Hero at the Fall
19:00
Rebel of the Sands // Traitor to the Throne // Hero at the Fall
REBEL OF THE SANDS TRILOGY
REBEL OF THE SANDS TRILOGY
- by Alwyn Hamilton
5.0/5.0 stars
~
Desert, dust and gunpowder - and a revolution to die for. Rebel of the Sands is an epic journey of love, magic and fierce rebellion through the heat of the desert and it is a magical masterpiece.
"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."
She’s more gunpowder than girl—and the fate of the desert lies in her hands.
Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mystical beasts still roam the wild and barren wastes, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinni still practice their magic. But there's nothing mystical or magical about Dustwalk, the dead-end town that Amani can't wait to break free from. The desert sand is in her bones. But she wants to escape. More than a want. A need.
Destined to wind up "wed or dead," Amani’s counting on her sharpshooting skills to get her out of Dustwalk. When she meets Jin, a mysterious and devastatingly handsome foreigner, in a shooting contest, she figures he’s the perfect escape route. But in all her years spent dreaming of leaving home, she never imagined she'd gallop away on a mythical horse, fleeing the murderous Sultan's army, with a fugitive who's wanted for treason. And she'd never have predicted she'd fall in love with him...or that he'd help her unlock the powerful truth of who she really is.
I read Rebel of the Sands and Traitor to the Throne last year and immediately fell in love. Alwyn Hamilton's debut series is a whirlwind of magic and ancient mythology in which you tumble headfirst into the magical lands she brings to life with vivid imagery that buries itself deep into the imagination, and characters that steal the heart with their sense of restless adventure. You can't help but be swept away by the beautiful chaos that awakes from the very first page and which doesn't rest until long after the final page has been turned. It is one of those books that lingers long afterwards, with you itching to pick it up again and journey through the 500+ pages of a mysterious otherworld undone by a rebellion at the heart of the desert, knowing that you will love every second of it.
With its killer opening scene, led by a girl made of gunpowder and a boy created from trouble who wreak havoc in their wake and light the spark to ignite a rebellion, Rebel of the Sands pulls you into a world rich with folklore and alive with a revolution that you almost become a part of. Because Amani's escapades through the desert, fuelled by a desperate desire for freedom and something more, become your own. Her little games in the dust with a foreign stranger as they flirt with traitor eyes, a crooked smile and the taste of death, sifting through secrets and truths that are scattered like grains of sand amid a desert rife with politics and at the brink of exploding in a mess of gunpowder and innocent lives, is just the beginning of a rebellion that spans desert and ocean and that could be the freedom she has always craved.
| And then came that grin. I might have traitor eyes, but Jin had the sort of smile that would turn over whole empires to the enemy - that made me feel like suddenly I understood him exactly, even though I knew nothing about him. The kind that made me feel like if I was on the right side of it, we could do anything together.
Amani, with her smart mouth and reckless death wish, is the warrior you want to be. Jin, with his natural affinity for danger and a restless energy to his step, is the one you hope shows you the world. The Rebel Prince, with his compassion and bravery and a desire to see a desert marked with equality and peace, is the leader you want to fight for. His rebels, with their ability to entwine magic with the dust at their fingertips, their sense of self-sacrifice for a greater, worthy cause, and their missions in the desert that blow you off your feet, are the family you want to be a part of. The Sultan, with his cunning, calculating, and morally corrupt tactics is the enemy you want to see destroyed. And the rebellion, steeped with betrayal and deceit, victories and losses, scheming and plotting, is one you want to see thrive.
Where Rebel of the Sands was just the taster, Traitor to the Throne escalates the Rebellion to darker heights; it descends into utter chaos with dark and deceptive games played on a bigger chess board with more players as pawns - and it is a magical treat. I didn't think Hero at the Fall could match it but I fell right back into this world and it felt like home. It could have been 1000+ pages and I still wouldn’t have had enough of the characters who live and breathe this story. It sucker-punched me with the thrills and emotions of a tornado and the last chapter was told with such beautiful story-telling, that I was sold. As far as epilogues or finales go, Hero at the Fall takes the cake. Words defy just how much.
“But even if the desert forgot a thousand and one of our stories, it was enough that they would tell of us at all. That long after our deaths, men and women sitting around a fire would hear that once, long ago, before we were all just stories, we lived."
This series, oh man. Perfection is rare in the literary world. Five-star books are easy enough to find but those books that slowly creep up on you and steal your heart blind, those are rare. I found it with this trilogy. Some books you carry forever. This is one of them. I could read it time and time again, wearing the words thin as I commit them to memory, and it would never be enough. I would feel every emotion, every push and pull, every tug to every character, every heart-racing paragraph just the way I did the first time. It is the stuff of legends and my God does Hero at the Fall read like one. It reads like a beautifully woven myth with all the magic and heroics that make an epic tale and I’d be lying if I said I don’t already miss the dust and gunpowder and wild escapades of the Blue-Eyed Bandit. It is an intoxicating world that sucks you in and doesn’t let you leave quite the same.
Rebel of the Sands is a beautifully spun tale of magic, myth and wild rebellion, weaving within its pages complex themes of power, freedom and sacrifice...it has everything from family, friendship and romance, to the blurred lines of right and wrong and broken moral compasses that can drive people to commit unspeakable crimes. It is a book that lives and breathes everything that makes fiction such an addictive, beautiful thing.
0 comments