Race the Sands

We need more single volume fantasy stories. This is just my idea, I mean you are free to disagree, but I honestly believe we would profit from having more single volume stories like this.

The laws of nature in Becar work this way; reincarnation is a fact. It's all based on your deeds. If you are nice, you will be human, if kind of okay, but with flaws, you will be an animal. The breed decided by your exact levels. But if you mess up seriously... you will be reborn as a kehok, a chimera-like monster that just lives to go on with harming people and murdering, living in the deserts, ensuring that you will stay a kehok forever.
Except, not really. Some people decided to just do something wild and capture kehoks to ride them in competitions. Every year there is a champion. The human rider gets money and glory, the kehok a special medal that erases all its previous crimes and it can be reborn better next time, as something other than a monster.
It does help that you can keep an eye on your own current status with the help of the priest class, the augurs. Doesn't help that they are greedy assholes.

Tamra used to be a rider, now she is a trainer that is not doing brilliantly. She is doing so badly, in fact, that his daughter, Shalla, will be taken as a ward of the augurs if she can't pay for her augur education any longer. The poor girl can't even just leave, as all children with skills in augur things are forced to study it. She needs to train a winning rider to fix it.
Raia has a horrible family, so now she needs to buy her freedom by winning the races. She needs a trainer.

You know, it all seems ripe for some “I'm a girl, hear me roar, UWU, fuck men, I am perfect”, 2021-style cringe. And it isn't! It's possible to not fall right into the stupid tendencies that plague stories now, especially stories with female protagonists.
Neither of the characters are spiteful assholes. They don't blame others for their own issues more than what's conductive of them bettering themselves. They have insecurities and flaws and they are never treated as some outside force they have no power over; they can do this. Of course they doubt it, but that's natural.
I feel many female-centric stories nowadays give ridiculous expectations to girls and women. You can argue older things gave those too, but what's the meaning in being critical, when you change things to something else equally unrealistic? What do I mean by that? Now female characters have to be flawless. Nothing bad ever happens because of her, she is a victim of everyone being against her. But she is also amazing. Born with naturally perfect skills and moral superiority. Doubting herself is just her being harmed by social brainwashing, it can never be her self-conscious trying to make her reexamine herself to make sure her decisions and choices are really correct, because they just are naturally.
And this book does better still.

There is something more on top of these two; a huge, societal change and a political conspiracy going on. It doesn't completely take over the story of Tamra and Raia, but it adds an extra layer and puts these two in context.
It also adds male characters. And tell you what, they are treated well in a story primarily about female characters. Look at THAT. Again, it can be done. They are flawed, but they are doing their best and they're not the the idiots who only exist to make the women look better.

Some minor things were there I didn't love. Sometimes it felt like characters were just repeating their motivations and feelings. I understand they had the issues on their minds constantly. Sure, I do. But it got a bit repetitive sometimes.
Also, there is a whole character I felt was wasted. They did great in many ways and then we reached the end, but the thing that happened to them was just so meaningless and I don't feel it added to the overall message or the end result. It was just lame.

The world-building was done well. It had to be sparing enough to fit in one book, so we didn't get over the top, useless add-ons some authors believe are necessary for a fantasy story. Yes, we all love Tolkien. No, you don't necessarily need to invent a whole language and mythology to write a story successfully. Don't force it if you are not already passionate, knowledgeable and obsessed with these things.

I was extremely impressed by this book. After my worst slump ever last month, it was a nice new start. I definitely recommend this and will be looking into reading more by the author.