I received this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The title and cover drew me in! Its a great premise. Some parts were a little slow but overall a good read!

9.5 / 10 ✪

https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com/2022/05/19/the-stardust-thief-by-chelsea-abdullah-review/

After reading this the only thing I regret is not trying to get a physical ARC of it. Although, I suppose that’s what money is for, right?

In the Stardust Thief, jinn bleed silver. Wherever their blood falls, life blossoms. It has the power to paint the desert green, heal wounds, or even restore the dying to life. This twist, along with so many others, prevented the book from being both a straightforward retelling, and a facsimile of so many others.

It also prevents the landscape from becoming too… dull. Tans and browns and reds and oranges aren’t necessarily dull, but after a while they do kinda make one long for a blue or two to break up the monotony. Maybe that’s why kohl was so popular. Point is, bleed a jinn or ten around one spot and you’ve got yourself a new forest. Or an everlasting river, as seen in the above excerpt.

As with really good reads, it’s hard for me to talk about what exactly I loved most about the Stardust Thief. I mean… there are just soooo many things! The retelling of various legends especially—not only those incorporated into the plot, but also those included as legends in their own right and told via storytellers, or in interludes—gave the world a tenuous connection to our own, while never confusing just which side of the looking glass the reader was on. It’s good to see so many tales from <i>One Thousand and One Nights</i> included in a single work, not just a retelling of Ali Baba or Aladdin or Shahrazad or the like. Yes, I know that other books aimed to do the same, but I’d argue that by in large, the results were nowhere near as good.

I feel like I should mention the characters too, but I’ve no idea where to start on them. Their depth is impressive, as each and every lead has a thorough backstory—both based in legend and written lore. I was really impressed at just how well they all worked together; amidst the chaos and battle there were hints of unlikely friendship and romance, though you could never tell just who was threatening to fall in love with whom.

TL;DR

This seems entirely worthless, as the review part wasn’t very long and mostly had to do with me gushing about how much I loved the story. Yeah, so that’s pretty much it. Whole-hearted recommendation, hands down. But is it worth the…? Yes. Are you sure? What about the…? Yes, that too. And the audiobook? Not sure about that, exactly. This one supposedly features a full cast, and even one terrible voice-actor can ruin the whole thing. But if I could just direct you back to the other forms of text, maybe try one of those.

Yeah, so I’m gonna wrap this up, as it’s pretty much just me rambling. Read this. It’s sooo good! The only downside I can think of is that you’ll have to wait another year for Book #2.

That was a fun adventure ~. Honestly the first prt reads more older teen/new adult to me, so if you fall into that age bracket or are looking to expand in to adult fantasy I’d definitely give this one a try.

The characters are cool, the story is interesting and there’s also some plotting as well. I liked the world building—I recently just read another book set in an alternate history Egypt and it didn’t feel nearly as convincing in its setting.

Now, I do feel that the book relies a lot on the mcs not telling each other important information A LOT to move the plot forward. Hopefully they’ll be over that in the sequel now that many many things have been revealed over the course of the story. (Gotta say Omar’s plot at home wasn’t that mysterious…)

Anyway this was entertaining and I’ll look forward to the sequel. Thanks to Netgalley and Orbit for a digital copy to read for a review!~

Rating: 2.5 stars

The thing about The Stardust Thief is that it was perfectly...adequate. It had a plot, it had a cast of characters, it had worldbuilding and a consistent magical system, but it was all just kind of bland. Average. Passable.

It seemed like a story and a world with so much potential, but it just fell flat for me. I honestly didn't realize this was categorized as an adult fantasy rather than YA which kind of surprised me because it very much felt like your run-of-the-mill YA fantasy the whole time I was reading The Stardust Thief. (and I'm totally not knocking YA fantasy because it's my bread-and-butter.) It's just a little disappointing because The Stardust Thief has the potential to be so much more, but I finished it feeling a bit underwhelmed.

I will say that the story started to gain momentum toward the end, so I have higher hopes for the sequel. The world is certainly intriguing enough that I'll be sticking around for book #2.

I love fanstasy books that are based on Arab / middle eastern mythology and folklore. So I was definitely the target audience for this novel! It gave me the same feeling as when I was reading the Daevabad trilogy by Chakroborty: lots of vivid descriptions, adventure, political intrigue, magical beings and great characters. All in all it is an awesome start to the trilogy and I cannot wait to read book 2,

If you like The Daevabad Trilogy, I think you will adore The Stardust Thief! Both series have the same gorgeous desert settings, magical djinn, and characters you will come to love…or hate.

