Book Review: Spindle by E.K. Johnston

Release Date: December 6th, 2016
Read: October 12th-December 6th, 2016
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Series: A Thousand Nights, #2
Format: ARC, 386 pages
Source: BEA 2016

Description from GoodReads:

   The world is made safe by a woman...but it is a very big world.

   It has been generations since the Storyteller Queen drove the demon out of her husband and saved her country from fire and blood. Her family has prospered beyond the borders of their village, and two new kingdoms have sprouted on either side of the mountains where the demons are kept prisoner by bright iron, and by the creatures the Storyteller Queen made to keep them contained.

   But the prison is crumbling. Through years of careful manipulation, a demon has regained her power. She has made one kingdom strong and brought the other to its knees, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. When a princess is born, the demon is ready with the final blow: a curse that will cost the princess her very soul, or force her to destroy her own people to save her life.

The threads of magic are tightly spun, binding princess and exiled spinners into a desperate plot to break the curse before the demon can become a queen of men. But the web of power is dangerously tangled--and they may not see the true pattern until it is unspooled.

Review:

   They have to make sure there aren't any loose threads.
   It took me a long time to get through Spindle, almost 3 months to be exact. Although that mostly had to do with school taking up most of my time, but the story itself was also kind of slow.
   I went into Spindle thinking it was just going to be a Sleeping Beauty retelling, I also went into it knowing that it was a sequel to A Thousand Nights, but you would not need to have read the first book in order to understand Spindle. Knowing that, I was excited to hop into the book. I found myself a little disappointed with the story, I found the idea to be interesting but for some reason I could just not find a hook in the story to keep me enticed.
   Overall, my favourite part of the story was what I believe a Islamic/Arabic feel to it. The world having been made up, had no specific location in our world associated with it, but the characters and people in the story could be connected to the specific culture(s). The characters names, their customs, their attire, they could all be associated with the culture. My favourite part was that it was obviously not the main focus of the story, but rather just who they were as people, and not just something added to further the plot. There aren't enough of these kinds of stories in YA, and I look forward to seeing more stories like this in the future.
  Spindle was a story filled with mythical creatures and adventure, I would definitely recommend to people who are fans of retellings. 

   

Rating:

Favourite Quote:

"This is how curses work. They poison everything."

Recommend to People Who Enjoy:

Young Adult, Retellings, Fairy Tales, Sleeping Beauty, Adventure, Magical Creatures