A review by lawbooks600
The Balloon Thief by Aneesa Marufu
3.0
Representation: Asian main character
Trigger warnings: Terrorism, racism, sexism, near death experiences, military violence and war themes, hospitalisation
5/10, I picked this up a while back from one of the two libraries I go to and the latter has more modern books than the former so I chose from that one I was really hoping that I would enjoy this since I typically like fantasy novels like this, too bad this isn't the case since I found so many issues within this, where do I even begin. It starts off with the main character Khadija whose surname I don't know yet and she is forced to marry a man her father already chose for her much to her disappointment and the only way she can escape is through the sky and a hot air balloon and this must've been set a while back if inventions like aeroplanes, electricity and even airships weren't described. Anyways apparently Khadija meets another character called Jacob and he plays quite a critical role later on in the book and soon enough it is revealed that the country they live in called Ghadaea or something along those lines is oppressing a certain type of people called hari and they do magic which they don't like and the tensions start to brew the further I went in. And there's where the problems start to show, for starters the characters aren't even that well written and didn't experience any character development and second of all is the worldbuilding, it's barely explained which left me more questions than answers like where did the hari come from, how can they do magic and what are the jinn, I just don't know. Towards the end of the book the conflicts come to a head when there were acts of terrorism and then Khadija and Jacob were involved in a big revolution which left them in a sorry state wrapping this up in a cliffhanger and a low note. I'm not sure whether I'm going to read book two in the series but maybe that could explain some plot elements.
Trigger warnings: Terrorism, racism, sexism, near death experiences, military violence and war themes, hospitalisation
5/10, I picked this up a while back from one of the two libraries I go to and the latter has more modern books than the former so I chose from that one I was really hoping that I would enjoy this since I typically like fantasy novels like this, too bad this isn't the case since I found so many issues within this, where do I even begin. It starts off with the main character Khadija whose surname I don't know yet and she is forced to marry a man her father already chose for her much to her disappointment and the only way she can escape is through the sky and a hot air balloon and this must've been set a while back if inventions like aeroplanes, electricity and even airships weren't described. Anyways apparently Khadija meets another character called Jacob and he plays quite a critical role later on in the book and soon enough it is revealed that the country they live in called Ghadaea or something along those lines is oppressing a certain type of people called hari and they do magic which they don't like and the tensions start to brew the further I went in. And there's where the problems start to show, for starters the characters aren't even that well written and didn't experience any character development and second of all is the worldbuilding, it's barely explained which left me more questions than answers like where did the hari come from, how can they do magic and what are the jinn, I just don't know. Towards the end of the book the conflicts come to a head when there were acts of terrorism and then Khadija and Jacob were involved in a big revolution which left them in a sorry state wrapping this up in a cliffhanger and a low note. I'm not sure whether I'm going to read book two in the series but maybe that could explain some plot elements.