In The Stardust Thief, we follow three POVs. My favorite POV was Loulie al-Nazari, the Midnight Merchant, who hunts down and sells illegal magic. Her jinn bodyguard, Qadir, is so loyal and sweet he’s easily one of my favorite characters! But he also has a lot of hidden secrets, making him intriguing and mysterious. When Loulie helps save one of the sultan’s sons from a powerful jinn, the sultan blackmails her into traveling with his oldest son to find a powerful lamp that will revive the barren lands but will also destroy the lives of jinn.

I also loved Mazen’s POV. Mazen, the youngest son of the sultan, longs to escape the confines of the palace and go on adventures. He’s obsessed with listening to stories and is a talented storyteller himself. He grows so much within this first book. I am excited to see where he will be at the end of the trilogy.

The last POV belongs to Aisha, one of the eldest prince’s Forty Thieves. While not my favorite character, she is complex and dynamic, and she’s plays a big part in the plot of the story, especially toward the end. I have a feeling she might even replace Loulie as my favorite character before the story ends.

The novel is structured where there are separate short stories nestled between the main chapters. I loved this part of the book so much! They bring so much texture and life to the main plot. Part of the plot is also heavily inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, and it’s retold in a way that I’ve never seen done before.

I found the book perfectly paced with just the right amount of action, character development and world-building moments. I adored learning about the djinn magic and mythology and political structure. I’m most excited to explore more parts of this world and learn more about certain character’s backstories and powers.

I’d highly recommend this book if you enjoy desert setting fantasies, characters that learn and grown throughout a series, and a perfect blend between character growth and plot development.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for the digital advanced reader copy.

I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley/Orbit for an honest review.

Oh man, this book did a really good job of living up to its hype. The book had such complex characters, complicated magic system, and rich world building. I was utterly in awe. The author did such a great job weaving stories inside a story. This is my new favorite type of storytelling. The imagery created by the author immediately transported me to the lands described. It had such good plot twists and none of them were out of place.

I appreciated the strong bond shared by Qadir and Loulie. Their genuine moments and interactions were so fulfilling. We don't get a see a lot of development in other relationships since everybody is dealing with their own stuff. Hopefully, we'll get to see more of that in the next one. I loved how Aisha’s internal conflict was dealt with and how she came to terms with it. I can’t let Mazen’s arc go unmentioned either. That inconsequential prince is definitely not so!

This is a truly strong debut by Chelsea, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series and other works by her. I do, secretly, hope that she chooses to bring on some darker and more complex characters in the next ones to make the book more enjoyable.

I really appreciate the middle eastern rep provided by the author, however I'm not the best judge of it so I'll leave it to the other reviewers.

A big thanks to NetGalley and Orbit Books for providing an eArc in exchange for an honest review.

Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights? A legendary smuggler? A cowardly prince? And a daring quest to retrieve a lamp from the desert? Save less, I'm in!

The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah is a fantasy novel following the master smuggler, Loulie al-Nazari, and her Jinn bodyguard. One day Loulie saves the prince, and is then tasked by the Sultan to find the legendary lamp of the desert that has the power to save the land. Otherwise she'll be executed. Cue dramatic music.

The Stardust Thief is perfect for fans of Hafsah Faizal's We Hunt the Flame, or those just wanting to get over the reading slump that followed S.A. Chakraborty's The Daevabad Trilogy. Now excuse me while I impatiently wait for the sequel.

Loulie al-Nazari, infamous jinn relic seller is recruited by the Sultan to retrieve a magical lamp from the Sandsea after she saves one of his sons from being posessed by a shadow jinn. Her jinn bodyguard Qadir accompanies her alongside Mazen and Aisha. Mazen is blackmailed into pretending to be his brother Omar on the journey and unlike his brother, he's not equipped for it. Aisha is one the forty thieves trusted by the real Omar and a jinn hunter.

The Stardust Thief was an interesting read for me because there were sections where I couldn't put it down but there were also sections that I felt coasted along. The beginning took some time for me to get into but I was really vibing with this world. Someone told me this was dark fantasy but while there is some violence I didn't find the tone to be dark. It's a sweeping action and adventure fantasy with the characters journeying through the desert.

At first I was wondering why Aisha even had a pov when we went 8 chapters without her having one only to then wait another 8 chapters to get her pov again. But she actually ended up being the most interesting character in the story for me. I found myself really enjoying her chapters.

