I read Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, the first in the Books of Ambha series, at the end of 2018 during my hiatus. I’ll go back to it and do a proper review at some point, but it was good enough that Suri went on my “authors to watch” list more or less immediately. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Realm of Ash was being released toward the end of 2019., since Empire of Sand felt like a standalone.