Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - The Daughters of Izdhar

My biggest complaint about this book is that the sequel isn't our 🤣😭.
Overall, I loved the characters and the magic and also the revolution piece. Will be very interested to see where the story goes in book 2!

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smoore236's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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beldaran1224's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This is a fast read, and a good time. The author explores many facets of women's rights and specifically explores the variety of issues that are specific to women of all classes and circumstances and how all of those are political. This is done through the lens of a fantasy world with magic.

The world is well rooted in SWANA (South West Asia, North Africa) elements, which gives it a great deal of life and authenticity. The magic system is fun and will appeal to anyone who enjoys "elemental" magic.

The characters were perfectly selected as a lens to view the Daughters of Izdihar (the suffrage organization) through. I also particularly enjoyed the way the author wrote the responses of the various men in the story to the Daughters.

I look forward to the second book in the planned duology!

More details about content warnings: this book goes over a host of issues that women face, many of which can be traumatic for women who have experienced them. Among these are abortion, purity tests (and the sexual violation associated with them), sex shaming, and homophobia. The book does not treat them flippantly, but nor does it linger on them in graphic detail. At all times, the book condemns these things. The book deals honestly with very heavy topics, but it isn't interested in holding them up as entertainment.

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sammy_nor's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring

3.5

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verinvaldez's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I nearly DNFed this book but since it's so short and I was already halfway through I decided to finish it. It wasn't the book I was expecting, I was told it was like Avatar the Last Airbender in an Egyptian-inspired fantasy world and therefore was expecting a major focus on the magic aspect. However this is a book primarily focused on politics, women's suffrage, class and female weavers stuggling to control their abilities.

As other reviews have said, the magic system is the exact same as bending in ATLA. A certain plot point was taken directly from ATLA.

There is a reveal where the waterweaver main character Nehal accidentally bloodweaves and bloodweaving is highly forbidden and kept secret, I'm pretty sure the reason she gets kidnapped at the end of the book is because she is a bloodweaver and she is going to be used by the enemy kingdom as a weapon.

Which unfortunately made the magic aspect fairly dull because it was too derivative, I expected inspired by ATLA not exactly the same system.

Nehal was a very irritating character, highly stubborn and I found her impossible to like as she appears to be completely disconnected from reality, failing to understand the consequences of her actions and only proceeds to get even angrier when things don't go her way. Nico barely felt like a character, he has somewhat progressive opinions in this world but he just does whatever the plot is asking of him and most of the time he's just pining after Giorgina. Giorgina was the most interesting character to me because she is far more grounded in reality than Nehal and Nico are, however she wasn't compelling.

I am not invested enough in these characters or this world to have any interest in reading the upcoming second book in this duology. Absolutely nothing is resolved by the end of this book, it is all just setup for the next book so don't expect a satisfying ending going into this.

On the positive side, I enjoyed reading a book where the setting is inspired by Egypt, the descriptions of the clothing were fascinating and the political ideas were interesting but the themes weren't married together well.

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