Name: Rebel of the Sands
Rating: 4.01195219123506 (251 reviews)
ISBN: 9780698410428

Alwyn Hamilton

Rebel of the Sands

Usually I read fantasy inspired by the European Middle Ages. However Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton is fantasy inspired by Middle Eastern customs and folklore. I really liked this setting of the desert, because it gives so much other opportunities and limitations than a story set in a forest. 

The plot itself was also really good, I loved the rebelling-against-the-government part very much, it was written very well. 

The love story was a bit mid to be honest. It started out really well with the train scene (loved that one), but after that they were not even talking with just the two of them? It was just a few sentences "he kissed me" but that was so quick I almost read over that. This could've been a little bit better in my opinion, but because Amani is so awesome she's forgiven.

I am very excited for the following books in the trilogy :)

If you liked this book, I recommend: the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.

Laura

Usually I read fantasy inspired by the European Middle Ages. However Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton is fantasy inspired by Middle Eastern customs and folklore. I really liked this setting of the desert, because it gives so much other opportunities and limitations than a story set in a forest. 

The plot itself was also really good, I loved the rebelling-against-the-government part very much, it was written very well. 

The love story was a bit mid to be honest. It started out really well with the train scene (loved that one), but after that they were not even talking with just the two of them? It was just a few sentences "he kissed me" but that was so quick I almost read over that. This could've been a little bit better in my opinion, but because Amani is so awesome she's forgiven.

I am very excited for the following books in the trilogy :)

If you liked this book, I recommend: the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.

"Amani is desperate to leave the dead-end town of Dustwalk, and she's counting on her sharpshooting skills to help her escape. But after she meets Jin, the mysterious rebel running from the Sultan's army, she unlocks the powerful truth about the desert nation of Miraji...and herself"--

Melissa Palmer

Book #143 Read in 2015
Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

This was a good young adult/adult fantasy read. Amani is a feisty young lady who recently lost her mother. Her aunt does not like her, her uncle is debating marrying her and her cousin is jealous of her. Amani needs to get away from that house and when a mysterious foreigner, Jin, crosses her path she sees a way to do so. But the way will not be easy, fraught with war, danger and magic. Good characters and excellent writing made this a read that was hard to put down. I highly enjoyed it and think high school students and adult readers would enjoy it. I am wondering if there will be a sequel....I received a copy of this book from Amazon Vine in exchange for a honest review. 

http://melissasbookpicks.blogspot.com

This phenomenal novel is the first in a trilogy packed with shooting contests, train robberies, festivals under the stars, powerful Djinni magic and an electrifying love story. "Tell me that and we'll go. Right now. Save ourselves and leave this place to burn. Tell me that's how you want your story to go and we'll write it straight across the sand." Dustwalk is Amani's home. The desert sand is in her bones. But she wants to escape. More than a want. A need. Then a foreigner with no name turns up to save her life, and with him the chance to run. But to where? The desert plains are full of danger. Sand and blood are swirling, and the Sultan's enemies are on the rise.

Colleen

3.5 Stars

Between The Wrath & the Dawn, The Rose & the Dagger, The Forbidden Wish, and others, I have read quite a few Young Adult Fantasy novels lately that involve a similar setting. Admittedly, magic goes quite well in a dessert setting, and I love when books draw from mythology. Still, I try to avoid reading too many similar books close together so I waited a couple of months before reading Rebel of the Sands. Rather than the books I just mentioned, when I started reading this I was immediately reminded more of The Assassin's Curse mainly because of the atrocious grammar from page one. The very first paragraph contained the words "I wasn't up to no good. Then again, I wasn't exactly up to no bad neither." That left me literally cringing. And just like when I read The Assassin's Curse, I had the momentary pause to wonder if it was worth turning the page if the whole book was going to be full of bad dialogue. I decided to keep reading anyway.

The opening of the plot is fairly pradictable: a teenage girl is hellbent on escaping her family's plans for her and her pigeonhole life, so she runs off the first chance she gets and off course gets tangled up in a much bigger quest. The start of the book is very Wild West: shoot outs, gunslingers, mining towns, train robberies... other than a few mentions of how there used to be magic, there was almost no fantasy element. Then the story takes an abrupt swing in completely the opposite direction and ends up being practically High Fantasy. Either the Wild West angle or Fantasy would have been perfectly fine, but the two did not mesh well together. It made the world building seem sloppy and the flow of the story inconsistent. The two elements could have been blended together (and it would have been unique if they had), but that aspiration was never achieved. They were mostly smashed up against each other like two very different flavors clashing.

