ade St. John splits her time between her isolated estate in South Africa, protected by an enchantment her grandmother concocted more than a decade ago, and a basement apartment in Tel Aviv, with a door full of more levers and pulleys than a bank vault. Worldly and confident, she stands out in any crowd.

Zyan, a Bedouin boy learning the ways of the desert from his father’s stories, has accepted a humble path in order to learn the secrets of the nomadic life and establish his roots in the shifting sand.At the well one day, Zyan catches a wavy vision of Jade—whom he believes is a jinn—which tugs the magical thread connecting them while simultaneously drawing them into a global crisis.

As they’re pulled closer, their lives become more imperiled, until it becomes apparent that only together can they stay alive.

Interesting and creative story. Loved it.

I really enjoyed reading this book, the plot was what drew me in and it kept getting better as I continued reading.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this title.

5 stars
Great read, definitely recommend, loved the ideas, the plot and the characters.

An interesting fantasy/mystery creatively told. I enjoyed this even though fantasy is not my favorite genre. It gets bogged down occasionally with too much detail/creativity, but the author is very talented. Lots of creative ideas here. Recommended.

I really appreciate the copy for review!!

Initially I was drawn into this story because it was about the world's supply of fresh, clean water, which is, along with climate change, and pollution, one of the real crises in the world right now. I was by no means convinced that bringing in magical abilities or Middle East jinn would lend adequate gravity to a story about a serious problem like this, but I was willing to give it a chance. The problem was that story got lost somewhere along the way. Largely abandoned were the jinn, and the story devolved into one that was delving far more into the day-to-day minutiae of the lives of the two main characters. It seemed to lose track of the fact that it was supposed to be telling an important story about a serious real-world problem.

The two main characters are a Bedouin boy named Zyan, who is living in Morocco, and Jade St John who splits her time between South Africa and Israel. She has the ability to bypass normal space by latching onto a strange system which allows her to travel great distances - on a global level - in relatively short times. She can also push people's minds in the direction she wants them to go rather than where they might have gone otherwise, and she can communicate on some level with animals. She has an assistant, for example, which is a pangolin, but which works for her as a sort of housekeeper, which I thought was rather cute. Jade works for a mysterious organization and gets her instructions from 'Mother' rather like John Steed used to in the old British TV series called The Avengers.

Zyan lives - as befits his ethnicity - in the desert and has a pets like chickens and a goat which he foolishly ties to a post outside a library, only to have it stolen. He tracks it down, but fails to act before the boy who stole it slits its throat. This is important for my attitude toward this novel later, if you'll bear with me. He has the ability to see Jade on occasion, but he thinks she's some sort of jinn. He becomes involved with the Moroccan royal family because they think he can talk with jinn and thereby help them with their fresh water shortage. Therein lies a problem.

Morocco is on the coast. It has a long coastline. It also has oodles of sunlight. It wouldn't take much to set up a desalination plant - or a series of them - running on solar energy which could supply Morocco with all the freshwater it could ever want. If this had been addressed in the story, and some sort of 'reason' (however weak or invalid!) had been put in place to 'explain' why their water problem couldn't be solved by this means, that would have been something, but for the author to dismiss all that, and make this sound like it was a crisis in need of jinn magic when there are technological solutions seemed like cheating to me.

The people of Morocco don't call their nation Morocco. It's known in Arabic as 'The Western Kingdom', and while politics are discussed in the novel, we learn very little about how Morocco truly is. It is a very repressive kingdom where free speech is highly circumscribed and homosexuality is illegal. Lack of water isn't a problem; lack of sanitation and access to flowing water in every household is a problem, so it seemed to me like this was a poor choice of a country to set this water issue.

Worse than this, over half a million Moroccans are addicted to drugs. Eighty percent of cannabis in Europe comes from Moroccan plantations. For me, that's no worse that growing tobacco, but Morocco is also a shipping route for South American cocaine. Drug addiction is particularly prevalent among Moroccan youth. These are not things to be proud of. Why Hollywood is so intent upon favoring Morocco for so many movie shoots is beyond me.

