While I enjoyed this Egyptian-inspired fantasy, I was a bit underwhelmed too. I found the writing to be pretty juvenile, and although the world-building was beautifully in-depth, it seemed to lose momentum in the second half of the book. That being said, I loved the setting, the magic system and elemental abilities that were reminiscent of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I especially loved Nehal and Malak. Overall, it was a worthwhile read that I think just needed a bit more polishing.

I knew going in that I would love this book, but oh my god?? I'm obsessed with everything about it

This book is phenomenal. It was so easy for me to picture the city of Alamaxa as if I was there myself, which is something that I always look for in a book. I was genuinely invested in the characters lives and stories, and I felt Nehal and Giorgina's emotions with them.

This book features a magic system similar to that of Avatar: the Last Airbender. Both of the main characters, as well as many others, have elemental magic, which allows them to weave earth, water, wind, or fire. Some can also weave sand, steam, ice, etc. (and, spoilers ~ blood, in rare cases).

The two narrators, Nehal and Giorgina, are very different people. Nehal comes from a rich family, whereas Giorgina comes from a poor family, and has to work hard for everything. They both offer unique perspectives throughout the story, and, in my opinion, they're both very likeable characters.

This story involves a group of women - the Daughters of Izdihar - fighting for womens rights, despite the police, government, and many citizens fighting against them. This really hit home, and made me all the more invested in the story.

This book overwhelmed me with emotions. It was extremely hard for me to put this book down and go to sleep. And that cliffhanger??? I need the next book asap. 'The Daughters of Izdihar' is beautifully written and so, so powerful.

I'm begging everyone to please read this book - it's truly amazing, beautiful, scary, and emotional. I can't say enough good things about this book.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the E=arc!
I absolutely loved the world that they are set in. This was a fantasy world that I believe was based in Egypt. The magic in this world was very creative and I love seeing a different perspective of each of the characters set in this world. I think the woman in this world was fantastic and I love to see strong characters like this.

A very interesting book! I was reminded of "Avatar the Last Airbender" with the Weavers' ability to manipulate the elements. That's pretty much where that comparison ends and it's not exactly what the book focuses on. The real spotlight is the fight for women's rights, which I love.
The characters and their relationships with one another ring so true and authentic.. Though the world is fictional, it is based on Egypt, which I found fascinating. I used the dictionary/look up function on my Kindle quite a bit!
My only gripe is the ending. I felt that it literally just stoppped. Obviously, this is a series, but I think it there could have been a less abrupt way to finish book one.
An older teen/new adult book with a little romance.and a lot of heart.
#NetGalley

Thank you, Avon and Harper Voyager, Harper Voyager and NetGalley for the chance to read this book! Seven out of five stars, absolutely.

I now regret reading this arc because that means that *I need to wait to read the sequel*, and I do not expect to be as fortunate as to read an e-arc again. MA'AM. *MA'AM*. There is a cliffhanger I am absolutely shrieking at, and I am very much looking forward to re-reading this book when it comes out again.

This book is told in two main POVs: Nehal, an extremely privileged young woman, who has power over water, and Giorgina, a woman with power through the earth, who works in a bookshop. One thing they have in common besides their powers is the man they're both connected to: Nehal's arranged husband, Giorgina's lover. Nico is a kind enough man, and easy enough to like. He agrees to paying and arranging for Nehal's desires, which as a woman, she cannot do herself.

Nehal is a casual revolutionary, idly flipping through pamphlets, but she grows increasingly more serious and dedicated as she learns more, experiences more. Still, her privilege is a great shield-- the police chief is her honorary uncle, and she gets away with far more than anyone else might. He's not the "one good cop"-- this is a show of the allowances made for the rich and powerful. Nehal barrels into delicate situations, armed with her privilege, her face, her name, her connections, her riches. Most of the time, she's successful.

This isn't the norm for anyone. Giorgina, like most others, doesn't have the ability to be public. She'd lose her job. Her reputation would be ruined, which would impact her family's prospects as well. She has no near-familial cop who'd care to see her unharmed. She'd be in jail, at best. Giorgina has hopes-- she wants to be with Nico, eventually, though she can't while he's married to Nehal, as then that impacts those she loves negatively. Without the right to vote, without the right to be responsible for herself, she cannot do as she desires.

Through the Daughters of Izdihar, Giorgina and Nehal meet and get to know one another, as well as their connection. There's no true competition between them, no rivalry of jealousies; both women are far too mature for that. That in itself is very refreshing.