The dialogue continued to be bad throughout the beginning of the story. It wasn't just that the grammar was dreadful; it was so over the top that it was campy (and unintentionally so). I will also note that right around the time the story jumps from Wild West to Fantasy, Amani suddenly stops speaking in her overly uneducated manner. In fact, the entire tone of the writing does an about face which just makes the first part of the story seem farcical because it becomes so obvious that the author was playing up the wannabe cowboy element. Since the story is told in first person, it is not just her dialogue that changes, but the overall narration and the entire tone of the book. That is not character growth; it's straight up inconsistency.

Because the book straddled two very different genres, the plot seemed stretched thin at times. The story also felt rushed. It tried to cram a lot of different things in a short amount of time particularly once the Fantasy elements ramp up. The story failed to bring the mythology to life, and since the mythological element was the main reason I picked the book up in the first place, that was a major disappointment. There was just too much going on in the story, too much crammed in haphazardly.

I also never fully believed in Amani's grand destiny. She is the stereotypical badass which means she is not nearly as badass as the author wants her to be. Much more like Annie Oakley gets a dose of magic and has an identity crisis along with a smack of instalove. Her character seems to fade as the story progresses and she gets swallowed up by everything going on around her. Overall, she has more than a hint of being lackluster. It was the standard quest type plot with predictable love interest. I never really believed the chemistry between the two main characters though.

The fictional world was loosely based on an 18th century version of our world. Actually, other than guns and trains there was nothing modern ("modern" in this case being approximately the 1800's) about it. I wondered for a little while if the story was going to go Steampunk, but it did not. Rebel of the Sands is loosely set in the Middle East and draws from their mythology (mainly from lore about Djinn). But it felt so Westernized. And no, I do not mean that as a pun due to the Wild West theme. I never felt any depth or richness to the lore in the book. As I mentioned, the story goes from magic practically being an old myth to suddenly magic being everywhere and abundantly used. So it never delves into lore; it just plunks mythical creatures gracelessly into the story.

I did not realize at first that this was going to be a series. So now I am stuck waiting about a year for the sequel and probably another year after that for book number three. Of course it had the requisite ending that was mostly just a buildup for the next book. It was not as obnoxiously a cliffhanger as some other series, but still.

I feel a little bad only giving this 3.5 stars rounded down to 3 stars. After all, I gave The Assassin's Curse 3 stars, and did like Rebel of the Sands better. I just did not like enough to round up to 4 stars. I will probably read the sequel when it comes out, but I'm not trying over myself to go get it. It gets a little leeway for being a debut book. But hopefully the sequel improves.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 4 Stars
Writing Style: 3 Stars
Characters: 3 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 4 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars

Beatrix Haase

wowwowwowwow this book was good. Highly highly recommend :)

xoxo,
Bebe

I can only recommend this book! more in my blog soon :)

Kirsten Simkiss

This is actually more of a 4.5 star book for me, so I gave it a 5 star review so it would up the average a little closer to what I felt it deserved. I thought this book was delightful. The protagonist, Amani, is a child of the desert and seeks to escape the world she was raised in, where women are pawns for men to trade. In her scheming to escape the city, she makes an unlikely friend in a foreign boy and, together, they get caught up in a plot much larger than Amani realizes.

The biggest fault of the book is that it suffers from too much information all at once in the beginning. While it's important information, it takes them almost 85 pages for her to get out of the city. That's a solid chunk of my book, which was only 314 pages long. Still, to it's credit, world building is important. I just felt like it could have been spaced out more along the course of the book.

I really liked Amani. She was a very lovable and believable protagonist and it was easy to understand her perspective and her choices. I also really enjoyed Jin as a protagonist, even knowing he was hiding things from her. Together, through trials and tribulations, they really grow as characters and that, more than anything, really brought this story to life. You understand their emotions as you read the story and you really see their emotions toward each other blooming without it getting to be cheesy or unrealistic. While Amani is kind of your standard YA heroine with impossibly good aim, she's more believable than most I've read. My one complaint about her is that her loyalty toward her family is very shaky and that she didn't seem to have any solid relationships in that aspect of her. When she hears her cousin, a girl she's lived and laughed with for years, is left with the Sultan and knows he's a violent abuser, she has one sad thought and then moves on. Sure, she tried gain a position higher than what she might have gotten in Dustwalk by turning her cousin over, but I feel like even then they might have had some concern for each other's well beings. It's not mentioned again for the rest of the book. I'm sure it'll come up again in later books, but I just thought it was a little callous. There are almost no positive female friendships until late in the book, which seems unfortunate in such a male dominated world. She also does something similar to Noorsham, breaking an implied promise to help him escape and thereby resulting in his indoctrination into the military. 

I thought the vibe of the book was really interesting. It was almost like having the Arabian Nights crossed with an American Western. Especially as you add the fantastic side characters in the later half of the book, it became a very interesting set up - though I do wish they had done more with that in this first book. Djinni and trains and magic sand horses? It's definitely not what I went into this book expecting.

For those of you interested, I would definitely recommend this book. I had a lot of fun reading this one and I'll definitely be looking up the next book in the series to see how this continues.

