Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton
What's it about?:
"Gunslinger Amani al'Hiza fled her dead-end hometown on the back of a mythical horse with the mysterious foreigner Jin, seeking only her own freedom. Now she’s fighting to liberate the entire desert nation of Miraji from a bloodthirsty sultan who slew his own father to capture the throne.
When Amani finds herself thrust into the epicenter of the regime—the Sultan’s palace—she’s determined to bring the tyrant down. Desperate to uncover the Sultan’s secrets by spying on his court, she tries to forget that Jin disappeared just as she was getting closest to him, and that she’s a prisoner of the enemy. But the longer she remains, the more she questions whether the Sultan is really the villain she’s been told he is, and who’s the real traitor to her sun-bleached, magic-filled homeland.
Forget everything you thought you knew about Miraji, about the rebellion, about Djinn and Jin and the Blue-Eyed Bandit. In Traitor to the Throne, the only certainty is that everything will change." - Goodreads Synopsis
My Thoughts:
I wanted to love this book so much more than I did. I generally have a really hard time accepting sequels to books that I absolutely adored, and this definitely is one of them. I loved the adventure and unknown in the first novel, and this sequel just made it seem like every other fantasy novel, which really disappointed me. It was still a good book, don’t get me wrong! It definitely does not deserve anything less than a 3 star review, but I wish I could give it 5.
Storyline:
I wanted more Amani and Jin, plain and simple. But instead, I got Amani and the Sultan and Sam. While it did make for a more “dynamic” book, it wasn’t exactly the adventure I was hoping for. I wanted another adventure with Amani and Jin together, and instead we got just Amani. The two of them together make for a better story, in my opinion, so when I realized this was going to be centered around mainly Amani with a little bit of Jin, I was quickly disappointed.
Characters:
Amani: A badass with a gun. Basically. Even when the entire world was against her, she didn’t give up. She has a big heart and an incredible brain. There’s no one like her. However. I found her to become boring and monotonous after a while. I absolutely adored her in the first book because she defied all odds set against her. We got to know her and her story, which I enjoyed much more than being introduced to a whole slew of new characters and their own backstories.
Jin: My favorite character in the entire book, which is probably why I didn’t LOVE this book because he made very small appearances and I really just wanted to see him and Amani be the dynamic duo again.
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