The Stardust Thief

STATS

Title: The Stardust Thief

Series: The Sandsea Trilogy (Book 1)

Author(s): Chelsea Abdullah

Genre: Fantasy (Epic)

First Printing: May 2022

Publisher: Orbit

PREMISE & PLOT

Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant, a relic hunter who retrieves and sells magic items created by djinn.  She is aided on her quests by Qadir, a djinn who serves as her bodyguard, and a magic compass that always points her towards whatever she is looking for.  Her success catches the attention of the sultan of Madinnne, and he blackmails her into finding a magic lamp, which contains a djinn of great power, from the desert known as the Sandsea.  She is joined on her quest by Prince Mazen bin Malik, who is one of the sultan’s sons, and Aisha bint Louas, one of the Forty Thieves who hunt djinn on the sultan’s behalf.  Their journey through the desert reveals deeper truths about themselves and secrets that each would rather keep buried.

A big draw here is the setting.  I know that fantasy settings based on places other than Western Europe and East Asia aren’t uncommon these days, yet it is still interesting to go to a new location.  The main inspiration here is, I assume, Kuwait, given Abdullah’s personal history (as described in her author bio at the back of the Orbit paperback).

While the book markets itself on the hunt for this lamp, the lamp itself is just a MacGuffin.  The real story is in the obstacles, both magical and mundane, the pop up along the way.  We get to watch the characters adapt and grow in response to each new challenge.

WHAT I LIKED

Likeable Characters

Each of the POV characters has their own charm to them, as well as their own personal struggles and arcs.  Those arcs aren’t always on-point (more on that later), but there is evident intent and some form of execution.  Given the structure of the plot and the softness of the magic system, these three were what hooked me in and kept me invested as the story progressed.

One characterization point that I think is worthy of praise is how Loulie’s relationship with her love interest, Ahmed, is handled.  We learn early on that Ahmed is the source of a lot of heartache for Loulie.  At first, it sounds like he’s going to be an antagonist, acting as an abusive ex, a manipulator seeking to control her life, or just an old associate who conveniently turns out to be the villain, but that’s not what we get at all.  Loulie genuinely loves him, he loves her and wants the best or her, and her anguish is because he made her a marriage proposal that she can’t accept but doesn’t want to deal with rejecting.  She wants to cling to the fantasy that they can be together.  Not only does the story take time to discuss the nuances of their relationship, but Loulie is self-aware of the fact that she is sustaining this emotionally painful situation.  It makes her feel very human.

Place

I’m not an expert of Kuwaiti culture, so I can’t comment upon any cultural elements or fantastical details in this book that are rooted in real-world influences.  I’ll just reiterate that it was a nice change of pace from what I usually read.  Abdullah did a good job of applying just the right amount of non-English terminology to really give the feel that this story is set in a different place without being so heavy-handed as to be confusing or distracting.

Structure

The quest to retrieve the lamp is ultimately just a framing device.  The real story is in the series of smaller quests the party must engage with on their travels.  This feels a bit choppy at first, but I settled into it.  These quests ultimately make the story feel like a serialized series of smaller adventurers.  This facilitates more rapid character development, as beats that drive forward the respective characters’ arcs come more frequently.  This sort of thing might not work for every narrative, but it works fine here.

Use of Stories

The power of stories is a recurring theme within this narrative.   Exposition is often delivered via characters telling stories to one another.  While this is rather blunt in terms of delivering information to the audience, the way that it is framed within the narrative feels organic.  The narrative also explores the idea about how history and truth can be warped by the party telling the story.  It’s not a concept that breaks any new ground, but neither does the story pretend like it is saying anything deeper than what is on the page.  It works for the context in which it exists, and there is opportunity for future installments in the series to go deeper.

WHAT I DISLIKED

Show, Don’t Tell

This book has a rather interesting relationship between showing versus telling information.

