Chelsea Abdullah: The Stardust Thief (The Sandsea Trilogy #1) [Spotlight]
Author photo by Neesa Abdullah
The gripping tale of a legendary smuggler, a cowardly prince, and a dangerous quest across the desert to find a legendary, magical lamp.
Neither here nor there, but long ago . . .
Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land—at the cost of sacrificing all jinn.
With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan's oldest son to find the artifact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen, and confront a malicious killer from Loulie’s past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything—her enemy, her magic, even her own past—is not what it seems, and she must decide who she will become in this new reality.
“Thinking about folktales and fairy tales and how they’ve been adapted into so many different things, and retold by various people and cultures—that’s fascinating to me,” the author told Publishers Weekly. “In The Stardust Thief, because I was specifically writing a love letter to the stories I’d grown up with, I was thinking about oral storytelling and how impactful it is. People think about the power of the stories we read, but we’re also surrounded by stories in what we watch, the games we play, the memories we share. They’re everywhere. Growing up in Kuwait, some of the best stories I heard were the ones people shared.”
“The Stardust Thief is a dream written upon a page-absorbing, lingering, and poignantly told. Abdullah weaves a sweeping adventure of tales within tales, while laying bare the ways those we love can both uplift us and break our hearts.”—Andrea Stewart, author of The Bone Shard Daughter
“You’ll be charmed immediately by the characters and pulled in by this exploration of how the stories we hear and the stories we tell ourselves—beautiful and heartbreaking alike—shape us.”—C. L. Clark, author of The Unbroken
Chelsea Abdullah is an American-Kuwaiti writer born and raised in Kuwait, where she grew up listening to stories about mysterious desert creatures and wily (only sometimes likable) heroes. Consumed by wanderlust, she has put down roots in various states. When not immersed in her own fictional worlds, she spends her free time playing video games, doodling characters, and hoarding books she doesn’t have the shelf space for.
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