by Chloe Townson
There are a few points of view scattered throughout The Stardust Thief but the most prominent voices are Loulie Al-Nazari – The Midnight Merchant – and Prince Mazen. The former is a scavenger, of sorts, who travels the desert in search of magical relics. The latter is a younger Prince who is kept cooped up in the royal household but who wants only to be free to wander the market and listen to stories – and who is a magnificent storyteller himself. The paths of the Merchant and the Prince are entangled through no choice of their own – the Merchant swept up into the King’s plots and the Prince sent with her by a brother who cares for naught but his own intrigues.
The Jinn and their relics are the crux of the story, however; the Merchant travels with Qadir, a Jinn who controls fire and can shift into a lizard. The Prince travels with Aisha, who is sworn to the band of forty thieves and their mission to eradicate Jinn from he face of the Earth. The four are an unlikely travelling troupe, though they learn to trust each other through the trials and tribulations of their quest across the desert – they are forced to question their own beliefs and the stories that led them to those beliefs.
The Stardust Thief is a refreshing Middle Eastern fantasy inspired by One Thousand and One Nights. The art of storytelling is revered in the pages of this book, the chapters interspersed by the stories of myth and legend. Though there’s potential for romance between the characters, it’s not something that takes precedence; what takes precedence are the relationships between travelling companions, the dips and highs of familial relationships that are affected by secrets and things left unsaid. The character arcs are dictated by the things that happen to them rather than by the people they fall in love with. There’s nothing wrong with fantasy romances; they’re like the fast food of the fantasy genre, easy to read and tasty to boot. The Stardust Thief is more like a home cooked meal; wholesome and warm, and when asked if you want another serving you say ‘yes, please’ even if you’re already full.