For those not aware, “show, don’t tell” is a writing principle that states that it is better to demonstrate information to the audience (through actions, background details, and word choice) than to outright state the information.  These demonstrations make the information more memorable and increase audience investment.  There are exceptions – showing can sometimes take more time than telling, which can slow the pacing and bloat the narrative – yet it holds true in most instances.

The Stardust Thief shows us one thing and tells us another.  This affects both plot twists and character arcs.  What we are shown is a good story, and what we are told is good in concept.  It’s just that they are different stories.

There are only two ways that I can make sense of this rather puzzling situation.  The first is that Abdullah intended to write the told story.  Had she shown that story, the told elements would have blended into the background; as it is, we can see a gulf between intent and the final product.  The second is that Abdullah realized that she hadn’t shown the story that she wanted, so she added the telling on a redraft to steer the audience towards her desired interpretation.  I think this could have worked if the two stories were closer together.  It’s just that the gap is a little too wide to be bridged in this manner.

The problem manifests throughout the book, but there are two aspects where it really stands out.

What a Twist(?)

I wouldn’t categorize any of the twists in The Stardust Thief as objectively bad.  They are interesting ideas that open up new opportunities to make the story more interesting.  While they aren’t always foreshadowed, they usually make sense when they surface.

The issue is that Abdullah almost always needs to tell us that they are twists.

Around the midpoint of the book, we get a reveal during an action scene that changes the characters’ understanding of magic items.  This is emotionally devastating for Loulie.  The revelation clashes with her values and her perception of herself.

This twist and is impact make some sense in context.  However, it has to spelled out to the audience after the fact, in the scene where we see Loulie’s emotional reaction to it.  When I read this reaction scene, I was certain that I must have missed something. I had read the action scene where the revelation occurred a few days earlier, and then I’d been distracted by the stress of moving.  Perhaps I had simply forgotten the twist.  But no – going back to the action scene, the revelation comes in a line of dialogue that is quietly swept aside in all the violence.  The scene in question is also from Mazen’s POV, not Loulie’s, so we are robbed of her reaction in the moment.  Had the twist not been spelled out in the reaction scene, it would have passed by unnoticed.

This delivery robs the twist of most of its emotional impact.  Loulie’s characterization removes what little impact still existed.  It makes sense that Loulie would be upset by the revelation, but when comparing her emotional reaction to her prior characterization, the reaction is far too intense.  It makes me wonder if an earlier draft had Loulie say or do something that would make the revelation much more upsetting, with the reaction scene not being edited in the final manuscript to account for the removed element.

Most of the twists in the book are like this.  The issue becomes even more glaring near the end of the book, where Abdullah stops pointing the twists out.  In the climax, random things start happening.  Many of these things have the same amount and groundwork and impact as the explicit twists, yet Abdullah doesn’t attempt to milk emotion out of them.  If she didn’t point out the intentional twists, I think they’d blend into the narrative the same way as the random elements.

Mazen the Coward

The back cover of The Stardust Thief includes the following paragraph.

Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land—at the cost of sacrificing all jinn.

When Mazen was first introduced, I was certain that the description of him as a “cowardly prince” was exaggeration for the sake of marketing.  He wasn’t cowardly. He was naïve and unskilled, and he was intimidated by Prince Omar (his violent, sociopathic older brother, who also serves as an antagonist in this book), but he didn’t run from violence or danger when it manifested, nor did he mask insecurities with abuses of power. Surely, the description of him as “cowardly” was an exaggeration to make Loulie seem badass by comparison.

Then Aisha calls Mazen a coward, and he agrees with her. This doesn’t match what we are shown, but it does work as characterization.  Aisha had been previously established as being tough-as-nails, and Mazen was dealing with the mental and emotional strain of extortion and a near-death experience.  Using “coward” as a derogative makes sense for the two of them in that moment.

After that, the narrative begins describing Mazen as a coward.  It does it again.  And again.  And again, ad nauseum.  As this point was hammered in, we are shown the exact opposite of cowardice.  Mazen routinely throws himself into danger, despite knowing that he is not qualified and could easily die.  At least once, his intervention saves the day.  He makes mistakes, to be sure, but that was a symptom of inexperience, not cowardice.