Morocco is also an islamic nation, but you would not have guessed that from this novel. There is no talk of Islam and none of the people depicted are ever shown following any of the tenets of that religion, which lent the story an air of high fantasy and inauthenticity. Indeed, at one point the Moroccan queen is depicted as flouncing around in a bikini in front of a stranger! Even for a western nation that might seem a problem (recall the sensation in Britain when Princess Diana was photographed with the sun behind her shining through her skirts. For an Islamic nation it was positively ridiculous.

While Morocco is more enlightened than many Islamic countries with regard to dress code (westerners can wear a bikini on the beach, for example), Moroccan women are expected to dress conservatively to one degree or another depending on which part of the country they are in. Some areas are more conservative than others, and even western women would be frowned on or worse were they to try wearing a bikini or even a bikini top at any place other than the beach. Moroccan women do have some rights, but they are far from equal as compared with western women - who even now still bear a greater load of grief than ever men do with regard to dress and comportment. In 2015 two women were publicly abused and arrested for dressing 'indecently'. That same year, three teenagers were arrested because one of them, a boy, took a picture of his friend, another boy, kissing a girl and posted it on Facebook. So no, they're a long way from equality and freedom in Morocco and I'm sorry this author skated blithely over all that.

This brings me to another problem, which was that I couldn't tell if this story was supposed to be set in the near future or in some sort of alternate reality. Britain's queen for example, was given as Queen Agatha, which is nonsensical since that name isn't remotely close to the name of any of the queens Britain has actually had, so again this undermined suspension of disbelief. Maybe in an alternate reality there would be a Queen Agatha and the Moroccan royal family would not have an issue with the queen disporting herself in a bikini, but without having any guidance from the book blurb or from the novel, it was hard to tell what was supposed to be going on here.

That wasn't why I DNF'd the novel though. The problem for me was, as I mentioned earlier, the fact that the author seemed to forget that there was supposed to be a story going on here, and instead spent so much time in minutiae which didn't really do anything for the story at all. I began to grow bored, but didn't really lose my interest until Zyan started rambling on about his dead goat. If he'd mentioned it in passing, that would be one thing, but he told a story about it that went on, and on...and on! It was so tedious that I quit reading right there.

That rambling wasn't interesting. It revealed nothing we did not know already, and neither did it do a thing to move the story (or me for that matter given Zyan's complete lack of effort to save the goat in the first place, and his stupidity in leaving it tied up where he couldn't keep an eye on it to start with). This had already been covered earlier in the story so this revisit was annoying at best. My patience had been waning with Jade's mindless and pointless puttering around by this point, so the endless story of Zyan's tragic loss of his nanny really got my goat - and I'm not kidding. I can't commend this as a worthy read, not based on the fifty percent of it I did read.

I LOVED THIS SO MUCH. It was fresh and unique! Just what I needed!
I absolutely loved the world building!
The main character is a sorceress, known as as Jade or by her code name Africa, she travels between locations by grasping filaments no one else sees and swinging through space like an acrobat in a circus.
Overall, a beautifully written, fun book! Can't wait to read more from this author!

Water Crown is a fantasy adventure taking place in the modern world, but one twisted with magical beings and phantasmagoric creatures. The main character is a sorceress or person with all kinds of magical powers. Known as as Jade or by her code name Africa, she travels between locations by grasping filaments no one else sees and swinging through space like an acrobat in a circus. Jade lives part of the time on a ranch retreat in a South Africa protected by magical powers and by beasts she talks to mentally. She also lives in a secret basement in Tel Aviv and with her family in London.

She is employed by a top secret worldwide organization of people with superpowers and the crowned heads of Europe. A young Bedouin boy in southern Morocco can see Jade and thinks she's a Jinn. He's adopted by the Prince of Morroco who thinks he can harness the young boy's talents. There's a worldwide drought and a desperate search fir underground aquifers in Malawi and under the Sahara. An absolutely treasure trove of fascinating locales and concepts. Read this to enjoy these exotic locales and awesome magic, but understand that it all fits together loosely and plot wise it never fully gels.

