Review - "Rebel Of The Sands"

Rebel of the Sands, Rebel of the Sands #1
by Alwyn Hamilton
rating:☆☆
published: 4th February 2016
spoilers? yes

Goodreads

There was only one thing I'd ever liked about Dustwalk, and that was all the space outside it. Beyond the flat-faced, dead-eyed wooden houses, you could run for hours and still find nothing but scrub and sand.

Rebel of the Sands was one of my most anticipated reads of this year and, boy, was I disappointed. Given the gorgeous cover (I know, I know, don't judge a book by its cover, yadda yadda yadda, I'm shallow, OK?), and the synopsis, and all the five-star reviews and hype it was getting, I was so excited to read it.

And then I read it.

To be honest, I was just bored. None of the characters grabbed me, none of the relationships did either, the plot was boring. The only thing I can tell you about the main character, Amani, is that she wants to get out of Dustwalk. Great. Anything more? Nope, nada, nothing. I never felt like there was anything to her character beyond the desire to leave behind her village, and once she'd left it, all she seemed to do was wander around after Jin. Same with Jin, the ~mysterious stranger~, who, by the way, Amani follows too very willingly at times. In fact, I can't tell you anything about Jin, in terms of his motivations and desires. I get that it's difficult to do so when Amani is the narrator, but good authors manage to do that anyway.

Amani and Jin's relationship was also pretty boring. At no point was I rooting for them to actually be together; I just didn't care. If they had stayed as friends that would have been totally OK by me, but there was never any development that felt like them growing to like each other in any way besides that.

Now, to my major annoyance about this book (actually, there are two but they're kind of similar).

The setting is supposed to be some mixture of a Western style adventure (guns and cowboys and saloon bars and shootouts, you get the idea) and Arabian mythology and culture. And it sounds great on paper (if the author can do it well). Only, to me it feels like the latter is relegated to a backdrop. The Arabian mythology and culture is inserted into the Western setting to that it becomes something "different" and maybe a little "exotic". I mean, for one, half the place names are possibly suited to the culture (I'm not entirely sure. From a white perspective, they seem like they could be but I'm inclined to think them made up) and then there are names like "Dustwalk" and "Juniper City" and it creates a kind of dissonance.

Also, while the characters are all non-white characters (and it says that at the start), they could easily be read as white. You know how, when you're reading a book with different race characters, and the author deals with their POVs well, you can tell that they're not all the same race (D.J. Older is a good example of this)? Well, this book, there was none of that. It felt like another afterthought, similar to the Arabian mythology aspect of the storyline. It's like this world has been created, and then these details shoved in to make it ~diverse~; it feels a bit like lack of research and consideration about how these voices and cultures might differ. (A slight side note: there's a point where it's mentioned that her uncle wants to marry her, and it doesn't really add to the plot - she wanted to escape from Dustwalk either way so why include this? - which makes me think it's the author including a gross stereotype about Arabia.

Kudos to the author for the plot twist though, when it was revealed that Amani was half-Djinni, I totally did not see that one coming.

Anyway, overall I was just a bit disappointed. I hope the next few books I've been anticipating are better.