If Mazen is a coward, then the average person in the world is also a coward, thereby robbing the word of all meaning.  Loulie is a coward by this standard.  She would arguably be even more of a coward, since she has experience, a djinn bodyguard, and an array of magic items, while Mazen must stumble along with one magic item he is learning to use as he goes along.

The narrative doubles down on this issue by validating Loulie’s courage.  Time is spent to assure her that she is courageous.  Meanwhile, Mazen is given a moral platitude from Aisha about courage overcoming cowardice.  The message is clear: Loulie is meant to be seen as heroic and does not need to change, while Mazen is meant to be seen as a flawed individual who needs to learn and grow.

The most charitable interpretation of this is that Abdullah set out with the intention of writing a character arc about overcoming cowardice.  Perhaps Mazen did indeed fit that description in an earlier draft.  However, as the manuscript evolved, Abdullah used him more and more to resolve conflicts and drive the plot forward, inadvertently erasing the character arc.

This is possible … but I have my doubts. On the page, this reads like spite.  I have the strong impression that Abdullah hates Mazen, or at least looks down on him.  This character represents an idea – or person, or a group of people – that she wanted to belittle.  Which segways us into …

Strength is a Matter of Perspective

Mazen starts the world as a pacifistic, sheltered individual, living in fear of his brother’s violent ways and his father’s disapproval.  At the same time, he is eager to escape the palace and experience the wider world, and thus sneaks out of the palace for the sake of new experiences.  He is meek and out of his depth, but when trouble arises, he dives headlong into it to save others.  He is open with his emotions, yet he doesn’t come across as someone who is paralyzed by them.

That’s why his characterization in the last third of the book feels very … off.

The Flaccid Man

There is a scene where Mazen and Loulie have just gotten out of danger.  Loulie is dealing with immense grief (both recent loss and old wounds brought about by a revenge subplot) and the combined physical and psychological strain of having been tortured until she was physically disabled.  Meanwhile, Mazen killed someone for the first time.  Bear in mind that this is not his first experience with death or violence in this book.  Despite this immense disparity, Loulie is stoic, yet Mazen is incapacitated by sobbing.

I am hardly the image of traditional masculinity, yet even I found this to be utterly pathetic.  More objectively, it also goes against Mazen’s character.  There are ways to write a character to back up this sort of emotional breakdown.  Had Mazen been shown to be emotionally fragile prior to this point, I would have bought this.  Abdullah had opportunities to do this.  She instead had Mazen demonstrate remarkable fortitude for someone in his situation.  In this scene, I could see Mazen being in a numb shock after what he’d just gone through, but a complete breakdown fits this character as poorly as the repetitive labeling of him as a coward.

This is not Mazen.  This is some other character whom Abdullah has gone out of her way to pummel downward.  When this stranger is placed against the female characters and other male characters of this story, a very familiar trend rears its head.

Strong Female Characters

Modern Hollywood suffers from an inability to write strong characters who happen to be female.  Too many writers can only write Strong Female Characters: poorly characterized entities who are, at worst, planks of wood with plot-breaking power or, at best, male characters reskinned as female.  Some cases will also prop up the Strong Female Character by making her outshine the male characters, but since such writers don’t know how to do that organically, they write the male characters as weak, limp, passive, inept, or otherwise secondary to the female characters.  It’s all about putting down other characters instead of building up their golden girl(s).

The female characters in The Stardust Thief are not Strong Female Characters.  They are well-written and quite heroic.  However, in light of how Abdullah handled the plot twists and Mazen’s cowardice, it is hard for me to see Mazen’s emotional breakdown as anything other than a character assassination to make Loulie and Aisha seem more impressive by comparison.

