Review: Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Title: Rebel of the Sands

Author: Alwyn Hamilton

Genre: YA Fantasy
Release Date: October 2015

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Rebel of the Sands follows the story of Amani, a girl gunslinger in a remote desert town. Amani dreams of fleeing her oppressive family and doing something more with her life. While competing in a gun shooting competition with the hopes to win enough money to leave her small town of Dustwalk behind, she meets a mysterious foreigner named Jin, who draws her into an adventure that's bigger and more complex that she could have dreamed. This book has been widely reviewed and is known for being a mix of a classic Western and a Middle Eastern-inspired fantasy, with a mix of Wild West gunslinging and train robbing, plus djinni and other magical desert creatures.

This book was hard for me to determine a rating for, as there were aspects of it that I loved and other aspects that really lost me. Overall, I enjoyed Amani as a character. She was flawed and made mistakes, but learned from them. She was often unsure and had to learn how to survive in the new world that Jin introduced her to rather than being preternaturally gifted right away. Plus, her sassy interactions and dialog, especially with Jin, were a highlight of her character. A few of the side characters, who appear later in the story, are also well-drawn and easy to connect with. I also thought that the setting was well-described and I could see how this story could be seen as immersive, if only it was better executed.

This unique setting was one of the aspects of the book that I struggled with. The story starts as a spaghetti Western, turns into a 1,001 Nights fantasy, then into a political military uprising. It was like the author couldn't decide which story to tell so they just included everything. The blend is unique, but not entirely believable. Miraji, the imagined country where the story takes place, reads like a mix of medieval Islamic culture and occupied India. Characters and places have a blend of Arabic and Persian names, there are calls to prayer and prayer rugs, a dash but then there are also gun factories and I swear Amani is wearing a cowboy hat in the beginning of the book. The characters aren't Muslim (there aren't any named religions as far as I can tell), but there are elements of Islamic culture that exist within the world. It just felt a bit off to me, and I had trouble buying into this kind of world.

The world was clearly inspired by reality and imbued with magic, which I think would have worked fine if this story could just decide what it wanted to be. Instead, it felt like two separate worlds mashed together, with well-written characters unfortunately drawn into it. This may be because it's a debut and this lack of cohesiveness will improve throughout the series. I'm hoping that the world building matures, because overall the writing is good and the characters are great; if so, I could see subsequent books being four or even five star reads.