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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
Four stars!
I read this many months after I read Rebel and Traitor, so it took me a little bit to get back into the swing of this story and these characters. Still, at times the beginning of this book felt winding and dragging, slow going like climbing a mountain of sand (š). Eventually though, the plot and the characters seemed to settle back into their course and I wasnāt able to put the book down. The finale especially was a success, but my absolute favorite parts of this book and of the whole series are the chapters that are told like stories. Many of them are extremely sad, like eulogies, but the prose is beautifully done.
Characters: I actually want to mention Leyla first. As much as I despise her, I think she was one of the most interesting characters of the series. I guess like Princess Shuri of Wakanda, sheās a brilliant young genius behind the technology that makes her kingdom and family strong. But sheās got a mean streak, Evil and unrelenting, constantly a step ahead, right to the end of the novel.
Amani stepping up as a leader and as a far more selfless person than she ever thinks she could be was a really nice character journey. It isnāt pointed out obviously, but everything she does with the gifts sheās given in the last third is selfless, even as she calls herself selfish. She makes a perfect advisor to the Rebel Prince.
Ahmed actually seems more like a character archetype than an actual character, but I think it suits his role in this story.
I like Jin a lot but I do think that he fell flat for me on this book, he didnāt seem to be doing a whole lot, though his presence was always nice.
Shazad is my favorite and I honestly just love everything about her and her story and her family.
The most delightful thing obviously is the way everyone came together in the end to fight the big battle of the finale, and even though many tragic things happened, I still feel light, happy with the ending. Itās nice to read some fun YA fiction!!
I read this many months after I read Rebel and Traitor, so it took me a little bit to get back into the swing of this story and these characters. Still, at times the beginning of this book felt winding and dragging, slow going like climbing a mountain of sand (š). Eventually though, the plot and the characters seemed to settle back into their course and I wasnāt able to put the book down. The finale especially was a success, but my absolute favorite parts of this book and of the whole series are the chapters that are told like stories. Many of them are extremely sad, like eulogies, but the prose is beautifully done.
Characters: I actually want to mention Leyla first. As much as I despise her, I think she was one of the most interesting characters of the series. I guess like Princess Shuri of Wakanda, sheās a brilliant young genius behind the technology that makes her kingdom and family strong. But sheās got a mean streak, Evil and unrelenting, constantly a step ahead, right to the end of the novel.
Amani stepping up as a leader and as a far more selfless person than she ever thinks she could be was a really nice character journey. It isnāt pointed out obviously, but everything she does with the gifts sheās given in the last third is selfless, even as she calls herself selfish. She makes a perfect advisor to the Rebel Prince.
Ahmed actually seems more like a character archetype than an actual character, but I think it suits his role in this story.
I like Jin a lot but I do think that he fell flat for me on this book, he didnāt seem to be doing a whole lot, though his presence was always nice.
Shazad is my favorite and I honestly just love everything about her and her story and her family.
The most delightful thing obviously is the way everyone came together in the end to fight the big battle of the finale, and even though many tragic things happened, I still feel light, happy with the ending. Itās nice to read some fun YA fiction!!
I canāt even believe that is finished this series. I never wanted it to be over, I would read anything and everything set in this world and I hope Alwyn Hamilton returns to this world in the future because I NEED MORE. Thank you for brining Jin, Amani and Shazad, Sam and the rebellion into my life.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was worried about this one because the second book fell so short of the first I thought maybe it would keep going downhill, but this was back at the level of the first book for the most part! Loved it.
YES YES YES! A wonderful and heartbreaking end for the Revel of the Sands trilogy! I just want to reread already!
I love this series. And the finale book was an amazing way to finish it. Full of plot twists, politics, love, and lots of action and war, this book has it all.
Iāve mentioned the setting before, but I love it, the desert setting with all the magical beings that come with it is an amazing and really refreshing setting to read about and to get lost in.
The characters really developed over the course of the books and I really enjoyed reading about them. I felt like everything was well tied up at the end and the series got the ending it deserved. I felt very emotional and attached to these characters. I feel like this is a classic that I will come back to.
Iāve mentioned the setting before, but I love it, the desert setting with all the magical beings that come with it is an amazing and really refreshing setting to read about and to get lost in.
