Pages:
259
Publisher:
Macmillan
Children’s Books
Release
Date: 22nd
October 2015
Edition:
UK proof, review
copy
Lo-Melkhin
killed three hundred girls before he came to her village, looking for a wife.
When she sees the dust could 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 the next one.
And
so she is taken in her sister’s place, and she believes death will soon follow.
Lo-Melkhin’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-Melkhin 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-Malkhin was not always a cruel ruler.
Something went wrong.
For
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-Malkhin 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.
Ever since I first heard about A Thousand Nights, I’ve been coveting it.
And then the lovelies over at Macmillan released how beautiful the finished hardcover
would look and sent out equally beautiful proofs and I was beyond sold.
A
Thousand Nights is
a re-telling of One Thousand and One
Nights, or Arabian Nights. I’ve actually
never read the original (which is something I’ll be rectifying now), though I did
know the basic premise of the story. From what I can tell, Johnston’s retelling
is pretty faithful to the primary text. It’s an old Arabic tale of a horrible
king who takes a new wife each night following the death of the previous one,
until one woman uses her incredible storytelling skills to keep her new husband
wanting the next and keeping her alive. Johnston weaves stories within stories
throughout the novel in the most enchanting way. The stories of the desert and
the customs and traditions as well as the daily life of her people and family were
magical and completely fascinating.
Through Lo-Mellkhiin’s wife’s
stories, she was able to protect herself by weaving a certain protective magic.
I have to admit that even by the end of the book I still wasn’t quite sure how
it worked and what it was. I don’t know if I just missed something, or if it
was meant to be unexplained as I imagine it would be if it happened in real
life! But it did niggle at me a little. I did love the way it allowed her
influence and to connect with her sister left behind in the desert and how it
grew and changed the longer she spent with Lo-Melkhiin. It was definitely
something I'd never come across before and I’m now even more eager to read
Renee Adhieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn, which
is also a retelling of One Thousand and
One Nights, to see how she has approached the story.
Considering that the heroine of
the story is Lo-Melkhiin’s wife it bothered me that she was never given a name,
and neither was any other character apart from the king. I’m sure there was a
thematic or author-y reason for this, but I think it could have been taken in
an amazing feminist direction and wasn’t. Even in the original story, the
heroine has a name, Scheherazade, and according to Wikipedia,
it was reputed to have been written in the Middle Ages, the Islamic Golden Age,
in a country that has a history of diminishing women to nothing… I think Johnston
could really have made a feminist punch with A Thousand Nights.
A
Thousand Nights is
a magical, beautifully written debut about the power of stories and the love
between sisters. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what EK Johnston
delivers next.
Thanks to Macmillan for the
review copy.
Sophie
I loved this book - I thought the writing itself was magical :) Great review!
ReplyDelete