Book Review: A Thousand Nights by E. K. Johnston

Lo-Melkhiin killed three hundred girls before he came to her village, looking for a wife. When she sees the dust cloud on the horizon, she knows he has arrived. She knows he will want the loveliest girl: her sister. She vows she will not let her be next.

And so she is taken in her sister’s place, and she believes death will soon follow. Lo-Melkhiin’s court is a dangerous palace filled with pretty things: intricate statues with wretched eyes, exquisite threads to weave the most beautiful garments. She sees everything as if for the last time. But the first sun rises and sets, and she is not dead. Night after night, Lo-Melkhiin comes to her and listens to the stories she tells, and day after day she is awoken by the sunrise. Exploring the palace, she begins to unlock years of fear that have tormented and silenced a kingdom. Lo-Melkhiin was not always a cruel ruler. Something went wrong.

Far away, in their village, her sister is mourning. Through her pain, she calls upon the desert winds, conjuring a subtle unseen magic, and something besides death stirs the air.

Back at the palace, the words she speaks to Lo-Melkhiin every night are given a strange life of their own. Little things, at first: a dress from home, a vision of her sister. With each tale she spins, her power grows. Soon she dreams of bigger, more terrible magic: power enough to save a king, if she can put an end to the rule of a monster.

A Thousand Nights by E. K. Johnston was my first pick for #2018FWTBRPickfor the month of September – this is my way of trying to take care of my uncontrollable TBR this year and you can read about it all HERE.  

Okay, I have no idea how to put into words that I am feeling in regards to this book – Arabian Nights has to be one of my favourite fairytales; and I have loved finding out there will be retellings of the same.

Yes, I did go into the book with Wrath and Dawn in my mind – it was a book that I adored; so of course I had quite expectations with this one as well. But maybe that was a bad thing to go into the book comparing it with another favourite with practically the same basic plot line – and I think that’s the reason why I came quite close to DNF – ing this book.

The writing style of the author is lyrical yes; which I think was done more for aesthetic sense rather than it being the writing style of the author herself – which in this case, ended up being a negative aspect of the book for me.

Another issue I had with the book was that it was so freaking hard to keep the characters straight in my mind – there were no names in the book (yikes!) and for someone who has to go back and check goodreads for the character’s name; this was a kind of hell that I honestly couldn’t even describe!

How did I even survive the book? With loads of wine, lots of days and a whole lot of cheetos, just so I wouldn’t ever destroy a book! This could have been so much better, if the author had been given a little bit of focus and attention.  

 

⭐ .5

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