Donald Maass Literary Agency

Library Journal: DEBUT The well-known myth and metaphor of Icarus is that he flew too close to the sun because he was overwhelmed by the freedom of flight or because he didn’t listen to his father Daedalus’s instructions. In this mythic retelling from Daedalus’s perspective, he’s not satisfied with that explanation. He needs to hear the truth from his son’s own lips—even if Daedalus has to descend to hell himself to get his answer. But Daedalus isn’t telling himself the whole truth of his own life or his son’s death because even Hell won’t give Daedalus a chance to justify his crimes to the boy who flew and fell the moment he got the chance. This is part of the current trend of mythic retellings, along with Madeline Miller’s Circe and Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne, telling a familiar story from an entirely different point of view. That this particular myth is wrapped around the even more famous story of tyrannical King Minos, Theseus, and the famous Minotaur adds another facet to this tale of an unreliable man placing the blame for his sins and his crimes on everyone but himself.

VERDICT Readers who enjoy mythic retellings will be riveted by Sullivan’s debut.

Washington Post: I have been exhorting all my friends to read this breathtakingly gorgeous book, but it is nearly impossible to summarize. Two sisters, Myung and Laleh, live inside the whale of babel, which swims through space and contains an entire universe inside its skin — but Myung is determined to leave the whale and see the universe beyond. Myung’s quest leads her to the story of two other sisters, Wisa and Magali, who live on Esi, a shape-shifting island that descends into barbaric chaos once every century.

“The Mad Sisters of Esi,” already an award winner in India, is dreamlike in the best possible way, crammed with haunting images and mind-blowing ideas on every page. In Mehta’s telling, madness takes on many meanings, including an ability to see the past and future as well as a hunger to create worlds, and the fear of it is used to enforce conformity. But when the story takes us to another island where everyone claims to be mad, they are just as conformist and rigid, obsessed with control.

At the heart of the story is the pair of sisters, separated and searching for each other, using time travel, ghost visitations, dreams and storytelling to reconnect. When the landscape changes like water, and time can be reshaped, all people have is one another. “Sister is a careful word,” Mehta writes. “You have to love and hate each other … You have to be slightly mad to love like that.” Theirs is a journey of ongoing loss, and sadness takes a central role: Even unraveling the mysteries of the whale becomes cause for mourning, because, as Mehta observes, things lose their power when you understand them. “The Mad Sisters of Esi” both demands and rewards a second reading, and it is a strong contender for the year’s best novel.

Wall Street Journal: Living in the depths of the black cosmic sea, there is a giant whale with an infinite number of worlds within its body. Wandering among them are two sisters: Laleh and Myung, neither of whom know their origins or how they wound up in the whale; only that both they and it were created by the Great Wisa. This is the mind-bending scenario dreamed up by Tashan Mehta for her unique fantasy novel “Mad Sisters of Esi.”

“Mad Sisters of Esi” is a great, sweeping fairy tale of a book, utterly different from most of the fantasy out now. While it could have benefitted from some paring, its world-building ambition is unmatched: The descriptions of the plants, food and animals of Esi are lush and memorable. So, too, is the examination of sisterly love, which is as complicated and deep as the black sea itself.