A Brilliant Conclusion: Review of Court of Lions (Blog Tour)

Hello booksicles! I’m so honoured and excited to be a part of the Caffeine Book Tours blog tour for Court of Lions by Somaiya Daud (which you can find out more about in this launch post). In my stop, I’ll be sharing my thoughts about the book in a review along with my own quote graphics.

About the book:

Title: Court of Lions
Author: Somaiya Daud
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication date: 06 August 2020
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction

Synopsis:

Two identical girls, one a princess, the other a rebel. Who will rule the empire?

After being swept up into the brutal Vathek court, Amani, the ordinary girl forced to serve as the half-Vathek princess’s body double, has been forced into complete isolation. The cruel but complex princess, Maram, with whom Amani had cultivated a tenuous friendship, discovered Amani’s connection to the rebellion and has forced her into silence, and if Amani crosses Maram once more, her identity – and her betrayal – will be revealed to everyone in the court.

Amani is desperate to continue helping the rebellion, to fight for her people’s freedom. But she must make a devastating decision: will she step aside, and watch her people suffer, or continue to aid them, and put herself and her family in mortal danger? And whatever she chooses, can she bear to remain separated, forever, from Maram’s fiancé, Idris?

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Review:

Thank you to Flatiron Books and Caffeine Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Content Warnings: violence, death, physical abuse, grief, themes of colonialism

Plot: 4.5/5
Characters: 5/5
Writing: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

Court of Lions was a stunning sequel to Mirage that concluded the duology perfectly. I loved how much more Moroccan culture was incorporated into it. More delicious food descriptions (this book made me crave sfenj so badly), clothes, language references, henna, haggling in the souk, small cultural details that made my heart swell with joy and even Moroccan marriage traditions (including the all important wardrobe changes!) which made me wish someone would invite me to a Moroccan wedding (although that’s impossible with the current situation). And the cover of the book is so gorgeous! I never thought I’d see a book cover with two Moroccan girls resplendent in qaftans and selhams!

This book had a much slower pace than the first, with more of an emphasis on politics and forging alliances and I thought it worked really well and seemed realistic. All the choices the characters made sense and came together at the end nicely.

Amani shone through in this book even more than she did in the first. She was brave, smart and versatile in a way Maram, for all her strengths, was not. I was already impressed with her growth in Mirage but in this book she grew even more. Although she hadn’t been raised to navigate courts she was smart, she knew how to influence people and understood the importance of symbolism. I admired the way Amani held to her hope of a better world and never, ever stopped fighting for it. I also loved how her relationship with Idris developed and how they dealt with the bumps on the road.

Maram also had her time to shine, quite literally, because she gets her own 3rd person POV chapters! Although they were few and far between they gave so much insight into her and her character development in this book was top-tier. I loved her journey of accepting and loving her Kushaila heritage and working through her father’s conditioning. Seeing the grief, fear and anguish beneath her icy exterior, seeing the soft parts of her that were always there but pushed down by the Vath, seeing her take the time to explore herself and come into her own was so emotive and touching. If Mirage was where Amani found her strength and resilience to act, Court of Lions was the same for Maram.

I loved her romance with Aghraas. The way they saw and accepted each other immediately and the slow burn of their relationship was exquisitely done. For someone who was taught that emotions were weakness and was used to constantly being on the defensive it was amazing to see Maram examine her emotions and lower her defenses completely around someone. Daud really does write romance well!

Amani and Maram’s friendship was so well fleshed out. The way they slowly regained each others’ trust and rebuilt a strong, sisterly relationship based on trust was beautiful to behold. Furthermore, the side characters and the complex web of relationships between them, Amani and Maram were also extremely well fleshed out and engrossing. And I loved how many strong, brave women were introduced into the story!

Court of Lions dealt with rebellion, liberation and the trials that come with them. How do you dismantle an imperial structure built to break you when it has become so interwoven with society? How do you convince people that rebellion is worth the risk? It also explored trauma and how the characters each dealt differently with their own.

I loved how much more world building we got in this sequel. We get to explore so many more places in Andala through the characters eyes as well as learning more about the world’s history and lore. The emphasis on the different tribes and their cultures was lovely to see especially as it reflected the diversity among the Amazigh tribes in the real world. It saddened me how the Vath dismissed them as all the same and sought to erase their cultures but unfortunately that also reflects our world too. However, I wish we got to see more of the universe the book is set in and understand Andala and the Vath’s position in it. There are multiple references to a galactic law but we never know who enforces it and why it matters so much.

All in all, Court of Lions was a brilliant conclusion and I’d highly recommend this duology to everyone as I love it with all my half Moroccan heart!

About the author:

Somaiya Daud is the author of Mirage and holds a PhD from the University of Washington in English literature. A former bookseller in the children’s department at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., now she writes and teaches full time.

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Giveaway:

Caffeine Book Tours is holding a giveaway, the prizes are five (5) paperback editions of Mirage and five (5) hardcover editions of Court of Lions by Somaiya Daud it is: