Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton

The sizzling, un-put-downable sequel to the New York Times bestselling Rebel of the Sands, by the Goodreads Choice Awards Best Debut Author of 2016! Mere months ago, 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 djinni and Jin and the Blue-Eyed Bandit. In Traitor to the Throne, the only certainty is that everything will change. * "Superlative.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review "A robust and satisfying sequel, Traitor to the Throne ranks at the top with the novels of Morgan Rhodes, Rae Carson, and Leigh Bardugo." --VOYA

This is the sequel to Rebel of the Sands, which I read several weeks ago. The conclusion to the trilogy, Hero at the Fall, came out in March, and I'm waiting patiently for a copy from the library. (Okay, so maybe it's impatiently, but I'm waiting!)

I love so much about this book. I always love non-western style fantasy, and this one is definitely middle-east inspired, with its djinni and deserts and fancy khalats. (A khalat is a loose, long-sleeved silk or cotton robe worn over the rest of your clothing.) The Demdji - the children of djinni and humans - are all fascinating, with interesting powers. And fantasy politics, at the highest of possible levels!

Amani is a fascinating main character, with her control over sand, her personal ethics, and her personal conflicts. She's the daughter of a djinni, and we actually meet djinni for the first time in this book! I liked her love story better in Rebel of the Sands - it seemed very muted in this book, but they did spend most of the book apart. I am eager to see where that part of the plot goes in HatF.

There were a couple of twists that surprised me - who the titular traitor was, for one. The book was full of traitors of one kind or another. I also really liked seeing palace and harem life; the first book focused on desert backwaters and outlaws, so this was quite a change, and I liked it. I'm still half in love with Prince Ahmed, though we meet his half-brother Rahim in the palace, and he's growing on me. The Sultan himself also surprised me; I expected a villainous, power-mad ruler, and he is not that. He seemed to surprise Amani, too.

I was excited to see the djinni actually make an appearance; I'd expected them to stay an abstract idea for the entire trilogy! They certainly never showed up in the first book. I mean, it was obvious they still came to humans, or Demdji couldn't exist, but no one, even the mothers, ever spoke about seeing or interacting with them. Even to their half-djinni children. I'm hoping this means they'll play a bigger role in the third book, because after the small glimpse we get here, I really want to know more about them!

Like most of the other reviews I've read, I agree that this wasn't as strong as the first one, but middle books in trilogies rarely are. It is a solid volume, though, with lots of plot advancement and world-building and politicking. Can't wait to get the concluding book!

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I haven't even finished yet and already I want to reread the series.

WOW! I loved this book so much, more than the first one. This sequel to the amazing “Rebel of The Sands” has exceeded my expectations. I didn't know that I was in for such a bumpy ride, but I loved every single part of it.

This book has everything: love, betrayal, sacrifices, friendships, family drama, amazing plot twists.
There were a lot of things that I didn't expect and that's what made me love the book so much more. I loved the writing style, the pace and the action. This is a book that keeps you wanting to read more and more, I just couldn't put it down.

Traitor to the Throne is a book I've had sitting on my TBR shelf for a little while now. I read Rebel of the Sands, the first book in the trilogy, earlier this year and whilst it was okay it hadn't left a lasting impression and I wasn't feeling pulled back to the series as quickly as I had expected to be. Having renewed and renewed this book with my local library I only had a week left to read it before I had to return it so with that pressure upon me I eventually picked it up.

Boy was this a different book from Rebel of the Sands, whilst Rebel of the Sands was quite a short read focusing mainly on Amani the desert girl running away from an arranged marriage and Jin the prince who is helping his brother to lead a rebellion against his father the Sultan. It was a book focused very much on setting up the world and didn't give us as much action as perhaps I'd been expecting. Traitor to the Throne is a much meatier book in all possible ways. It's a good 200 pages longer than Rebel of the Sands and each of those 200 pages are used to their full potential as we develop the world building of Book 1 into a more politically charged and high stakes story.

We pick up just after Rebel of the Sands with Amani and Jin working with the Rebellion to try and overthrow the Sultan. Soon we find Amani captured and taken to the Sultan's palace where she is imprisoned in the harem. From within the palace, she uses her position to find out important political information that she can use to help the rebellion. As a result of this shift in the setting we are introduced to a whole host of new characters, the sultan, his sons and wives in the harem, we see the return of some underused characters from book one like Tamid. This gives the book more depth as we get to know more about what the Rebellion are fighting against and the political situation across the country and the history of how we got there.

That is one of the main reasons I fell in love with this book so much, those deep political conversations between Amani and the Sultan, the context we gain about the history of the country and the role of the Demdji and how they can be used for political gain. The life within the Harem makes for fascinating reading as well as we see how the women use every advantage they can scrape to ensure they don't become usurped by a new potential wife.

The book is my favourite type of fantasy, it was driven by changing alliances and character actions rather than big battles and fighting. The endings twists and turns leave us with a really good draw to pull us back into the final book of the series with a really good OMG reveal in the last pages. We have all the players on the board now, we know them all and we really are set for the closing rounds to play out in the last book.

Really really good book, if you didn't love Rebel of the Sands and like me aren't sure of returning for book 2 please please do, it pays you back dividends with a more mature, developed and engaging book.