【 REBEL OF THE SANDS 】

book #1 in the Rebel of the Sands series

Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Young Adult
Author: Alwyn Hamilton
Published: February 2016
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Pages: 358 (paperback)

This is pretty much everything you want from a YA fantasy novel. It’s buckets of fun and full of magic, awesome characters and adventure.

The world this is set in is so cool – Hamilton is bringing us an Arabian-inspired desert world where the main character comes from a tiny industrial town. Amina is a fierce female protagonist who’s a keen shot with a gun, and the opening scenes see her at a shoot-out (shooting glass bottles) to try and win money. All she wants is to get out of her small town and away from the leering men and a pretty grim future of being a housewife.

And of course that means we get adventure stacked on adventure stacked on action. There are some great characters we get to meet along the way that help and hinder Amina’s plight to escape to the big city: Izman. My favourite is Jin, and he’ll probably be yours too.

I am a total sucker for desert fantasy because it always offers such a curious blend of action-packed adventure and irresistible myth and magic. The looming threat of bad magical creatures and the presence of other tricksters like Djinni fill these pages with just the perfect amount of fantasy flavour.

There’s honestly just nothing not to love about this book. I can’t wait to get my hands on the sequel because things are left on an epic scene in the book one (though not quite a cliff-hanger) and I need to know what will happen next. I’m particularly excited to see and learn more about the magical powers in the book and the abilities of various characters. And to see the romance blossom, because who can resist that?

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Title: Rebel of the Sands
Series: Rebel of the Sands
Author: Alwyn Hamilton
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Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mythical beasts still roam the wild and remote areas, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinn still perform their magic. For humans, it’s an unforgiving place, especially if you’re poor, orphaned, or female.

Amani Al’Hiza is all three. She’s a gifted gunslinger with perfect aim, but she can’t shoot her way out of Dustwalk, the back-country town where she’s destined to wind up wed or dead.

Then she meets Jin, a rakish foreigner, in a shooting contest, and sees him as the perfect escape route. But though she’s spent years dreaming of leaving Dustwalk, she never imagined she’d gallop away on mythical horse—or that it would take a foreign fugitive to show her the heart of the desert she thought she knew.

Rebel of the Sands reveals what happens when a dream deferred explodes—in the fires of rebellion, of romantic passion, and the all-consuming inferno of a girl finally, at long last, embracing her power.