources wisely (and makes the book a little more interesting too – take that Oliver Twist). In Aman J Bedi’s exhilarating fantasy Kavithri we get a tale of person the world despises not for who she is but who she represents, and she doesn’t take no easily. It’s a fast-paced action drama with a compelling lead character to root for and worry about.

Kavithri better known as Kavi works long days with little money as railway porter living on the streets of Bochan. Days are hard, people have little respect for her and as she belongs to the near extinct and heavily despised people known as the Taemu she is very much discriminated against openly by nearly everyone in both society and even walking down the street. Kavi though wants one thing - everyone in Bochan has the right to be tested to see if they could be a Mage – as well as releasing if there is any magical power that the might Jinn see in her. But those guarding the testing grounds refuse her entry – every year – again ana again. But this time Kavi has a new plan, one that goes wrong but will open up what she could be and also place her and her world in huge danger.

Those expecting a magical school chosen one tale will be disappointed. Instead, this is a fast paced, often brutal almost anime style fantasy story hovering on the edges of grimdark but is actually more a grimy and cheeky fantasy world that is fascinating in what it subversively pokes at. At the heart is the character of Kavi which the third person narration follows nearly exclusively. Bedi makes us feel how much the world here delights to humiliate her and put her in her place but are very quickly on her side. She is determined, funny, sarcastic and rarely takes no as an answer. Unusually though she has a side that when the chips are really down she may do things we wouldn’t approve of. Bedi makes it clear though these actions are always when the world has acted unfairly, and so Kavi has no other options. However throughout her sense of doing the right thing while gets hurt stays strong and she is very much a hero more than anti-hero -  just one put through the wringer.

Here is the where the story takes interesting choices and departs from the norm. A mild spoiler is that yes Kavi has magic but she is not judged under the tests capable of being a mage. This means her schemes to help find her lost family are blown apart and instead she is now focused don the far more difficult task of being a Blade – the people who looks after the powerful but physically weak mages. To do this one small problem she has to learn how to fight. Instead of magic classes Kavi must learn fighting and her one skill is she has some fairly powerful but high-cost regenerative powers now. Here a lot of the book has Kavi welcomed to the seedier side of city life and brutal montages of training and fighting both with her mentor figures and eventually the Siphon where Blades are chosen. Bedi has an action focused style - everything moves at pace and the plot talks some fast handbrake turns as we think we are on one track then skip into a new direction. Its quite frenetic and rarely allows the reader to breathe but I was having fun as the story really wasn’t going where I expected it to. That does sacrifice exploring the other characters who appear, but rarely do they have time to reveal much about themselves but how Kavi battles the world becomes the main attraction fast. Its packing a lot into 400 pages and to do so would have slowed things down a lot

The world of the novel is a little subversive. Reading along it is very hard not to think of India and its history especially when we hear they are recovering from being colonised by the extremely ruthless and privileged Kraelish Empire. It’s more a steampunk world with trains and rickshaws and just getting more like early 20th technology but Bedi has some surprises in store. Some that again point to the anime style approach that I sense in the story which we find out are key to his world’s earlier history and gods. There is a theme of how colonisers leave a lot of messes behind for people to deal with, their cultures are changed and how as a wider nation they interact with each other has been harmed in the process. It’s not explored explicitly for most of the book but in many ways this is the source of this world’s issues that Kavi is trying to survive in. The next book’s outcome is uncertain as to what the result will be.

Kavirthri is a very fun action focused fantasy that lovers of pace, action and fighting will delight in. I am very interested in what this author may have in store for us next and think this story is well worth a look!