Megan Lowe

I quite enjoyed this book. At first I found there wasn't a lot to sink my teeth into but the more the story goes on, the more things unfold and keep building on top of each other. I'm not sure the blurb quite matches the story, in terms of romance, but it is an enjoyable book.
One thing I absolutely hate, is that the ebook finished at 75% with an excerpt of book 3. Someone should look at that because I downloaded books 2 and 3, started reading what I was told was book 2 and hello spoilers!
Anyway, this book is good. I liked it, you should read it!

jess

This book had some really good parts. First of all, it's a unique setting and I appreciate that this was set in a non-European counterpart culture. It was a nice change, and I like that instead of keeping it to ancient history like most non-European fantasies tend to do, this was modernized, with guns and trains. I haven't read a setting like this, and the worldbuilding was really good - it felt like the Wild West but it had elements of Middle Eastern culture as well, and that was really cool. This is helped by the fact that Hamilton's descriptions are vivid; I really enjoyed some of the prose. She paints a good picture of the desert, its people, and the environment around Amani. 

However, a lot of writing outside of description fell flat for me, and caused it to drag a bit. None of the characters were as fleshed out as I would have liked them to be, especially Jin and Amani - at the end of the book I felt like I didn't know them at all. There were awkward time skips in the book; presumably they would have bonded in those periods but I didn't feel like they had any connection to each other. I saw the plot twists coming from a mile away as well. 

It was enjoyable though; the strengths make this a worthwhile read.

Shereen Evans

I really wanted to like this book but I had a very hard time with it keeping my attention. I would find myself drifting off and not fully paying attention to what I was reading and would have to go back and re-read quite a few passages. At times the plot was a bit confusing. I do not think I will be finishing this series.

Sandra Tammaru

I love this 😍, need the 2. book now, but i dont have it yet 🙈😥

Livia

Okay but, now I must suffer because I don't have the second and third book, am currently too b r o k e to buy them, and 100% sure that delivery by book depository would take forever.

Does this book has many tropes? Yes. Do I care? No. Because it's executed really well.

Also, please tell me Jin looks like an eastern asian. The secons I read the name 'Jin', my mind just goes KIM SEOKJIIIN and now I can't stop.

Victoria P

really enjoyed this one! i found amani a very interesting character and her development was so nice. i fell in love with jin :( so pretty

Samantha Chavez 

I’d heard so many things about rebel of the sands, so I decided to finally pick it up. I was not disappointed.
The magic, world-building, character development, and romance were so amazing. 
Once I started reading, I wasn’t able to stop. 
You’ll fall in love with the characters and root for them and their journey. It was well-paced and absolutely amazing.
Amani goes through incredible character development and an amazing journey. She finds friendship, magic, romance, and a depth within herself she never realized she had. 
Jin was incredible and I loved the romance. It was a slow burn that’ll leave you melting.

Steysha

5 reasons to read this book:

-	If you like deserts, this book is just for you
-	A unique interpretation of good old superpowers, such as shapeshifting, burning heat, illusions (Anami`s my personal favorite) 
-	If you liked Clary and Sebastian relationships from Mortal Instruments, then you need to read this 
-	A strong heroine who knows how to use a pistol 
-	Interesting mythology

What I didn`t like: 

-	The real shit went down only 80 or so pages before the end and everything that happened before was damn boring. I even thought about dnfing this book. Thanks god I didn`t, because the last 80 pages were worth it.
-	The romance was just meh, Jin is not my hero.
That`s pretty much it. And though I was disappointed in the first half of the book, after the second one I feel a desperate need in the sequel :)

rosebud 🫧

Enjoyable read, with some great – even though some slightly underdeveloped –characters. Loved it but not perfect. 

Zoë Schaefer

Sheila

I feel let down by this book. I was all hype for a great desert setting with a Middle Eastern vibe only to realize that it's actually a Western with a slight Middle Eastern twist...in a way that felt appropriative to me. I think I would've let it slide more if it wasn't made increasingly apparent that the world in which the story is based was mimicking Earth. 

On top of all that, despite the fact that this book is short, it took forever to get to the meat of the story. Normally I don't mind if the main plot points happen until later in a story as typically the first half would then be devoted to character building & laying down a solid history. I was SO BORED by the way it was handled here! A whole bunch of telling, the MC making some seriously questionable decisions, & a love interest that you could spot like a lighthouse in the dark the second he showed up (at the very gd beginning...). Furthermore, the development & personality of Amani herself was painfully similar to Nettie in Wake of Vultures, except Lila Bowen did it better. 

Once the story caught up to the actual plot & magic, it was far more interesting. I found myself more invested in the secondary characters than in Amani or Jin...which should tell you a lot frankly. I don't think I'm going to follow through on this series.

Rebel of the Sands

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