I really enjoyed seeing Nehal grow, and Giorgina gain confidence and strike out on her own path. can't wait to read the sequel!

No one is more shocked than me that this book was a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps I had the wrong expectations going in, but the magic system wasn’t all that interesting to me, one of the protagonists was so boring I almost skipped her chapters, and there were too many repetitive setbacks for my taste.

I really did love Nehal and Malak, though. I also liked the supporting character who wanted to burn everything down. I think if the book was about the three of them, or about Nehal and Malak and Yusry, a gay man who tries his best to live his life truthfully, I could have enjoyed it a bit more.

Giorgina and her love interest are so boring, their conflicts so uninterested to me, I couldn’t really care for them at all.

I also wish that less of the plot was the women in this oppressive society trying to do a pacific protest, being sabotaged, beaten, arrested. Telling men what happened, being ignored. Rinse, repeat.

It made the second half of the book feel a bit deflated of tension and momentum, because anytime the book seemed to be gearing up for an escalation, it just handled the women the same setbacks instead. I needed a bit more variety in the plot, I guess, in addition to a protagonists that felt like she had more reason to be the POV character.

I loved that this book told a story set in a more modern Egypt! The Daughters of Izdihar tells a harrowing tale of two girls, Nehal and Georgina, both on a journey towards freedom and choice, in a country on the brink of war. I enjoyed role of the technological levels of this story, the juxtaposition between trains and palanquins showcasing a country seemingly on the path to the future while being heavily held back by restrictions on women and their personhood. The colorful descriptions of the fashion, the cuisine, and the architecture were immersive and aids in pulling the reader into the story.

I liked the magical weaving element of the story, though I felt that at times, this component of the story felt more like an afterthought. The beginning of Nehal's story leads with a burning desire to attend the Weaving Academy due to her struggle to learn the skills of weaving on her own. Yet, the very moment she attains everything she had been striving for, Nehal never has to struggle to rise in strength and skill. Further on in the story, Nehal's fast-learned ability quickly culminates to dire consequences, but I would've liked to see a little more of the Weaving Academy.

Georgina's journey with weaving, while featuring a wildly contrasting story, had similar tones to Nehal's. With Georgina, I liked that her story showed the difficulties of weaving while coming from a less privileged background. But again, at times, it felt like her weaving abilities only come into the story as a method to lead into the next act of the book and I would've liked to see more of her relationship with her weaving abilities.

One of my struggle with the story was feeling like there were times when the actions and thoughts of the characters were told to the reader, as opposed to being showed to the reader, leading to the characters occasionally feeling very one-dimensional. For example, upon being given new information, the reader is told Nehal is reflecting on the consequences, without further delving into her thought process involved in the choices she must make about the issue at hand.

In a story showcasing police brutality and the escalation of violation at the hands of cops, I found it odd and a little distasteful that there was pro-cop rhetoric within this book. When the characters have to deal with the police force, Nehal reflects that "... there were some like Shaaban who were honorable and dedicated to maintaining the peace.." While not being a full endorsement for police, this line of thinking is all too similar to rampant "not all cops" arguments, and I did not enjoy that the issue is not reflected upon further in the story.

In the end, I did like this book for the magic elements and the setting, and the cliffhanger has me waiting impatiently for the sequel!

Before I get started, I'd like to say thank you to both to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I'd also like to offer a disclaimer: I've known the author for years online. While I would like to say that my opinions are unbiased, I'm afraid that I cannot claim to be wholly unprejudiced where my friends are concerned, even if that bias is subconscious. However, I will do my best to offer my unsolicited, earnest feedback with this review.

Now that we are all on the same page...

Have you ever heard of "lightning in a bottle"? Or it may be more appropriate to call what Elsbai has captured as "djinn in a bottle," because novels like The Daughters of Izdihar, the first of a series called The Alamaxa Duology, make storytelling look less like craft and more like magic. The writing is propulsive and thoroughly cinematic -- utterly unputdownable after you read that first page -- which is a quality that made series like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games absolute blockbusters. If this isn't the novel everyone on BookTok is talking about in 2023, I'll eat my hat.

Daughters is set in a fantastical country inspired by a historical Egypt known as Ramsawa. There, manipulators of one of the four elements (fire, earth, air, and water), known as weavers, are tolerated for their innate powers at best and scorned as heretical by religious acolytes at worst. They are feared for their capabilities; as are Ramsawi women, who are held in just as much contempt as weavers, if not more so.