The characters really developed over the course of the books and I really enjoyed reading about them. I felt like everything was well tied up at the end and the series got the ending it deserved. I felt very emotional and attached to these characters. I feel like this is a classic that I will come back to.
I REALLY wanted to like this series more than I did. The first book was SO GOOD but the next two dropped exponentially in quality.
Don't get me wrong, I still liked this book, and it definitely earned three stars, and I might even one day want to re-read it, but it has some serious problems, especially since its the last book in a series.
My biggest issue with this book is a spoiler, so proceed with caution.I was MASSIVELY disappointed in Hela and Sam's deaths, not because I really liked both those characters and wanted them to live (I did, but that's not enough to ruin a book for me), but because they were so poorly handled. In both cases, I could think of about five different ways that the situation could have been handled that didn't result in their death (why didn't Amani shoot the sultan in the hand and then grab Hela in the ensuing chaos? Why didn't Sam lift Amani up through the ceiling and then, still holding her hand, jump and/or climb up while she pulled him through the floor?) I don't think this book would have had the same emotional impact if there were no deaths, because it would mean there was no cost to victory, but the lazy and quick ways these two beloved characters died made it seem like they were dying just for the sake of making a "twist-y" tear-jerker moment that was demanded by the plot rather than a real consequence of the story. For me, that really took away the emotional impact and left me thinking that those characters really deserved better.
Plus- how did her father know they were married? None of the other Djinni seemed to have any knowledge of the outside world while they were imprisoned, yet her father knew to stab Jin in the stomach so he would have enough time to come back and heal them. Did he just want to save Jin for some reason, and the fact that he was also saving Amani was just a happy accident? Why does he suddenly care about Jin? Again, it felt like the more dramatic moments were happening just for the sake of plot and not because they actually made sense with the story.
Other than that, I felt the epilogue was WAYYYYYY too long. I appreciated checking in with everyone, but at a certain point it felt like too much. A lot of the fun and satisfaction in finishing a story is that you can sort of imagine where the characters go from there, and its left with almost a slow fade-out. This fifteen-page epilogue left NOTHING to the imagination, and spelled out not only the rest of every remaining character's lives, but the generation after them as well. For me, it felt like plot was slapped onto the end to tie up loose threads that the author forgot about. It wasn't organic or smooth and felt out of place, which was the feeling I was left with at the end.
Don't get me wrong, I still liked this book, and it definitely earned three stars, and I might even one day want to re-read it, but it has some serious problems, especially since its the last book in a series.
My biggest issue with this book is a spoiler, so proceed with caution.
Plus- how did her father know they were married? None of the other Djinni seemed to have any knowledge of the outside world while they were imprisoned, yet her father knew to stab Jin in the stomach so he would have enough time to come back and heal them. Did he just want to save Jin for some reason, and the fact that he was also saving Amani was just a happy accident? Why does he suddenly care about Jin? Again, it felt like the more dramatic moments were happening just for the sake of plot and not because they actually made sense with the story.
Other than that, I felt the epilogue was WAYYYYYY too long. I appreciated checking in with everyone, but at a certain point it felt like too much. A lot of the fun and satisfaction in finishing a story is that you can sort of imagine where the characters go from there, and its left with almost a slow fade-out. This fifteen-page epilogue left NOTHING to the imagination, and spelled out not only the rest of every remaining character's lives, but the generation after them as well. For me, it felt like plot was slapped onto the end to tie up loose threads that the author forgot about. It wasn't organic or smooth and felt out of place, which was the feeling I was left with at the end.
This is a review of the series as a whole, since I read them all pretty much successively. So there will be spoilers for the series (though if you're on this page, hopefully you've read the other two already). But in short: incredibly inventive setting let down by hopelessly cliche characters and average writing.
First, I adore the setting and the world. Wild West meets fantasy Middle East is a wonderful, fun, unique, and incredibly well-done merging of two popular genres that provide an incredible amount of ideas for Hamilton to play with. The myths of Djinn and the independence indicative of Wild West stories merge together incredibly well. The little bits we learned about the neighboring countries and their customs made me want to learn more.
