Family. That was the word that came to mind as Loulie took in the domestic scene. It gripped her heart like a vise, made it difficult to breathe. She had become accustomed to–preferred–living a solitary life, but it was easier to forget what she had lost in the cities where the families were scattered and hidden. Sitting around this campfire, she could see the interconnectedness of the lives around her–and she could see herself sitting in the heart of the web, adrift.
page 253, The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah
Table of Contents
Preamble
The Stardust Thief is another one of those books that had been on my to-be-read pile for years. I think by the time I got to it this month, it had been in my TBR for at least three years, I think I put it in there around the time I started my 2022 reading challenge.
Recently, I heard someone in the lexi aka newlynova Discord server mention this book quite positively so I decided to put a library hold on it and actually read it. The premise and the setting of the story intrigued me, I do love me a fantasy involving various Arab and Islamic mythologies and especially stories involving jinn.
Some of my most favourite fantasies such as The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty and A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlà Clark involve jinn in some form which is why I think this book was initially added to my TBR and why it remained.
So without further ado, let’s get into the book.
The Book
The Stardust Thief is a multi-POV fantasy story inspired by stories from One Thousand and One Nights. The three POVs are the three main characters of the story – Loulie, Aisha, and Mazen. Loulie is a merchant who with the help of her jinn bodyguard Qadir finds and sells the magic of jinn which in this world is very illegal. Aisha is one of the Thieves a group of assassins and thieves who hunt down living jinn. Mazen is a prince, one of the sons of the Sultan of Madinne who accompanies Loulie and Aisha on a quest to find a magical lamp deep in the desert.
In the world of The Stardust Thief, jinn are a persecuted group. Their blood, silver in colour and containing magic is often used to build these opulent cities in the desert and to create life where none existed. The fraught relationship between jinn and humans is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this particular story and I found myself more interested in the jinn perspective which unfortunately we get very little of.
Of all the characters, I found Qadir, Loulie’s jinn bodyguard to be the most interesting, mostly because his character has an air of mystery about him which remains for most of the book. The three main characters weren’t all that compelling to me. There were attempts at what appears to be a romance between Loulie and Mazen and I think the author would have been better off just cutting that out of the story, I don’t think it added anything to the story.
The rest of the story here is…fine. This is another one of those books where nothing is technically wrong and the story itself is competently told but nothing about it is exceptional in any way. Thematically, it tries to explore themes of found family, revenge, trust and loneliness and I don’t think it really manages to explore these in any meaningful depth.
This book’s saving grace was that I like this particular setting and the One Thousand and One Nights inspiration adds a degree of charm to the whole affair. The tropes – jinn, princes, cartoonish villains, and an adventure to find a magical lamp are fun enough to keep me reading and not make this the third DNF this month.
Conclusions
The Stardust Thief is the first book in the Sandsea trilogy – the second book in the series came out earlier this year. While I don’t regret reading this first book in the series, it just is not compelling enough for me to continue with the series in the near future.
This may be the last book I read and write a review for this year. There is currently a book whose library hold is currently in transit so if I do decide to read and review that, this will be the penultimate book of 2025. Considering that I started off the year with the terrible Heavenly Tyrant, this is a relatively okay way to end this year’s reading.
That’s all from me. See y’all in the next post.
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