In the face of such oppression, two women -- Nehal and Giorgina -- are coming of age in the Ramsawi city of Alamaxa amidst a rising tide of change for both women and weavers. Both are involved in the feminist organization known as The Daughters of Izdihar, which not only serves women practically by offering food and sourcing healthcare, but also politically, as its members fight for suffrage and equal protection under the law. Both are also weavers, and weavers are also beginning to experience some amount of freedom, as the long-shuttered Alamaxa Academy of the Weaving Arts reopens for the first time in two centuries. It's the only formal school where men can learn to harness and utilize their magical gift (and women, too, for an exorbitant price). Looming on the horizon, however, is the threat of war from a neighboring country, not to mention the threats posed by violence from within, like police who brutalize protestors with impunity. One stray gust of errant wind could bring a tempest to Ramsawa, and that tension is illustrated on every page.

It is a delicate balancing act to propel the plot forward and not lose sight of any one of these disparate elements, which a lesser author might be prone to do. But Elsbai handles her narrative with ease, much like a water weaver who transforms liquid into ice into steam back to liquid again. A lot of this ease is owed to the specificity of the world-building, and how readers slip undetected between each narrative, experiencing first-hand how a privileged aristocrat like Nehal and a working-class romantic like Giorgina can inhabit the same city, but entirely different worlds.

What also makes this balance possible is how each character is rendered, primarily, with empathy and compassion. This is a choice that runs parallel to the hero's journey Nehal and Giorgina are both on, as Nehal learns how to advocate for others, and Giorgina learns how to advocate for herself. That these lessons are inextricable from their pursuit of justice in the face of overwhelming odds is the point. The personal is political in The Daughters of Izdihar. They may be able to manipulate grains of sand or gusts of wind, but it is these women believing in each other which grants them their most salient, fearsome power: the power to effect change.

Most importantly, though? This book is fun. It is *extremely* hard not to root for a ragtag group of characters who are fighting against a violent heteropatriarchy, which I would argue will be refreshingly cathartic to read in 2023. (It was in 2022!)

Five out of five stars.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Okay, this was a solid debut fantasy! I loved the writing style, and though the worldbuilding and magic system could be a little more fleshed out, I'm sure it will be later on in the series. It has a solid base and I'll definitely be interested in a sequel!

This is a feminist fantasy starring Nehal, a girl forced to marry to pay off her father's debts, and Giorgina, a commoner in love with a nobleman. These girls' paths are intertwined when Nehal marries Nico, Giorgina's lover. I honestly wish the leads had spent more time interacting with each other, but I get the feeling their friendship is going to grow in future books, which I'm really excited for. You can't have a feminist novel without some strong female friendships, of course. And Nico was fun, and even though sometimes he had the resolve of a wet blanket, he's trying his best! Nehal definitely brings out the best in him, and we get to see him grow throughout the novel, which was a lot of fun.

There IS a lesbian romance! It's sort of a side romance (this is definitely more fantasy than romance in general), but it was super cute and I'm excited to see more. It's not a queernormative society, so of course there is some stigma, but the character is very comfortable with her identity as a lesbian, which is refreshing to see. Fantasy can always use more wlw couples!

One critique I do have is that this book felt more like a prequel than anything. There wasn't much of an overarching plot; this story was just our two leads reacting to things that happen to them. Nehal does have the goal for most of the book to attend the weaving academy, but even that gets sidelined for her to get dragged along through some semblance of a plot. There wasn't necessarily a climax, either, just characters setting the stage for a sequel, which was disappointing. Nehal especially was enough to carry me through this book without an engaging storyline, but it still left me wanting more. I hope the sequel can really find its footing, expand on the worldbuilding and magic system, and really double down on the political intrigue.

All in all, it was a good book, but did leave something to be desired. The series has so much potential, though, and I'm excited to see what Elsbai comes up with next!

The Daughters of Izdihar was SO good!!! Absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it to any fantasy lovers!

I am giving this book five stars even though I do have a few issues here and there. My likes far outweigh any minor nitpicking. Fair warning without any spoiler specifics, this book is part of a duology and ends on a major cliff hanger.

This is a story of women fighting for their rights in a society heavily catering to men. It is not unlike the real fights of women throughout history. It has the added aspect of elemental manipulation impacting their fight.

