Introduction
The Stardust Thief, written by Chelsea Abdullah, was published on May 17th, 2022, by Orbit Publishing company. This book is the first of the Sandsea Trilogy - something I didn’t know until halfway through the book, and something I am very excited about. This book was a Christmas gift to me from my college roommate and her family. They know that I love fantasy books and figured this would be right up my alley, and they were correct. I had a great time reading this book, and I recommend anyone who enjoys fantasy, action, and mystery genres to check this one out. A quick reminder that the Plot section of this review will not contain spoilers, only a brief and ambiguous overview. I will warn any readers that the Thoughts sections will contain spoilers, so if you haven’t had the chance to read this one yet, I highly recommend doing that before continuing here.
If you want to learn more about Chelsea Abdullah and her upcoming projects, check out her website, https://www.chelseaabdullah.com/, and follow her on social media @chelsabdullah.
Plot
Told through the perspectives of a merchant with a heartbreaking past, a prince with a secret to hide, and a thief with an ulterior motive, The Stardust Thief sees these three characters forced into a hesitant alliance to search for an ancient and powerful artifact.
Thoughts
The first thing I noticed was how much this book reminded me of Disney’s Aladdin. A thief and a royal meet by chance in a market just outside the palace after the trapped royal sneaks out to see more of the world. The thief saves the royal only to get caught and blackmailed later by a powerful figure within the palace. Her job is to find an ancient lamp containing a powerful magical being. The thief agrees and inevitably ends up betraying the royal. There were enough deviations as the book went on to make it feel like its own entity, but the similarities listed above are especially prevalent in the beginning.
Because of these initial similarities, I expected the book to be much more cliche than it was, and I was pleasantly surprised. For example, when Mazen and Omar switched places, I assumed that Mazen being so different from Omar and so naive about the world would quickly give him away, even with Aisha’s help. Instead, he did a remarkable job pretending to be his brother, and he was only found out when they were captured by Imad and had his magical bangle stolen. Another example was what I thought would be a love triangle between Ahmad, Loulie, and Mazen. Mazen was clearly enamored by Loulie, and though she seemed to feel some affection for him - or at least his morals - she and Ahmed were obviously in love or getting there. I contemplated how they would get Ahmed out of the picture, considering the possibility of his death multiple times, but I wasn’t sure they would go through with it. I - like Loulie - was torn on his character until his death, which I was both saddened and intrigued by.
On the subject of character death, Qadir’s almost death was devastating for me, especially when told through Loulie’s perspective where we could see and feel her overwhelming grief. When he came back, I was thrilled, but I began to wonder if it would have been more interesting for him to stay gone. It’s definitely an avenue I would have been heartbroken to read, but I think it would have been an interesting road to go down. He is one of my favorite characters, so I hope he survives the rest of the series, but his death could potentially lead to a lot of character growth for Loulie. For the moment though, I’m hoping he and Aisha survive the cliffhanger this book ends on. Aisha’s almost death was more interesting to me than Qadir’s. I really enjoy the moral ambiguity of her character and the arc she goes on throughout this book, but forcing her to merge with the Dune Queen to remain alive was incredible. They are similar in so many ways, but different enough that their influence on one another is going to be amazing to read should she survive the next two books.
I love having this book told through three perspectives, and I’m not sure I could pick a favorite of them. If I had to, maybe Mazen, but it’s a difficult choice to make. Every character has their own goal and agenda that stems from their complicated pasts. I appreciate that these things can be known by the reader while still being kept secret from the other characters through the use of different points of view. Part of the reason I can’t pick a favorite perspective is because I love all of the characters - everyone is well-written and very dynamic, which makes the story much more interesting - and their backstories are revealed slowly over the course of the book. Even when you think you know what happened, you don’t get the full picture until the very end, which compelled me to keep reading. The ending was wonderful, and to finally see how everything had played out and to have the characters’ own assumptions flipped upside-down was phenomenal. Nothing is what it seems, and I love it.
The only complaint I could really make about the book would be the pacing. For large sections of the story, I got so caught up in everything else going on that I often forgot that the end goal was to find the lamp before Omar to ensure he couldn’t use it to wipe out the jinn. It was interesting, but sometimes got repetitive, and while I felt most things were very important and held my attention, there were times I felt like I was just waiting for the next thing to happen. However, the last 150 pages or so were amazing, and I could not put the book down. I loved the setting too, the desert setting is something I haven’t seen often in books, and it was refreshing to have something new. Especially because every bit of greenery had stemmed from the death of a jinn, making the image bittersweet.
All in all, this book earns an 8.5/10 for me. While some of the plot points could have been condensed a bit more, I had a great time reading this book and was pleasantly surprised to find many of my assumptions proved wrong in the end.
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