Review | Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Goodreads Synopsis

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 escape from.

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.

3.5/5 stars

Amani is a girl that lives in a Dustwalk where nothing ever happens, where she doesn't feel happy but trapped. She wants to do everything to get out of there so she can accomplish great things. Since she was young, she taught herself how to shoot and she is very freaking good at it. The story begins in Pistol Pit where Amani is dressed up as a boy so she can win a shooting competition and there, she meets a foreigner guy and the story takes off from there.

This is a western book mixed in with some middle eastern elements which I loved, because the names are Arabic and I'm Arabic as well so that was cool! I loved the world, it is centered around Djinni and it's nothing like I've ever read before. My first instinct while reading this book is that it is catchy, but I found it so hard to grasp the world. I was ever so confused and I found that the author dumped all the information about the world through a story and wanted to DNF it, but I was shocked with some revelations that I couldn't let it down.

Halfway through and I still didn't get the political aspect of the story. I found that the author didn't do that well with the explanation of the world and that is the only reason my rating was low despite loving everything else about this book. Personally, I find info dumping to be the worst, but I didn't mind it too much when we came to the middle of the book. It didn't ruin it for me which I found surprising - except for the fact that I thought about DNFing it.

Let's come to the romance. I loved loved the romance in this one. It wasn't prominent and the story didn't revolve around the romance which I loved. The two love interests in this book were great companions which perfect chemistry. Amani's love interest who is the foreigner (it's said in the synopsis so its not a spoiler) is just the perfect man. He was so mysterious which is something so admirable when it comes to hot mcs in books. I just need the author to write more about his life before he met Amani PLEASE. I am so interested in his life and we saw little snippets of it through this book, but I just need more.

Since this is the first in a series, the characters weren't fleshed out like how I wanted them to be, but that's okay. Hopefully we get some novellas and some insight into the character's lives more in upcoming books. Amani though was amazing. I loved reading from the perspective of such a bad ass character who is a great shooter and is an on-point leader as well. She took every risk she had the opportunity to take, but her decisions were well thought of. She was reckless, but not dumb which I truly admired.

The writing was impeccable. The book had me hooked from the very first chapter and it says something about how good the author is in capturing your attention. The book was so easy to power through, it was my first book to fully read and enjoy since I'm in a terrible slump. One thing that I really liked was the feminism aspect of the book. No one seems to mention this, but women are so stepped on in this one and it shows how oppressed women are and it's so sad. I really loved seeing a female character not taking shit from everyone for once.