The handling of other men in this story supports this conclusion.  They are allowed to be strong and capable … if they are villains or submissive to the women.  Loulie’s love interest and the djinn bodyguard are the only examples of strong men who aren’t villains, and both are deeply devoted to her.  All other men who aren’t presented a morally reprehensible are easily mowed down by Loulie or Aisha.

Bottom line, it seems like it was very important to Abdullah to not only establish a moral hierarchy for men versus women, but also to project the worst possible interpretation of feminine traits onto men while claiming the best possible interpretation of masculine traits onto the women.  You can feel the pent-up sexism here. Whether it is misandry or internalized misogyny will likely become clear in the next installment of the series.

Of course, all of this could be me reading too much into things.  Years of trends in bad writing have far too many media reviewers jumping at shadows.  It’s entirely possible that the flaws in The Stardust Thief are merely the result of poor editing creating an unintended pattern.

And Then They Fought

Writing action is not Abullah’s strong suit.  She’s either not interested in choreographing fights or lacks experience in how to do so effectively.  To her credit, she makes choices that keep this from being detrimental.  There are quite a few fight scenes, but they are typically small engagements that come down more to clashes of emotion or ideas than contests of skill.

As the story progresses, Abdullah ups the stakes in combat by upping the number of participants.  Fights start to employ unspecified numbers of minions that the protagonists need to either evade or overcome.  This works fine the first few times, as the protagonists were trying to escape rather than defeat this shapeless horde.  Then the climax comes.

The Stardust Thief ends in a battle between our POV characters, backed by a few djinn, and a small army of no fewer than forty warriors, who have been built up as a massive threat throughout the story.  Somehow, the protagonists prevail.  I say “somehow” because we don’t get details.  It’s just a chain of vague descriptions where the protagonists throw around magic and slash with blades and somehow bulldoze through this legendary group.  The entire battle portion of the climax could be reduced to “and then they fought” without anything of value being lost.

As with so much else in this story, this was unnecessary.  Abdullah had set up a small, intimate finale between our heroes and villains.  She gave us that fight.  The battle was window dressing.  I can’t help but wonder if she only threw it in because someone misleadingly told her that fantasy stories must end in big battles.

Virtue Signaling

Much like in Notorious Sorcerer, this book takes a moment to virtue signal about contemporary sociopolitical topics.  Said commentary doesn’t mesh well with the surrounding narrative.  Brief though it is, it broke my immersion.  It also doesn’t make sense or need to be there.

Near the climax of the book, Abdullah introduces a non-binary character.  This character is a shapeshifter.  The concept of treating a shapeshifter as either not having a gender or being too ambiguous to tell the gender is hardly groundbreaking in fantasy.  However, Abdullah insists on halting the book for two lines of dialogue where a djinn character explains non-binary individuals to Mazen.

This brief exchange is every bit as blunt and cringy as Carroway explaining transgenderism to Rosemary in High Guardian Spice.  It also makes no sense in context.  None of our named characters should need the concept of a non-binary shapeshifter explained.  Mazen loves the folklore and stories told by wandering storytellers; it is hard to believe that there are absolutely no stories in this culture refer to djinn shapeshifters, especially when the djinn in question in this case is the subject of at least one famous story.  Loulie and Aisha shouldn’t need it explained, either, given the amount of contact they have with djinn and magic items.  Djinn characters should also know about this.

Abdullah chose to call attention to the fact that she had a non-binary character.  This was done for … well, not the audience’s benefit.  We’d have figured it out if she just referred to the shapeshifting djinn as “they” all the time.  This was for Abdullah’s benefit.  I don’t know whether she’s a true believer or just a virtue signaler, but either way, she rammed the message into her story without any care for whether it made sense.

Now, I’m sure some of you will quite reasonably point out that it’s just two lines of dialogue.  They aren’t even long lines.  This isn’t anything close to Sancia bringing Foundryside to a screeching halt to monologue about the evils of slavery.  However, I still feel this was worth bringing up.  Our next review (Son of the Storm, by Suyi Davies Okungbowa) has this exact same commentary in it – and it does it right.  (It also manages to do it horribly, horribly wrong.)