For Loulie and Mazen to get so many chapters I wanted a little more character development for them. While identity was a big theme in the book Mazen's journey was my least favorite. He's very gentle and at times overly idealistic which results in him getting a rough wakeup call. I enjoyed Loulie's relationship with Quadir and it was nice when they were in scenes together and she had someone who made her address her emotional turmoil. Even though the three are traveling together because they're all dealing with their own internal conflicts at times they felt a little disconnected. But I really feel that problem was solved towards the end.

This book was inspired by One Thousand and One Nights and I do like how the original source material was woven in. There were even little short stories which had there own sections as opposed to exposition dumps and I found that so unique. The world was also vibrant and I had a clear picture of it. I also like how the magic was explained with the jinn relics and the backstories of certain characters without being overly confusing.

I'm interesting in seeing were this trilogy goes in book 2. Also for the people who read fantasy looking for a big sweeping romance, there isn't one here. Though there were hints and I'm glad the author didn't force it. I think people who struggle with larger fantasies like I do sometimes will also appreciate how this story reads.

Originally posted
https://womenofcolorreadtoo.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-stardust-thief-by-chelsea-abdullah.html

Hello, yes? I'm in love with this book. From the second I read the words "neither here nor there, but long ago" I knew I was going to love this one. What followed was a story filled with magic, mayhem, grief, and action that had me on the edge of my seat. The characters were complex and loveable despite their faults and the world was so well fleshed out and unique.

I can't remember the last time I read a book that kept me guessing until the very end. Each twist made me scream "why didn't I see that coming?" I laughed, I cried, I gasped in shock, and I didn't want it to end. This book may just be one of my favorites of the year and I cannot wait to see where the rest of this series goes!

Chelsea Abdullah’s The Stardust Thief takes place, as the book’s first words tell us, neither here nor there but long ago. In this long ago time, there are jinn in the world—magical beings whose silver blood brings forth life where it lands. For reasons we do not know (at first), the Sultan of Madinne has ordered all jinn to be killed on sight. There is even a cabal of Forty Thieves tasked with hunting them down, resulting in lush oases where they are massacred. It is beautiful and horrible, as one character describes it, and it is both the backdrop and the driving force of the story that unfolds.


That story starts with a mandated expedition. Relics—magical artifacts associated with jinn—are coveted items, and a young woman named Loulie al-Nazari (a.k.a. the Midnight Merchant) specializes in selling these relics on the black market. Loulie gets caught by the Sultan, however, and is forced to go find a specific relic—a powerful jinn trapped in a lamp—that will give its master great power. And so Loulie and her bodyguard Qadir, along with the Sultan’s son Mazen and a renowned jinn-killer named Aisha, head out to find the coveted item, whether they want to or not. [rest at link below]

https://www.tor.com/2022/05/17/book-review-the-stardust-thief-by-chelsea-abdullah/

A fantastic debut from Chelsea! Amazing description and vibrancy, Chelsea takes you on a breathtaking journey that had me rooting for her characters all the way to the end. A fantastic edition to the fantasy world.

What a beautiful, magical book!

I loved the magical, enchanting Arabian setting of this book. The Stardust Thief wonderfully incorporates stories from One Thousand and One Nights to weave a well written novel full of magic and adventure. The world was immersive and it was easy to lose myself within the journey and the characters. I loved the legend and stories of the jinn and the storytelling.

This is such a wonderful debut from an Arab woman writer. I love the characters, and the varying POVs I felt added to the story. Loulie and Mazen were such interesting characters and I loved their character arcs. I can't recommend this enough for fantasy lovers and look forward to more installments.

I struggled through the middle of this book, but overall I really enjoyed it and I’m definitely interested in continuing the series! We follow three different POVs: Loulie, who sells jinn relics as her alias the Midnight Merchant with her jinn bodyguard, Mazen, the son of the sultan and a storyteller, and Aisha, who is a member of the Forty Thieves who serves Mazen’s older brother Omar. Out of all these characters, I think I enjoyed Loulie’s perspective the most, but I also very much enjoyed Mazen’s POV as well. I found myself wishing for more background in Qadir, Loulie’s bodyguard at the beginning, but we slowly learn more about him and his relationship with Loulie as the story goes on, and he’s now one of my favorite characters! I’m also very curious if there is going to be any romance in the second book, because I can easily see two potential love interests for Loulie, but after what happened with Ahmed who knows if she’ll want to put herself in that position.

I loved the desert setting, although since I was reading an ARC copy without a map, at times I was confused as to where the group was located as they were travelling to the Sandsea, since at one point it sounded like they were in the middle of the Sandsea and then suddenly outside it.