However. That's about all I liked. The prose was a little purple and much too repetitive, even for the younger audience that Hamilton was aiming for. How many times did I need to read a variation of "the sand got everywhere" or "the sand was a part of you if you lived in the desert" or "Demdjinn don't lie" or "I can't lie, I'm a Demdjinn" (or mentions of Shazad's beauty, or Amani's blue eyes, or
SO MANY other things)?? I honestly feel like it was a least once a chapter. I understand motifs, but there's a difference between motifs and just flat-out repetition for no repetition's sake. Whenever Jin called Amani "Bandit" or "Blue Eyed-Bandit," it felt incredibly inauthentic. I understand teasing someone about a nickname they've earned, especially one as famous as that, but the way he did it and the situations he used it in was clunky (like, when he's asking her advice, or complimenting her, when it would have made much more natural sense to just use her name).
And I understand what Hamilton was trying to do when she interjected the myths in between chapters (though I wish she had done that in the first book as well, for consistency), but I didn't understand why their names weren't used. In some of the myths, the descriptors were used (The First One, The Sin Maker, etc.), but it seems like that is only the case because their names aren't known, since when they are known, the names are used (Princess Hawa, Ashra, etc.). So why didn't Hamilton use the characters names when she was recounting their myths? It's fine to call Hala "the Golden Girl" a few times (or Shazad "the Beautiful General," or Jin "the Foreign Prince"...), but not every single time. Using their names would make more sense with the idea that their stories will live on past their deaths in a meaningful way, especially in the case of Sam, who, as we learn, is eventually forgotten in his homeland but remembered (as the Nameless Boy, apparently??) in the desert.
And the characters were so incredibly cliche, and their plots so predictable. The only thing that didn't happen which I expected was that Jin didn't turn out to be a Demdjinn, which I was incredibly thankful for. Otherwise, of course he fell in love with Amani, and of course Ahmed was a kind, thoughtful, if unassertive ruler, and of course Shazad was beautiful but deadly, and of course Sam the wise-cracking thief would fall in love with her, and of course Amani and Jin were brought back to life once they "died." Nothing was unexpected when it came to the characters, their actions, or their development. Which, with a setting this inventive, is an incredible let down.
I would love to read this series written by a different author.
However. That's about all I liked. The prose was a little purple and much too repetitive, even for the younger audience that Hamilton was aiming for. How many times did I need to read a variation of "the sand got everywhere" or "the sand was a part of you if you lived in the desert" or "Demdjinn don't lie" or "I can't lie, I'm a Demdjinn" (or mentions of Shazad's beauty, or Amani's blue eyes, or
SO MANY other things)?? I honestly feel like it was a least once a chapter. I understand motifs, but there's a difference between motifs and just flat-out repetition for no repetition's sake. Whenever Jin called Amani "Bandit" or "Blue Eyed-Bandit," it felt incredibly inauthentic. I understand teasing someone about a nickname they've earned, especially one as famous as that, but the way he did it and the situations he used it in was clunky (like, when he's asking her advice, or complimenting her, when it would have made much more natural sense to just use her name).
And I understand what Hamilton was trying to do when she interjected the myths in between chapters (though I wish she had done that in the first book as well, for consistency), but I didn't understand why their names weren't used. In some of the myths, the descriptors were used (The First One, The Sin Maker, etc.), but it seems like that is only the case because their names aren't known, since when they are known, the names are used (Princess Hawa, Ashra, etc.). So why didn't Hamilton use the characters names when she was recounting their myths? It's fine to call Hala "the Golden Girl" a few times (or Shazad "the Beautiful General," or Jin "the Foreign Prince"...), but not every single time. Using their names would make more sense with the idea that their stories will live on past their deaths in a meaningful way, especially in the case of Sam, who, as we learn, is eventually forgotten in his homeland but remembered (as the Nameless Boy, apparently??) in the desert.
And the characters were so incredibly cliche, and their plots so predictable. The only thing that didn't happen which I expected was that Jin didn't turn out to be a Demdjinn, which I was incredibly thankful for. Otherwise, of course he fell in love with Amani, and of course Ahmed was a kind, thoughtful, if unassertive ruler, and of course Shazad was beautiful but deadly, and of course Sam the wise-cracking thief would fall in love with her, and of course Amani and Jin were brought back to life once they "died." Nothing was unexpected when it came to the characters, their actions, or their development. Which, with a setting this inventive, is an incredible let down.
I would love to read this series written by a different author.