Review: Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Title: Rebel of the Sands
Author: Alwyn Hamilton 
Series: Rebel of the Sands #1
Publication: February 4th 2016 by Faber & Faber
Genre: Young Adult ~ Fantasy
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Kobo | Google Play
Rating: 4/5

   

"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 an unforgiving, dead-end town. It's not the place to be poor or orphaned or female. And yet Amani Al'Hiza must call it 'home'.

Amani wants to escape and see the world she's heard about in campfire stories.

Then a foreigner with no name turns up, and with him she has the chance to run.

But the desert plains are full of dangerous magic. The Sultan's army is on the rise and Amani is soon caught at the heart of a fearless rebellion...

An epic story of swirling desert sands, love, magic and revolution.

Where to start with this wonderful book? I really loved Rebel of the Sands. It wasn't quite a five star book but it was a close call. I don't think I'd ever get sick of these kind of books — The kind where every page is practically a wonder and where anything can happen.

I loved Amani's journey. Mostly because she truly evolves from this girl who thinks about herself first (because she mostly grew up with not a lot of people to have her back) to someone who discovers true friendship on the way and actually thinks about those people first. 

I also really liked her relationship with Jin. I'm glad to say it wasn't insta-love at all. So we can all cheer about that. She actually got to know Jin over the course of a couple of months. And I also can't say that the romance was a big thing in this book. There was a hint of it, a few kisses but that was it. I loved that.

The secondary characters were also very interesting to read about. They really brought something extra to the story that wouldn't have been there if it was just about Amani and Jin.

The story had a lot of plot twists. Some I had seen coming but other were unexpected and quite startling. The writing was impeccable. I almost felt like I was in the desert, along with Amani, Jin and all the others.  

Rebel of the Sand by Alwyn Hamilton was close to being flawless. The setting, the characters, the plot twists, the writing... all of it was so perfectly done. It was one of those books that I had a hard time to put down because I wanted to keep reading, to keep finding out more and more about this world and these characters.

       About the Author:

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Alwyn Hamilton was born in Toronto and spent her childhood bouncing between Europe and Canada until her parents settled in France. She grew up in a small town there, which might have compelled her to burst randomly into the opening song from Beauty and the Beast were it not for her total tone-deafness. She instead attempted to read and write her way to new places and developed a weakness for fantasy and cross-dressing heroines. She left France for Cambridge University to study History of Art at King’s College, and then to London where she became indentured to an auction house. She has a bad habit of acquiring more hardcovers than is smart for someone who moves house quite so often.