Asra is a demigod with a dangerous gift: the ability to dictate the future by writing with her blood. To keep her power secret, she leads a quiet life as a healer on a remote mountain, content to help the people in her care and spend time with Ina, the mortal girl she loves.
But Asra’s peaceful life is upended when bandits threaten Ina’s village and the king does nothing to help. Desperate to protect her people, Ina begs Asra for assistance in finding her manifest—the animal she’ll be able to change into as her rite of passage to adulthood. Asra uses her blood magic to help Ina, but her spell goes horribly wrong and the bandits destroy the village, killing Ina’s family.
Unaware that Asra is at fault, Ina swears revenge on the king and takes a savage dragon as her manifest. To stop her, Asra must embark on a journey across the kingdom, becoming a player in lethal games of power among assassins, gods, and even the king himself.
Most frightening of all, she discovers the dark secrets of her own mysterious history—and the terrible, powerful legacy she carries in her blood.
Audrey Coulthurst’s debut novel, Of Fire and Stars, is an iconic princess-falls-for-another-princess story. When I picked up Inkmistress, I was thrilled to find that while it takes place in the same world as Of Fire and Stars, it also ventures into a whole new realm of storytelling. There’s magic. There’s a dragon. And there’s Asra, our protagonist, a bisexual demigod with a lot of problems and a world to save.
Asra lives alone at the top of a secluded mountain where she is safe from people discovering her and the magic of her blood. Among other things, Asra’s blood can shape the past or the future (at a large cost to her). Asra is head-over-heels for Ina, a girl from the nearby village, but it’s quickly revealed that Ina has been leading her on and is engaged to a boy from a different town . In hopes of winning Ina back, Asra uses the power of her blood to help Ina discover her manifest (people in this kingdom take a gods-connected animal manifest that they can turn into at will). What results is a disastrous series of events that she couldn’t have anticipated. Now Asra must venture from the mountain to put a stop to what she’s set in motion.
There’s so much to enjoy in Inkmistress. For one, Asra is an immensely relatable character. She desires to feel loved and experience the belonging of family, which she’s never truly felt. Hal, another demigod who Asra meets on her journey, is a joy of a character—his high-energy personality lights up every scene he’s in. There’s also a high level of cool factor with the magic system. Asra is so powerful that she can literally change the past or future. It’s not a power that comes lightly or that she can use often, but the magnitude of that power, and the responsibility and ramifications that come with it, keep the stakes high. Not only that, but in Asra’s kingdom, nearly all mortals take manifests. This means that they can transform into a particular animal at will. Cue me, wracked with indecision over which animal I’d want as my manifest (Okapi? I think it would have to be an okapi).
In terms of queer representation, what’s remarkable about the fantasy world that Coulthurst has created is that here, queerness is a nonissue. None of the conflict is related to Asra’s sexuality; in fact, every major relationship in the book is queer. It’s refreshing, rejuvenating even, to read a book where again and again, queer relationships are established and treated as completely unremarkable. It’s such a reassuring escape, to dive into a world where relationships that look like my own are accepted and affirmed.
Inkmistress has phenomenal bisexual representation. Why? So many reasons.
For starters, Asra’s two relationships over the course of the book are focused on the individuals themselves, not their genders. Her first relationship is with a girl—Ina—and the second with a boy, Hal. Any time that Asra compares how she feels for the two, she’s not ruminating on differences between loving a man or a woman—she’s thinking about the differences between Ina and Hal as people. The same goes for Asra’s physical intimacy with either one. She never compares the experience of kissing people of different genders (something which I’ve read in many books, and that certainly has its place, but not in every book with a bisexual protag, please!). Instead, Asra’s physical intimacy with either Ina or Hal is grounded in the moment and focused on the individual person.
The other reason Inkmistress excels in this area is that Asra’s story validates a part of the bisexual experience that is frequently invalidated. As more and more YA books with bisexual protagonists are published, it’s expected that we should see a large variety of bisexual experiences. While books about bisexual female protagonists who end up with woman are extremely important, it’s just as important to have a wealth of books about bisexual female protagonists who end up with men. Asra’s relationship with Hal validates the experience of many bisexual people in straight-passing relationships, who often receive assumptions and policing of their identities. (If you’re looking for more outstanding books featuring bisexual girls in relationships with boys, try Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert (recent recipient of the Stonewall Book Award!) or Noteworthy by Riley Redgate.)
Another detail that I love in the world of Inkmistress is the inclusion of genderfluid gods. In Asra’s world, magic is tied to multiple gods who have real influence in the world. Two of them, the water god and the spirit god, are genderfluid, and Asra uses they/them/theirs pronouns to refer to them. I wish these gods had played a larger role in the story, but as it is, it was extremely validating to read the word “genderfluid” right there on the page—and in reference to gods, no less!
Finally, I want to talk a little bit about one of the major themes of the book: family. Asra begins the story both physically and emotionally isolated, left as a child on the top of a mountain where she is expected to stay. She has never felt like a part of a family or a community, and she yearns for that kind of connection. I won’t say too much, but by the end of the book Asra manages to create her own found family and learns to define love in her own way. I felt a strong parallel between Asra’s feelings of isolation and the experience of many queer people before they find community. Like Asra, we may feel isolated, desiring connection, understanding, and validation. Of all the aspects of Inkmistress, my favorite is journeying with Asra as she finds the confidence to confront the manipulation she has experienced and to choose the relationships, family, and type of love that are best for her.
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Michaela Whatnall works in children’s publishing in a variety of capacities, including as a publicist, a reviewer, and a reader for an agent. Michaela grew up in San Diego but lives in Tennessee, only two minutes away from the nearest library. You can follow Michaela on Twitter @mwhatnall.
[…] Inkmistress by Audrey Coulthurst was reviewed at YA Pride. […]