Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Rebel of the Sands wasn't on my original book list. In fact, I was walking through the library on my way out from picking up a couple of books on my list when the title stopped me in my tracks. Does that ever happen to you? You don't mean to look, in fact you purposefully avert your eyes from the bookshelves so you don't end up at the library or bookstore for hours at a time... You know... because your family needs to eat dinner and there's laundry to do or you're late for work. But this one caught me, snagged my eye and I suddenly found my feet taking me right to it.

This book is great. It has a sci-fi/fantasy feel, which I don't usually go for but I decided to go for it anyway. In it's place I've removed Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (which turned out to be something I dropped after the first five or six pages due to explicit material).

So... Rebel in the Sands... the front cover reads:

Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mythical beasts still roam the wild and remote areas, and rumor has it that somewhere djinn still perform their magic. For humans, it's an unforgiving place, especially if you're poor, orphaned or female.
Almani Al'Hiza is all three. She's a gifted gunslinger with perfect aim, but she can't shoot her way out of Dustwalk, the backcountry town where she's destined to wind up wed or dead.
Then she meets Jin, a rakish foreigner, in a shooting contest, and sees him as the perfect escape route. But though she's spent years dreaming of leaving Dustwalk, she never imagined she'd gallop away on a mythical horse - or that it would take a foreign fugitive to show her the heart of the desert she thought she knew.

Pretty intriguing right? Opens up on Almani, orphaned like it said and living with her aunt and uncle. Her uncle is a weirdo and has multiple wives and is considering marrying Almani. Ew. So, she either marries her uncle or finds someone else to marry. We'll come back to that.
She wants out of Dustwalk. Before her mother was killed, she would tell Almani about an aunt that lived in another town far from Dustwalk, in a "promised land" kind of story. So Almani dresses up as a boy, enters a shooting contest and meets Jin, the foreigner. They meet multiple times throughout the book, enemies one second and partners the next. But Jin isn't who you think he is. And neither is Almani, who always thought she was a "normal, boring" girl. Almani has a secret that she doesn't even know she has and to top it off, let's add warring countries, an evil sultan with a master plan to dominate the world, mythical beings that are only reigned in with iron as their tether and creatures of magical porportions. It's really great and intriguing.
I read this book all the way through in about two days. It's not a creepy or evil magic that one assumes would be the case, especially these days. But it's one that is on the underlying surface and peeks out once in awhile for the good of those around the characters themselves.

So, if you happen to pick up this book, take a moment and read it through. Because the author is in a hurry to get to the storyline, she doesn't stop and explain what exactly the "djinn" are or what other mythical creatures are or what they can do. So read it it slowly, but enjoy. It's a great one that I'll probably reread eventually.

Now - The next book on my list is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. It's a huge book but it's a classic so you might not hear from me for awhile. Peace out, friends.