author: Alwyn Hamilton
published by: Faber & Faber
released: February 4th 2016
pages: 358
my rating: 4 out of 5 stars
"Tell me that and we'll go. Right now. Save ourselves and leave this place to burn. Tell me that's how you want your story to go and we'll write it straight across the sand."
Dustwalk is an unforgiving, dead-end town. It's not the place to be poor or orphaned or female. And yet Amani Al'Hiza must call it 'home'.
Amani wants to escape and see the world she's heard about in campfire stories.
Then a foreigner with no name turns up, and with him she has the chance to run.
But the desert plains are full of dangerous magic. The Sultan's army is on the rise and Amani is soon caught at the heart of a fearless rebellion...
An epic story of swirling desert sands, love, magic and revolution.
This is another book I read as a buddy read and I don't think I would have picked it up otherwise. I know there probably are more YA books set in the desert but personally, I haven't read that many (that'll hopefully change soon).
Overall I think the beginning was the strongest part of the book and after that it slowly became less unique. It starts off right away with lot of action and continues to be fast paced throughout the book.
Amani is a strong, kickass female character and I really liked her. She can shoot better than basically everyone else and has a habit of saying what's on her mind. What's there not to like?
Her relationship with Jin is also great and worked really well.
My problem with this book was that it started to get more and more like the typical YA book. That may work for a lot of people and I could also look over it most of the time but it still bothered me. Personally, I think this book would have worked better if the magic took the backseat here, because it didn't seem very necessary.
Still, I can understand the hype around this book and I am looking forward to the second book.
No comments:
Post a Comment