Monday, May 9, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book review: The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah

 



 Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on May 17, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Stardust Thief is a new fantasy debut from author Chelsea Abdullah, marketed as being "inspired by stories from One Thousand and One Nights".  And to be fair, that description is for once not incorrect, with the book featuring a Scheherazade-esque character in the backstory, a magic lamp containing a powerful Jinn, and a world filled with assassins, thieves, sultans and princes, smugglers, and jinn and relics of various powers.  It's a type of fantasy novel that has become a bit more prominent of late I think (see S.A. Chakraborty's Daevabad trilogy), and that's for the better - because I've really enjoyed such takes on Islamic/Middle-Eastern Myth, and so I had some high hopes for this one.  

And these high hopes were pretty much answered as The Stardust Thief is very very good.  The story focuses upon a trio of point of view characters: magic-dealing Loulie al-Nazari, whose heart remains conflicted by the murder of her family and the secret of her companion being secretly a jinn; Mazen, the cowardly prince who just wants freedom who hates his cruel jinn hunting brother; and Aisha, a thief and jinn-hunting assassin working for that murderous brother.  Together they go on a quest for a lamp said to control jinn, and wind up dealing with more of the legends of jinn - and the ambitions of humans - than they ever could have imagined.  The result is a really good start to a new trilogy.  

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
For most people - the Jinn are monsters who ought to be hunted for the safety of humankind, beings who are responsible for murders and monstrous acts.  But when Loulie al-Nazari was a child, her family was murdered by mysterious assailants, until she was saved by such a jinn, a being named Qadir.  Gifted with Qadir as a bodyguard, and with the help of several of his magical relics, Loulie has made a name for herself as the Midnight Merchant, a criminal smuggler who acquires magical relics - illegal due to their connection with Jinn - and peddles them in underground markets.  Loulie tries to keep her head down from the authorities, particularly the Sultan and his monstrous jinn-hunting and murdering son Omar, for both hers and Qadir's sake. 

But after Loulie save the life of the Sultan's youngest son Mazen, she comes to the attention of the Sultan, and tasked with a quest that has killed all others who have attempted it: to track down an ancient lamp said to contain and control a powerful ancient Jinn who aided the Sultan's ancestors.  And to make it worse, Loulie is forced to take with her Prince Omar and Omar's thief/assassin friend Aisha....meaning she and Qadir must be especially careful of their communications for fear of Qadir being exposed as a Jinn himself. 

But it isn't just Qadir and Loulie who are holding secrets, but "Omar" as well - for Omar and Mazen have used a magical artifact to trade places, and her companion is secretly the cowardly freedom-wanting prince instead.  And so they all soon find that themselves stumbling into more secrets about Jinn and humans than they could ever have expected: secrets and myths that threaten to change everything in the human world...if it doesn't kill them all first.....
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The Stardust Thief is in some ways a story with a lot of elements you've probably seen before or will recognize.  You have three point of view characters in Loulie, Mazen and Aisha with very different point of views, stories straight out of 1001 Nights (The Woman saving her life by telling stories to the Sultan, the jinn in the lamp, a group of thieves and assassins working for the Sultan etc.), and one of these three characters is pretty standard too: Mazen is the royal who wants to adventure and see beyond the palace, and also who thinks the Jinn-killing and cruel ways of his father and brother are evil and wishes he wasn't related to them.  There's plenty here that's very recognizable, from the above, to the clear evil plots of Prince Omar that you just know are going to come back into play in the end.  

Yet what makes The Stardust Thief kind of special is how well it builds its world from these inspirations and from Abdullah's own creativity.  As the cast goes on their adventure they find themselves caught up in a Jinn myth one or more of them has heard, which then is retold to the reader....except those stories might not quite match the realities they expect, as the stories tend to paint Jinn poorly....and while some of that is true, there are also two sides to those stories.  And so we have Jinn, Ghouls, Possessions, Magic, and so so much more that I'm forgetting now, and it works so so well and making this a really strong world.  

A strong world would be nothing of course without really strong characters, and while some of them (Mazen) are a bit derivative, they work really well here.  Loulie is a woman who is caught between a lot of emotions - her desire to make it on her own and to prove herself as the Midnight Merchant right under the Sultan's nose, her hatred of those hunting Jinn after she was saved from death by Qadir, her feelings for a Jinn-hunting noble that leave her entirely conflicted, and more.  The adventure forces her to confront all of these feelings in really interesting ways that always make you care and concerned for her.  Mazen is of course the more generic character in that he's the prince who wants adventure and wants to be good instead of evil like his brother, but he's done particularly well, and the book manages to make him the right mix of naive and intelligent at the same time.  And whereas you'd expect romance to grow between him and Loulie, the book merely makes Mazen's crush one-sided, and it works far better than if it was mutual.  Finally, Aisha is a character I didn't know what to make of at first, being a thief who hates Jinn and who is kind of rebellious but also loyal at the same time.  But that's the point of her, as a character who doesn't know what to make of herself, and what she herself is other than someone in need of vengeance for her loved ones, and her journey to something very different, and a bit more defined works quite well.

It all ends on a conclusion that is well, a hell of a cliffhanger.  This book doesn't really stand alone, but it does end on a good stopping point that concludes this part of the arc and promises a whole new arc to come that is just well....something I want to read pretty quickly.  Highly recommended.  

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