My official review goes live on my blog on 19th September 2019 at:

https://thebespectacledbibliophile.home.blog/

James Suriano is quite skilled at descriptions. My favorite scenes were the ones in Morocco or South Africa. He also made the mystical water tribe, the Waterites, sound enchanting. His character development and dialog was extremely well done as well.
I did, however, have issues with the amount of politics in this book. Personally, I found that there was way too much politics and not enough sci-fi and fantasy. There were also quite a few grammatical errors in the book. It was still a good read though

The tagline for this book immediately caught my eye: “A world running out of water, kings and queens struggling to control what is left, and a diaspora trying to stop them.”

Sci-fi is not generally a reading genre I gravitate towards, but I couldn’t resist giving The Water Crown by James Suriano a chance. It is an intriguing and fast-paced novel that I struggled to put down. I found this to be a highly enjoyable book and definitely recommend this to both sci-fi fans and those who are not avid readers of this genre.

The story bounces between the perspectives of two very different characters. Zyan is a 10 year-old Bedouin boy in the deserts of Morocco, who is learning the ways of his nomadic people through his father’s actions and stories. Jade St. John is a woman known as an “unconventional,” or person with magical talents, who splits her time between her family estate in South Africa, protected by enchantments set in place by her grandmother, and her secure apartment in Tel Aviv, when she isn’t on assignment for her mysterious employer. Their paths cross when Zyan sees a vision of Jade while he is drawing water at a well one day, thinking that she is a jinn. As the world is drawn into a drought and a crisis over control of dwindling water supplies ensues, the thread connecting Jade and Zyan pulls them closer, while her responsibilities pull her in a different directions. Jade and Zyan realize that the only way they can survive is by working together.

The author has a beautiful way of using description, making me feel as though I could see places I’ve never been to in my life. His descriptions of Africa are lush and picturesque, but I feel that the most vivid descriptions are of the desert scenery in Morocco:

“The night brightened, with a dense layers of stars backlighting the sky while the moon took front stage, turning the browns and oranges of the Sahara into a palate of many grays. Zyan felt reinvigorated by the cool air and the sugary fragrance of a far-off tree or flower that had opened in the welcoming light of the moon and released its sweetness.”

I like reading about the characters as well. Much of Jade’s character development is presented through flashbacks to her childhood, while Zyan’s growth happens throughout the book. He flashes to stories that his father has told him as morals and lessons, and then is presented with choices in the present. I find it especially fascinating to compare how mature Zyan is at 10 years old compared to children in more “advanced” societies. Even as a comparatively responsible and mature 10 year-old, he shows considerable growth throughout the book.

At times, I would get a bit lost in the more sci-fi type descriptions of situations, and would find myself having to go back and read a passage two or three times to get a sense of what the author was trying to convey. Some of the concepts are a bit difficult for me, but as I’ve mentioned, I’m less oriented to sci-fi than other sorts of books. However, I did find this book to be fascinating. The complicated passages aren’t a turn-off in the least. I wanted to grasp the ideas, which is why I went back and re-read them until I understood.

The plot itself is a little complicated, with a lot of moving parts, but it did come together in a way that I didn’t quite see coming. The ending is amazing. I won’t say more than that, other than you should definitely read this book. It is an enthralling novel, with emotional aspects that I definitely did not expect, since the few sci-fi books I have read have been somewhat clinical and detached (think Brave New World). I give this book a resounding five out of five stars.

I found the synopsis for this book very intriguing
A WORLD RUNNING OUT OF WATER, KINGS AND QUEENS STRUGGLING TO CONTROL WHAT IS LEFT, AND A DIASPORA TRYING TO STOP THEM.
I loved the world building, especially jades home with her concoction of animals which she can speak to (and in one case “Gwevlyn.” the pangolin works for her in the house making tea etc..) I also loved Zyan and following him and his family as they move through their desert home.

I did find the writing style a little overdone which took me out of the story at times . “The early-evening sun sat just above the Moroccan horizon, still draping a heavy heat across the windblown mountains of the mustard seed-colored landscape”
I had to google some of the animals jade interacted with -( pangolin is an anteater!? - just say anteater? ) Which In my opinion made the story feel a little pretentious?

Overall I enjoyed once I got into the bulk of the story and got used to the writing style.

The Water Crown is inviting and inventive. I enjoyed entering this science fiction world, and I love the ideas the author puts in place, along with the characters that populate this unique story.