That was one of my biggest issues with this book. I would be reading and then it would suddenly switch to a vision, or the characters would seem to suddenly be somewhere else without much indication as to what was happening or where it came from. I don’t know if this is due to reading an ARC copy, and maybe it was a formatting issue, or maybe it was just me not fully understanding what was going on in the moment.

The pacing was also a bit inconsistent. I started this book back in April, and it took me almost a full month to finally finish it. The first part was really quick and kept me engaged, but once they started travelling it felt like the pacing slowed down and kind of meandered a bit and didn’t really keep me engaged, so it was a struggle whenever I tried to pick this book up. The final third was amazing, lots of action and reveals and the ending makes me want the second book ASAP! Overall pacing is definitely on the slower side, so if you’re the kind of reader who likes slow paced books I think this would be a great one to try.

There are so many twists and turns, especially in the last half of the book and that’s really what made this a 4 star for me by the end. I wasn’t really feeling so connected to the characters because of how slow I found the middle section, but once things started picking up and we got more information on the characters, I found that I couldn’t put this book down!

Overall, this is a solid debut fantasy and a great start to what I’m sure will be a series of epic proportions. I can’t wait to see what trouble Loulie, Mazen, Qadir and Aisha get into in the next book, because things seem like they’re really going to get moving now!

I’m not sure what it was, but I didn’t really enjoy this one. It had all the elements of a book I would normally like, but it didn’t come together for me. It has interesting characters, magic, a quest and a bit of mystery. I think I just didn’t connect with the writing style. It also seemed to hide what the bad guy was really after almost too much. Like, you know who the bad guy is, but you really don’t see his end goal until the very end.

This is the story of Loulie al-Nazari. In a land where the jinn are hated, and hunted for their magic, Loulie makes a living being the Midnight Merchant. With the help of her jinn bodyguard, she hunts down and then sells illegal magic and relics. On her journeys, she happens to save the life of one of the princes, and from there, the sultan blackmails her into finding a magical artifact that will sacrifice all of the jinn to heal the barren land. So she goes on an adventure with her bodyguard, one of the princes, and one of the prince’s jinn-hunting forty thieves, and many shenanigans are had.

I enjoyed my time with The Stardust Thief. It started out a little bit slowly for me, but it soon got its metaphorical feet under it and from there it became quite a page turner. I read it in three nights, and a couple of those were quite late nights, as it turns out.

I really liked the characters in this one, especially Qadir and Mazen. Qadir and his relationship with Loulie was an interesting one, a little more akin to a father-daughter relationship than that of a bodyguard and his charge. He’s very secretive though, as I always assume jinn to be. I thought Mazen really grew as a character throughout the novel, and I enjoyed seeing that character growth. Aisha, the jinn-hunter was also an interesting character that I came to like.

The Stardust Thief is inspired by 1001 Nights, and you can definitely see elements of that in the story. There’s storyteller whose nightly stories made the sultan fall in love with her, the jinn trapped in a lamp, the forty thieves… but so much more, and I loved the inclusion of all the stories told in this one. This book really embraces the tradition of storytelling as a theme.

All told, The Stardust Thief was beautifully written, so hard to put down, with characters I couldn’t help but latch right onto. I had a great time, and can’t wait for the next installment!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

The Stardust Thief is the first book in Chelsea Abdullah's The Sandsea Trilogy. The book centers around Loulie, also known as the Midnight Merchant, who is a criminal that hunts and sells illegal magic with the help of her jinn bodyguard. All is well, until one day she saves the life of a cowardly prince and consequently draws the attention of the prince's powerful father, the sultan. The sultan blackmails Loulie into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive barren land, but in doing so will sacrifice all Jinn. With all this in mind Loulie has no choice but to obey, and thus sets out with the sultan's eldest son and her bodyguard to find the lamp. But along the way dangerous trials are presented at hand that will make Loulie question everything she knew about her enemy, her magic, and even her own past.

This book was a really great start to a new series, I really loved how it weaved together the tales from 'A Thousand and One Nights' into a captivating and refreshing plot. The story does alternate between three point of views, but the author kept each character interesting and had wonderful flow from chapter to chapter. The world building was also very well developed and overall the authors writing style was really captivating and descriptive.

If you enjoy an evenly paced plot with action packed scenes alongside emotional scenes, characters who are so well described that they feel real, world building that even has you feeling as if you're tasting the food, then this book might be for you!

