A Thousand Nights (A Thousand Nights, #1)

by E.K. Johnston

[Artemis]

The Artemis Reader

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this retelling of the classic A Thousand and One Nights. A Thousand Nights is an elegantly written novel that approaches the original tale with a unique spin.
As a lover of all things fantasy, fairy-tale and retellings of classics, I was quickly enamored by A Thousand Nights. However, be warned: nothing is explained thoroughly in this novel. But the lack of explanation works well within the story, the mystery becomes all encompassing and slowly, pushes you to finish it.
I loved that the characters did not have names (exception with Lo-Melkhiin, the only character with a name). Everyone else was “my sister’s husband’s father’s etc”, which ended up not being confusing to me. It worked to make the story even more mysterious and also question who really tells these tales in the first place? Often myth and fairy tales have no author, the author is simply “anonymous”.
Our unnamed heroine of the story was well written – incredibly brave and selfless, she sacrifices herself to save her sister from being party of Lo-Melkhiin’s body count, and never truly gives up hope that she will find a way out of this situation. She uses her wits and strength to make a future for herself and eventually find an answer to her problem.
Everything about this books is exquisite and elegant. The extremely slow pace seems to be the most off putting thing about this book but Johnston spends that time building the characters, the location and the plot up until the epic ending. If you like atmospheric, character-driven reads then yes this is the book for you. If you’d rather have action and fast pace drama – you may want to look elsewhere.