review: a thousand nights

This is my second retelling of the original tale, the first one being The Wrath and the Dawn. I tried my best not to compare the two, but i think even if i hadn't read TWATD first, my rating would still be similar. I'm rating this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. I didn't enjoy it as much as i was hoping to.

Plot

To be honest, the plot felt very dull and unexciting. Firstly, it was very slow-paced and nothing highly interesting really happened for the first 250 pages. It did get pretty good towards the end, but way too late for my preference. I'm not sure if it's because of the style of writing or just unclear description, but the whole plot about small-gods and demons was a little confusing and took me a while to understand what was happening. Other than that, i was expecting this book to be somewhat centered around romance. It wasn't. At all.

Writing

I have a huge problem with the writing. It's not because the style wasn't nice and elegant, because it was. It's because of the way the story was told. The writing didn't help me feel connected to the main character at all. She seemed very emotionless, especially since it was written in a first-person perspective. This made me feel like i was only reading a story, rather than living in it. At times, i thought the tales that the main character told Lo-Melkhiin were even more interesting and captivating than the story itself.

Characters

I can't say that i liked any character in this book, because i couldn't feel attached to any of them, not even the main character. The only thing i quite liked was the main character''s(omg i don't even remember her name being mentioned throughout the entire book?) bond with her family. That was pretty nice, especially with her brothers. I wish we got to see more of their relationship. The demon inside Lo-Melkhiin was actually quite interesting, though. I wish there had been more chapters with his POV. I enjoyed them more than the main character's, but they were too short.

Maybe this just wasn't my cup of tea. I know some of my friends liked it, and i think it was mostly because of the elegant writing. However, i'm happy enough to have this book on my shelf. The hardcover is absolutely gorgeous.