Rating: 4.5 stars

Once in a while, you come across a story you didn’t realize you were starving for until it was sitting right in front of you. Such was the case with Chelsea Abdullah’s debut novel The Stardust Thief, a sweeping, magical fantasy epic and the first in a trilogy I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on in its entirety.

I’ve been a lover of the fantasy genre since childhood, and while there are still stories within that genre I enjoy, they all began to feel a little too similar after a while. Many were Eurocentric - or imitation-Europe centric - and if there happened to be a character that could be suggested to share my Middle Eastern heritage, it was a toss up as to whether or not they were the villains of the story, or at the very least the lackey of the villain. After a while I began to take those stories for what they were, accepting there wasn’t really space for people like me in fantasy.

The Stardust Thief takes that assumption, that defeat, and throws it right out the window. It flies in open defiance of every narrative that ever tried to make that part of the world seem like a monolith. It is set in a fictional Middle Eastern land whose geography is every bit as diverse as I know the Middle East to be. Cities are sprawling metropolises, and each one they visit feels different. The desert is not all barren and sandy, instead dotted with oases and port towns. You’d think this would be a given across fiction, alas it is not.

The story follows Loulie, who goes by “The Midnight Merchant” and who deals in jinn artifacts as she is volun-told by the Sultan of Madinne to accompany his eldest son on a quest into the Sandsea - a treacherous desert - in search of a magic lamp. The scheming prince in question, Omar, uses magic to switch places with his much kinder brother Mazen, who heads out on the quest with Loulie in his brothers place.

Also along for the adventure are Qadir, a jinn and Loulie’s business partner-slash-bodyguard, and Aisha, one of the thieves in Omar’s service, who travels with them to protect her employers interests. Together the four of them venture out on their quest, each carrying the weight of expectation, grief and the secrets they keep from one another. The Stardust Thief is as much a character study as it is an adventure, and it really thrives for it.

Woven throughout the mythos and characters Abdullah has created are tales and legends I recognized. Of course, they are not presented as literal retellings of a famous story. Rather, there is just enough familiarity there that the reader can pick up on which story she is alluding to. One such tale took me by such surprise (in the best way) that I gasped out loud.

It was this, too, that I realized I had been missing in my fantasy depictions of the Middle East. The region is no monolith as I said, but there is enough cultural overlap that many elements of our mythos and legends are shared across nations. We have been sorely lacking stories that treat it as the sprawling, epic, diverse literary canon that it is, and The Stardust Thief gives us exactly what we need.

Beyond how much this book resonated with me on a cultural level, it is honestly just a ton of fun. The characters are relatable and allowed to wallow in their messiness, or make mistakes without being punished for it. They joke and tease with as much ease as they fight. The action is so carefully blended with quiet, tender moments. The characters actually talk things out like grownups.

The adventure itself is breathtaking. It never feels drawn out or endless. Instead, it feels more thoughtful and episodic, with each piece of the mystery surrounding the jinn and their magic unravelled slowly for the characters so that the reader might piece things together as the characters do. Despite the episodic nature, however, there are moments of genuine tension that keep you eagerly going from one page to the next. It is a work of art and a must read for any fan of fantasy.

I mean it when I say the wait for the next book is going to be a long one.

The Stardust Thief
By Chelsea Abdullah

3.25 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Orbit Books, for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

What a fun book about the power of storytelling, found family and journeys into the unknown!

I was swept away from the very first page by beautiful prose and an exciting setting — a fancy boat on a desert sea, and even if I wasn’t hooked by that a humble prince with an obsession for stories and sneaking out was certainly enough to sell me on it!

An exciting, fast paced debut that reads like a YA!

I liked that this was the story of (though she’s not mentioned by name) Shahrazad’s sons and what happened after, I liked that we were able to feel a deep connection to stories and this place with all the folklore sprinkled through out the book and I really enjoyed our cast of characters and their shenanigans!

The author’s twists of the old familiar stories was fun and so good that you never know what to expect!

Very excited to re-read this later this month when my copy arrives!

The Stardust Thief is a fantastic debut inspired by One Thousand and One Nights. It has magical artifacts, an atmospheric desert setting, jinn, political intrigue, and well developed characters.

The story follows a group of characters, the Midnight Merchant, a jinn, a prince, and a thief, who embark on a journey to retrieve a magical lamp for the sultan. Woven into their journey are several tales from Arabian Nights. I loved how these stories added to what was happening in the book.

If you like desert fantasies, quests, and multiple POV stories, I think you’ll like this book too. It’s a fantastic start to a trilogy.