You’d think this would be a given across fiction, alas it is not. The desert is not all barren and sandy, instead dotted with oases and port towns. Cities are sprawling metropolises, and each one they visit feels different. It is set in a fictional Middle Eastern land whose geography is every bit as diverse as I know the Middle East to be. It flies in open defiance of every narrative that ever tried to make that part of the world seem like a monolith. The Stardust Thief takes that assumption, that defeat, and throws it right out the window. After a while I began to take those stories for what they were, accepting there wasn’t really space for people like me in fantasy. Many were Eurocentric – or imitation-Europe centric – and if there happened to be a character that could be suggested to share my Middle Eastern heritage, it was a toss up as to whether or not they were the villains of the story, or at the very least the lackey of the villain. I’ve been a lover of the fantasy genre since childhood, and while there are still stories within that genre I enjoy, they all began to feel a little too similar after a while. Such was the case with Chelsea Abdullah’s debut novel The Stardust Thief, a sweeping, magical fantasy epic and the first in a trilogy I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on in its entirety. Once in a while, you come across a story you didn’t realize you were starving for until it was sitting right in front of you.
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