I want to rate this higher, I really do. Primarily for the language, which is colourful and sensual and really quite wonderful. If only the other aspects of this book matched up.

It reminds me a bit of another recent read of mine, Roses and Rot. They both trip over the same hurdle, and in all fairness I'm not really sure what can be done about it. Both Imogen and Shazi are meant to be wonderful story-tellers - one doing fairy tale retellings to lure in actual fairies, another telling stories to save her life by morning. In neither case do I find their abilities convincing - which is odd, because both authors are fantastic with language! I just tend to feel they spend so much time upping their character's abilities that by the time we actually see these abilities presented, they are... underwhelming at best. Shazi's tales, from my perspective, didn't merit a stay in fingernail cutting let alone strangulation... but as I said, this is the type of thing where you have to suspend disbelief, as it's hard to present a creative genius convincingly.

My bigger problem was with Shazi herself. I can't help it; I deeply dislike her. In fact I tend to dislike pretty much all these people. The Caliph is a mass murderer; he slaughters (or has slaughtered, no difference really) young girls over and over, and perhaps he has a genuine reason for it - perhaps not, this is another thing I found less than convincing - but the majority of people around him don't know this! And instead of stabbing him from behind, they just let him go on his merry murderous way. Shazi is by far the worst example of this. She's manoeuvred herself into wifedom because the Caliph killed her best friend and she wants revenge. But literally two days after the marriage she's in love with him, and poor murdered Shiva can go hang. (Literally.) And yes, there's some lip service to Oh-the-guilt! but that's what it is - lip service. It's been a long time since I've felt such a level of contempt for a YA protagonist, but this weak little traitor absolutely deserves it. Stop having every single character tell me how wonderful she is, book. She's not, and all that propping up is irritatingly undeserved and only makes me hate her more.

It's a problem that goes all through the story. There are brief mentions of riots because - who'd have thought! - the peasantry don't like their daughters being slaughtered, and good for them. But not only do the riots stop when the Caliph doesn't kill Shazi (because apparently she's just so special that the angry mob suddenly handwaves away all the other girls who've died... HATE), but the Caliph's all too happy to send soldiers out to quell the mob, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of sacrificing (others) for the greater good anyway, when you're happy to keep stacking up bodies like firewood.

In short: lovely language, but most of the characters need to die in a fire.