Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
Series: Rebel of the Sands #1
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
She’s more gunpowder than girl—and the fate of the desert lies in her hands.
Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mystical beasts still roam the wild and barren wastes, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinni still practice their magic. But there’s nothing mystical or magical about Dustwalk, the dead-end town that Amani can’t wait to escape from.
Destined to wind up “wed or dead,” Amani’s counting on her sharpshooting skills to get her out of Dustwalk. When she meets Jin, a mysterious and devastatingly handsome foreigner, in a shooting contest, she figures he’s the perfect escape route. But in all her years spent dreaming of leaving home, she never imagined she’d gallop away on a mythical horse, fleeing the murderous Sultan’s army, with a fugitive who’s wanted for treason. And she’d never have predicted she’d fall in love with him…or that he’d help her unlock the powerful truth of who she really is.
Oh, good lord this book was boring. This is a spaghetti Western meets Middle Eastern fantasy and it is just as bad as it sounds. Ok, I guess it wasn’t terrible terrible, but it is so excruciatingly dull.
Awhile back, Walk On Earth A Stranger came out. It was also a Western, and it was also super fucking boring. But apparently a lot of people loved it. I wasn’t one of them.
Aside from the Middle-Eastern-magic thingy, there are a few similarities between this book and Walk On Earth A Stranger.
1. Girl with special skills/power growing up in a place where she’s different and special
2. Girl has no parents/dead parents
3. Girl disguises herself to get the fuck out of Dodge
4. Girl falls in with a guy who can’t possibly be the romantic interest! Not
5. Girl goes on a long-ass, unending, again, excruciatingly dull road trip to get to wherever the fuck she’s supposed to go
Judging from the high ratings for this book and Walk On Earth A Stranger, clearly people like this stuff. It’s just not for me.
I’m only a couple of chapters into this book, but I’m enjoying it. I am having a little trouble with the spaghetti-western feel to it, because that’s just not my thing, but the magic and other stuff incorporated is making it feel more interesting to me. I haven’t really gotten to a whole lot of action yet, though…
I need action, otherwise good writing, and I got neither here 🙁
I feel significantly better after reading this. It’s SO AWKWARD downrating a book that’s flooded with five-star reviews. I gave it a three but now looking back, I still think I was maybe too generous. May also be because I hadn’t yet read the majority of the Western remixes out in YA recently so I had nothing to really compare except the author’s notion of “super exotic Eastern lands that are probably just desert and camels”.
It’s such a pretty cover though! Ugh…I’ll pass on this one. I can’t do boring.