Let’s put a pin in this particular criticism for now.  We’ll be coming back to it in the next review.

Sequel Bait

Does every fantasy book these days need to kick off a trilogy or other series?

I get that trilogies are a convention of this genre.  I celebrate that we can expect long-form epics that span multiple installments, bringing with it a wealth of character building and world exploration.  It’s just that some books were clearly not written to have more than one installment.

Much like Notorious Sorcerer, the ending of The Stardust Thief feels like it was stretched thin.  This story would have ended outright with only a slight change to the climax.  Instead, twist after twist is slung at the audience, and then the POV characters get thrown into another adventure that isn’t even set up by those last-minute twists.  Unlike Notorious Sorcerer, it’s clear that this wasn’t done for the book itself.  This was done to set up the sequel.

I wonder if Abdullah originally planned to write more than one book.  According to a Twitter post from May 2022, she began working on The Stardust Thief six years prior.  It’s possible that she wrote a full series in that time, yet given the heap of mystery boxes that get flung at the audience at the ending of this book, I’m doubtful.  I suspect that she said, “Yes,” when her soon-to-be agent asked if her book had series potential, with the new ending being tacked on without any plan in mind while she scrambled to start work on The Ashfire King.

LESSONS LEARNED

Tell What You Show

There’s nothing inherently wrong with reinforcing what you’d shown on the page with a little direct confirmation within the dialogue or the narrative descriptions.  It’s just something that should be done carefully.  Make sure that what you tell the audience aligns with what you are showing them.  Presenting the audience with two different stories only reduces the emotional weight of both.

Care for Your Characters

Flawed characters are not a bad thing.  Characters that display traits traditionally seen as the antithesis of strength are also not bad.  If you are going to make a character seem weak, it is important not to step over the line into cartoonish characterization.  There is a point where a character is no longer a flawed individual whom we want to improve but rather a victim of the author’s malice.

Can I Take a Message?

When it comes to folding real-world messages into fantasy and science fiction, it is important to consider immersion.  You want to message to resonate with the audience and give them something they can take back out into the real world.  Simply directing their attention to something in the real world will, be best, shatter immersion and ruin their reading experience.  At worst, it antagonizes people who would disagree with the message, without anything meaningful being gained from the antagonism.

One thing we’ll get into this a bit with Son of the Storm is that how well a message meshes with the story is a matter of degrees.  You can often get away with some very on-the-nose hot takes if they can mesh seamlessly with the narrative and world.  Alternatively, you can sabotage your delivery if your writing style tips your hand to the audience.  Before we take a potshot at those that disagree with us or to signal that we are virtuous, it’s important to take a step back and really think about whether this is the right narrative for that sort of thing.

Plan Your Sequels

Trilogies are wonderful … but so are standalone stories.  You should begin with the end in mind.  If you must retrofit your standalone into the series, don’t just change your ending.  Go back and change what came before so that your first installment progresses naturally into the second.

RATING: 6/10

I realize that this rating puts The Stardust Thief even with Shadow of the Conqueror.  Despite the number of words spent to analyze this book’s faults, it is not a balance of great things and terrible things.  It is an overall average read.  Whether I would recommend it comes down to your personal tastes.  If this sort of adventure story suits you, or if you want more fantasy settings based upon the Middle East, it’s worth your time.

STORM ON THE HORIZON

We’re starting up a nice world tour with our recent installments.  Notorious Sorcerer, we explored the Aegean and Mediterranean-inspired city of Bezim.  The Stardust Thief took us to a Kuwaiti-inspired desert.  Next, we head further south, into a world inspired by the empires of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Son of the Storm is the most irritating and exhausting book I have read in a while.  I may have hated Notorious Sorcerer, but I did not feel mentally drained every time I tried to read it.  I’m not going to take a multi-part series to explain its problems, as they are straightforward, but be prepared for a longer-than-normal review.

We’ll dive into it during Golden Week.  I hope to see you all then.