What I absolutely loved:

1. This book has such good female representation. Some authors think they write female characters well but these truly are well written. There are so many distinct characters that are given complex, realistic backgrounds, personalities, obstacles, etc. It’s not completely one thing. Queer issues are brought up naturally and fit into the world that is not queer. You see characters who are straight, queer, accepting, indifferent, bigoted, violent, peaceful, confident, insecure, and everything in between.

2. The fantasy elements were fun and interesting. The elemental manipulation is done in a lot of stories and can sometimes feel obviously influenced/inspired. This felt thought out and fitting of the world it’s in.

3. The world building is satisfying. It it detailed enough to imagine the locations without being overdone and excessive.

4. So many other little things worked together to where I finished the book much faster than expected.

My only little, minor, tiny issues:

1. I didn’t love Nehal. I like the idea of the spitfire using her status and privilege to help her cause. She was very selfish and annoying at times. I guess that does fit her character though. She does start to recognize this at the very very end so that’s why it doesn’t bother me as much as it could.

2. I prefer when series of any kind have some resolution in each book. I don’t love when I finish a book, especially one that’s 400ish pages and am left with so many loose ends that won’t get tied up until the next book. I find that doesn’t bother a lot of people but it’s something that always annoys me. I feel more like a finished a dramatic chapter than a whole book.

Overall I still loved this book and will sit impatiently waiting for the next installment.

Fantastic fantasy that has all the elements that I love. Great world building that didn’t disappoint at all. Pick this one up if you would like to be whisked away by magical writing that grips you from the very start.

I have such mixed feelings about this book. I loved the idea, loved Nehal, but for the most part I felt like the entire book is just setting up for action. There are so many chapters where all that happens is the characters going to men with requests, with begging, with information, only to be mistreated as they knew they would be. A lot of the story just feels like the characters confirming, for us, that they live in such a misogynistic society that fighting even a little bit shouldn’t be considered bad.

I love literary fiction, so I have no problems with a book that is literally about nothing but vibes and feelings, but this story really felt, even at its most propulsive, like it was spinning its wheels and saying the same thing again and again.

Of course, like I said before, I did come to care about the characters. I especially love Nehal and how impulsive she is, and Malak. I want to know what happens to them so I’ll inevitably read any books that come next. I just hope the next few books move beyond telling us how horrific this world this for all of its women.

First, thank you so much for the eARC. I am so beyond grateful. This book is everything I wanted and more. “The Daughters of Izdihar” is the perfect combination of fantasy and real world problems, which is something I feel can be hard to achieve.

This book follows our two protagonists, Nehal and Giorgina, as they deal with fighting for the rights of women and weavers (the magic system—not unlike bending from Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is AMAZING). Their noble cause is pitted against the crushing patriarchal society in which they live, as well as some unsavory groups that are introduced throughout the story.

To start, the plot and the pacing is perfect. I read over half of the book in one sitting because of how invested I was. There is a good balance of high-stress and low-stress events, and the plot is easy to follow. The world-building is phenomenal in every way. This world is so detailed and interesting, from the society the women are fighting to change to the religion and the weavers. I also really enjoyed that we learned about the culture and history throughout the plot in ways that made sense—I didn’t feel like it was all dumped on me at once. I really enjoyed the various conflicts and how they were handled and intertwined. The biggest is women versus a violently patriarchal society, but weavers versus religious zealots, police brutality, and international relations are all dealt with masterfully.

Next, the characters. I LOVE the characters. Obviously, Nehal and Giorgina are the spotlight and they deserve every bit of it. The women are juxtaposed in many ways, which makes their perspectives so interesting. Not only are they opposites in personality, but they also deal with themes in opposite ways. Think one learning when to bite her tongue and the other learning when to stand up for herself, that kind of thing. It’s amazing. The other major character is Nico, who is such a lovely character. He is well-intentioned but frustrating, and I love that. He, like the women, is a complex character who is easy to like and easy to learn from. He represents a larger problem, which is addressed in the story (but I won’t spoil anything!). I really love so many of the characters, like Nagi and Labiba, and even the antagonists are well-written and so very easy to hate.

I wish I could put to words just how much I love this book. It was such an amazing read and so well-written, in my opinion. I read over half of this book in one sitting because I simply could not put it down, and I really will think about this story for the rest of my days. My only regret is that I now have to wait for publish day to get this book in a physical format and then even longer for the second book. I cannot wait for both of those dates, even if they are far away! Thank you again to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC—I am so grateful for the opportunity to read such an amazing book.