A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston

A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston

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. 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 rises and sets, 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. Far 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-Melkhiin 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.

Review:

(I received this book for review from the publisher via Net Galley and all opinions are my own).

I thought it would take me years to finally finish this book. It had gotten to the point where it began to feel like a chore to me, which is not something I enjoy. I don't think it's something anyone enjoys. The thing about A Thousand Nights is that it had so much potential. There are some chapters, some lines, that just scream 'incredible', in fact the first 3 chapters had me really excited and I thought that it'd end up being a 4 star rating. What went wrong? Everything.

'She' (this mysterious girl whose name we never learn) knows that Lo-Melhkiin is coming to seek a wife, in a bid to save her sister from his murderous hands she sacrifices herself to the devil. Pretty literally. Once she gets to the Qsar, she survives the first night, then the second, and then suddenly she's survived the longest out of any of the wives at Lo-Melkhiins hands. Whilst she is busy surviving, weird things start happening around her. She dreams something and it appears to her. She tells a story and it comes true. It's all very mysterious.

I, personally, was so confused throughout the majority of this. I felt that for a story with so much going on, with such vast world building and religion and magic and everything else that it includes, it needed a little more explanation. Now, explanation isn't exactly the word I was looking for but it just felt that all of this new information was just handed to us and we were automatically expected to know what to do with it. It felt like going into a psychology exam with no idea who Freud is. And then the author threw in talking animals and demons and it all got very weird, very quickly, and not the good kind in my eyes. I just didn't understand it and without a basic understanding of something, it's hard to enjoy.

The storytelling also felt a little bit off to me. I just couldn't get into the voice very much and I found the writing style quite jarring instead of the usual fluidity and magical-ness that I usually love and look for in fantasy or retellings. The characters didn't grip me, the plot didn't grip me and neither did the writing. It's a miracle I finished A Thousand Nights if I'm honest.

That's all I have to say really. I don't think I can go into much detail because I didn't have any idea what was going on half the time and I just didn't like it so I don't have anything to say. The cover, though, is absolutely gorgeous.

A Thousand Nights is due to release on the 22nd of October 2015.