Every Rising Sun
Ratings2
Average rating4
15
Ratings2
Average rating4
In this riveting take on One Thousand and One Nights, Shaherazade, at the center of her own story, uses wit and political mastery to navigate opulent palaces brimming with treachery and the perils of the Third Crusade as her Persian homeland teeters on the brink of destruction. In twelfth century, Persia, clever and dreamy Shaherazade stumbles on the Malik’s beloved wife entwined with a lover in a sun-dappled courtyard. When Shaherazade recounts her first tale, the story of this infidelity, to the Malik, she sets the Seljuk Empire on fire. Enraged at his wife’s betrayal, the once-gentle Malik beheads her. But when that killing does not quench his anger, the Malik begins to marry and behead a new bride each night. Furious at the murders, his province seethes on rebellion’s edge. To suppress her guilt, quell threats of a revolt, and perhaps marry the man she has loved since childhood, Shaherazade persuades her beloved father, the Malik’s vizier, to offer her as the next wife. On their wedding night, Shaherazade begins a yarn, but as the sun ascends she cuts the story short, ensuring that she will live to tell another tale, a practice she repeats night after night. But the Malik’s rage runs too deep for Shaherazade to exorcise alone. And so she and her father persuade the Malik to leave Persia to join Saladin’s fight against the Crusaders in Palestine. With plots spun against the Seljuks from all corners, Shaherazade must maneuver through intrigue in the age’s greatest courts to safeguard her people. All the while, she must keep the Malik enticed with her otherworldly tales—because the slightest misstep could cost Shaherazade her head. This suspenseful first-person retelling is vividly rendered through the voice of a fully imagined Shaherazade, a book lover whose late mother bestowed the gift of story that becomes her power. Created over fourteen years of writing and research, Jamila Ahmed’s gorgeously written debut is a celebration of storytelling and a love letter to the medieval Islamic world that brings to life one of the most enduring and intriguing woman characters of all time.
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Contains spoilers
”With a sharp pen and fine paper, I have wrought blood and madness.”
This was delightful. Maybe skewing a touch YA in its insistence on creating a love triangle, but I still really enjoyed this book all the same. And if you know me at all, overlooking YA romance tropes and still rating the book highly is something very rare indeed.
Rather than this being a retelling of the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, it takes the main storyteller from there (Scheherazade) and puts her on her own adventure reluctantly at the right hand of a Seljuk monarch, Shahyar, whom she marries as a way to force his hand. She finds herself weaving tales at the whim of her husband, trying to keep one step ahead of a potential headsman’s block while keeping her own family safe.
This really was a beautiful story told both through the actions of the characters as well as through the short stories told by Scheherazade along the way. The prose was fantastic, and I liked the way the characters change and develop as the story goes along. There’s some real soul searching done by both Scheherazade and Shahyar over the course of the story, and I liked how things wrapped up for both of them.
My only complaint, and the thing keeping it from a 5 star favorite rating, is the YA love triangle the author forces in. Major plot spoilers: <spoiler>About halfway through a character is introduced whom Scheherazade starts having feelings for, which seems rather hypocritical for someone who was instrumental in getting Shahyar’s previous wife killed for the same reason. Sheherazade acknowledges this throughout the book, but only in an offhand “gee I shouldn’t be doing this” as she’s doing this sort of way that I found a little juvenile.</spoiler>
But I really did enjoy this story greatly. It took me a while to get through, but only because I was taking my time with it, a mark of a story and a world I really did want to get all I could out of. Highly recommend for anyone who liked A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, or who wants to see Sheherazade get out of her castle and go on an adventure of her own.
