There are many wonderful books out there, but few manage to tick all the boxes for elements I love as much as The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah did. I inhaled this – and I admit, I may have inhaled it a bit too quickly, as my memory of the plot is getting a bit hazy – but it was so worth it. I am already looking forward to diving back into the world of this wonderful book, and I hope I get to love it as much as I did this time around for many more reads.

Many thanks to Nazia at Orbit for sending me an ARC for review. All opinions are my own.

RELEASE DATE: 19/05/2022

STAR RATING: 4.5/5 ✶

SUMMARY: Neither here nor there, but long ago…

Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp.

With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan’s oldest son to find the artefact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen and confront a malicious killer from Loulie’s past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything – her enemy, her magic, even her own past – is not what it seems, and she must decide who she will become in this new reality. (from Orbit)

OPINIONS: I adored this. My current gremlin brain has already forgotten far too much other than that – and I’m looking forward to rereading it soon to refresh my memory. But the story was delightful and dark, gritty and compelling, and all-around wonderful. I fell for this book within just a few chapters, and its many twists and turns kept me engrossed until the very last page. The worldbuilding in this is rich and plastic, which just adds to the book as a whole transporting you into its realm.

This is the sort of fantasy that takes its cues from mythology and stories, but turns them into something wholly its own. The focus is laid on character development and platonic relationships, with romance being very much on the backburner (which I really appreciated, especially as the most obvious comp to this is S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad series, which is wonderful, but also very focused on its romance). The main story is interwoven with in-universe tales, which I loved too, as it added another dimension to the linear storytelling which you don’t see too often. The characters are varied and amazingly well-developed, from Loulie, a merchant of stolen magical artefacts, to Qadir, her bodyguard or Aisha, the resident thief. Each of them brings something unique to the table as they are somewhat unwillingly thrown together on the book’s central quest – and I’m excited to read more when books two and three come out, as The Stardust Thief is announced as a trilogy.

One of the elements I loved most as a reformed historian was the inclusion of magical artefacts, old, valuable and highly sought after. I adore old things, and it’s catnip for me if they’re used as a plot device in books… Combined with the inserted stories and nods to A Thousand and One Nights, this was a book I was always going to love – and what is not to love in a thrilling story based on Arab mythology, with a fantastically diverse cast of characters and an epic quest?

Add The Stardust Thief to your Goodreads here, and pre-order a copy via Bookshop here (affiliate link).

I have been having a massive writing block in recent weeks – which is why my review output has been much slower than it has been. But luckily, it hasn’t affected my reading as much (though, looking at the huge pile of books that need writing about, that may not be such a good thing after all…). One of the books that have been sitting next to my laptop is The Shadow Glass by Josh Winning. A weird and wacky fantasy adventure inspired by a love of 1980s films that is immensely loveable and immersive – and one that managed to hit exactly that nostalgic love for The Neverending Story that I grew up with (as a child, one of my family nicknames was “Fuchur” – the German name for Falkor, the dragon from that story).

Many thanks to Lydia at Titan for sending me a copy for review. All opinions are my own as usual.

RELEASE DATE: 22/03/2022

STAR RATING: 4/5 ✶

SUMMARY: Jack Corman is failing at life.

Jobless, jaded and on the “wrong” side of thirty, he’s facing the threat of eviction from his London flat while reeling from the sudden death of his father, one-time film director Bob Corman. Back in the eighties, Bob poured his heart and soul into the creation of his 1986 puppet fantasy The Shadow Glass, a film Jack loved as a child, idolising its fox-like hero Dune.

But The Shadow Glass flopped on release, deemed too scary for kids and too weird for adults, and Bob became a laughing stock, losing himself to booze and self-pity. Now, the film represents everything Jack hated about his father, and he lives with the fear that he’ll end up a failure just like him.

In the wake of Bob’s death, Jack returns to his decaying home, a place creaking with movie memorabilia and painful memories. Then, during a freak thunderstorm, the puppets in the attic start talking. Tipped into a desperate real-world quest to save London from the more nefarious of his father’s creations, Jack teams up with excitable fanboy Toby and spiky studio executive Amelia to navigate the labyrinth of his father’s legacy while conjuring the hero within––and igniting a Shadow Glass resurgence that could, finally, do his father proud. (from Titan Books)

OPINIONS: I absolutely devoured The Shadow Glass. I was reading this while traveling across London on the tube, and was very upset when my journey was over and I had to pause – only to race through the rest on my way home. Lydia from Titan sold me the book as her favourite book of the year in the publicity email, and I’m so glad I listened and requested it, as the blurb had it sounding quite out there and I wasn’t sure if it would click with me. But this is brilliant and manages to hit those nostalgic feels without going too far into absurdist comedy. The Shadow Glass is fast paced and plot-driven, but its characters don’t suffer because of it.

I really enjoyed Jack undergoing extensive character growth throughout the story and developing as a person within a relatively short span of time. We also get to know the deceased Bob fairly well, which I liked a lot, as well as some of the stranger creatures from the eponymous film. As a whole, it served as wonderful escapist entertainment, with big dashes of humanity and nostalgia. This will make readers of my generation and that before mine connect with this – it is very much a book aimed at those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and makes for a refreshing change in the current market.

Add The Shadow Glass to your Goodreads here, and order a copy via Bookshop here (affiliate link).

Portrait of a Thief is a brilliant book combining tropes of dark academia with the classic heist and interrogating the effects of colonialism both on society and on the individuals as all of the main characters are Chinese-American with a variety of backgrounds and relationships to their culture. One that I’d highly recommend, and I’m very much looking forward to having a finished copy in my hands soon.

Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for sending me an eARC of Portait of a Thief via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

RELEASE DATE: 14/04/2022

STAR RATING: 4.5/5 ✶

SUMMARY: This was how things began: Boston on the cusp of fall, the Sackler Museum robbed of 23 pieces of priceless Chinese art. Even in this back room, dust catching the slant of golden, late-afternoon light, Will could hear the sirens. They sounded like a promise.

Will Chen, a Chinese American art history student at Harvard, has spent most of his life learning about the West – its art, its culture, all that it has taken and called its own. He believes art belongs with its creators, so when a Chinese corporation offers him a (highly illegal) chance to reclaim five priceless sculptures, it’s surprisingly easy to say yes.

Will’s crew, fellow students chosen out of his boundless optimism for their skills and loyalty, aren’t exactly experienced criminals. Irene is a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything; Daniel is pre-med with steady hands and dreams of being a surgeon. Lily is an engineering student who races cars in her spare time; and Will is relying on Alex, an MIT dropout turned software engineer, to hack her way in and out of each museum they must rob.

Each student has their own complicated relationship with China and the identities they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but one thing soon becomes certain: they won’t say no.

Because if they succeed? They earn an unfathomable ten million each, and a chance to make history. If they fail, they lose everything . . . and the West wins again. (from Coronet)

OPINIONS: I think this is my favourite non-SFF book I’ve read this year. It combines so many things I tend to love about books – dark academia vibes, a good heist, strong characters with complex backgrounds, and most of all, being a commercial and accessible story with immense depth. Through looking at both colonial theft of art by major museums and the complicated relationships to identity all of the main characters have in regards to being Chinese-American, Portrait of a Thief gives the reader much opportunity to think further than the surface level heist story, but by packaging it in an accessible way, it makes readers more open to receive the message. And that is one of my absolute favourite things about books right now. Thinking about museums and how their collections are largely based on objects looted through colonialism never fails to make me grumpy, so this really felt like a book written specifically for me. (If you’re in London and feel similarly, the V&A has an exciting exhibit of reproductions of major landmarks and sculptures! Instead of looting them they made their own to give us an impression, all the way back in the 19th century)

The story is compelling – as behooves a heist – but it is also a lot of fun. The characters are all charming in their own ways, from Will, who is passionate about art, to Irene who can persuade anyone to do anything (that girl just rolls nat20 after nat20 on persuasion!) or Lily who is a student but also races cars passionately. They come to life in a way that makes the reader almost feel like part of their gang by the end, and while, of course, the idea that a random group of college students can pull of these heists requires a level of suspension of disbelief, as a whole, their shenanigans make sense, and I cheered every time something went off without them being caught.

All in all, just a brilliant book, and I highly recommend it to anyone, even if it’s not necessarily the genre you usually read. It has something for everyone, romance, action, charm, discussion of complex issues, the whole shebang, so really, there are no excuses not to at least give this a shot. I can’t speak to the nuances of cultural representation, but for me, it was an interesting perspective to read, and it felt organic, adding to the book and its story rather than overpowering it.

Add Portrait of a Thief to your Goodreads here, and order a copy via Bookshop here (affiliate link).

I love traveling with the help of books – especially in these days. And A Thousand Steps Into Night takes us into a Japanese-inspired secondary world called Awara, following the adventures of Miuko. A world of demons, gods and humans, where anything can happen. I thoroughly enjoyed my stay, and I hope you’ll follow me there.

Many thanks to Harper360YA for sending me an ARC. All opinions are my own.

RELEASE DATE: 01/03/2022

STAR RATING: 4/5 ✶

SUMMARY: In the realm of Awara, where gods, monsters, and humans exist side by side, Miuko is an ordinary girl resigned to a safe, if uneventful, existence as an innkeeper’s daughter.

But when Miuko is cursed and begins to transform into a demon with a deadly touch, she embarks on a quest to reverse the curse and return to her normal life. Aided by a thieving magpie spirit and continuously thwarted by a demon prince, Miuko must outfox tricksters, escape demon hunters, and negotiate with feral gods if she wants to make it home again.

With her transformation comes power and freedom she never even dreamed of, and she’ll have to decide if saving her soul is worth trying to cram herself back into an ordinary life that no longer fits her… and perhaps never did. (from HarperCollins)

OPINIONS: I love me a compelling YA. And A Thousand Steps Into Night has something that made me fall in love with it quite early on in the story: a scene in which Miuko, the main character, is disguised as male – magically, so she doesn’t have to worry about visibly passing – and has actual gender feelings about it. And not in the way of discovering that she is, in fact, trans or gender non-conforming, but a scene in which she moves through the world, ostensibly male for everyone who perceives her, but feeling uncomfortable in this body, specifically pointing out elements of dysphoria this disguise is giving her. And that is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a YA novel before. It is something so small – the scene only takes up a couple of pages – but it is something that meant a lot to me, to have this trope of a girl passing as a boy interrogated from the perspective of what this actually does with a person.

As a whole, the story is relatively fast-paced and compelling. It is in many ways a YA fantasy that revolves around tropes, and as such, doesn’t feel like it re-invents the wheel. But it is compelling and keeps the reader enthralled. Miuko is a charming heroine, and one who doesn’t feel overpowered. She isn’t incapable of failure – which for me is always something that irritates – and the narration sticks close enough to her to get her insecurities across. And that is where YA shines for me – the main characters are allowed to be insecure and not know how to deal with the world and unknown situations. I found A Thousand Steps Into Night to be a fun, escapist read with some deeper undertones that made me like it all the more.

Oh, and I loved the footnotes giving more information about the Japanese mythology behind creatures and elements in the story. Both in terms of pronunciation and backstory, I just loved the added focus on *this is something relevant* as somewhat of an information magpie.

Add A Thousand Steps Into Night to your Goodreads here, or order a copy via Bookshop here (affiliate link).