This year I’m going to host an Advent Book Calendar event, where Jen and me are going to pick one book every day until December 24th. Books we’ve read this year, and tell you why you should pick it up. You can check our progress in the Advent Book Calendar 2018 introduction post, where you can “open” the windows every day and find out what we have for your reading pleasure!
My pick for day 16 is A Thousand Nights a reimagining of the fairy tale A Thousand and One Nights.
This is a quiet and thoughtful story. Every page turned and every story she tells about her family, her life, her sister builds this magical, beautiful, and sometimes scary world, that springs out of the book like one of those inflatable yard ornaments slowly coming to life.
Simply stunning storytelling and not one to be missed.
“This nothing like what I have come to expect from YA these days.
I would even say it was a bit slow and thoughtful. I enjoyed the quietness, the culture, and the almost literary feel of it.“
Read Jen’s full review and get the book on Amazon!
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. But back 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 in it’s place. 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 sets and rises, 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. The words she speaks to him every night are given strange life of their own. She makes things appear. 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 rule of a monster.
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