They begin “The Oleander Sword” with nothing but great things ahead and a secret relationship between them. Priya, a maidservant working first for and then alongside Malini, comes into her own as a free woman and worker of ancient power. First, the biggest problem: you’ve seen all this before. In the first book, “The Jasmine Throne,” Princess Malini escapes exile and imprisonment to raise an army and-if all goes well-to seize the empire for herself. Tasha Suri’s series, The Burning Kingdoms, takes place in a magnificently reimagined southern Asia where spirits walk the earth and fire has a will of its own. This season publishers have presented readers with a veritable feast for the imaginative mind. These days readers have an enormous range of stories to delight them as contemporary fantasy engages with an ever-widening pool of cultural sources that encompass the world’s collective mythologies. As a lifelong reader of all things folklorish and fantastical, like many of my American contemporaries, I grew up on a diet of European tales and legends-a satisfying but ultimately limited fare.

A brave new world review