The Crimson Fortress by Akshaya Raman is a young adult fantasy novel, the sequel to The Ivory Key, mildly inspired by Indian culture and mythology. It features the main character — Vira, Queen of Ashoka, and her journey to recover the Ivory Key and solve its riddle to unlock the hidden quarries. However, the Ivory Key is not what they thought it was. It is bound to unlock more horrors than magic, at least at first. At the end of the last book, the royal siblings have strayed away from each other, each of them wanting to gain something different. Spread out across the country on different missions, they each find out secrets and details that paint a larger picture when connected. This book is filled with secrets and aha moments. At every turn of the page, there is a new surprise, a new detail waiting for the reader. It’s almost like the reader is solving the puzzle right along with the characters and that’s what makes it so interesting to read. I really enjoyed the book. The characters were kept strong, and the plot was woven together very well with the relationships between the characters. One thing that I think that the author did really well was to maintain the line of thought even while switching between the different POVs of the royal siblings. Just one note I would like to add is that there were a decent amount of Indian/South Asian language terms in the book that could be confusing for an unfamiliar reader, but it wasn’t too bad because the meaning can always be searched up if they are really hindering the understanding of the plot — which they usually weren’t.