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It's initially a little disappointing to find that Of Sand and Malice Made turns out to be not the long awaited follow-up to the first book in Bradley Beaulieu's Song of the Shattered Sands series, but rather a short three-part prequel novella. We will have to wait until February 2017 for Blood upon the Sand 's continuation of the imaginative Arabian fantasy outlined so thrillingly in Twelve Kings , but all is not lost, as Of Sand and Malice Made proves to be a fine reminder of just what was so good about the first book, and it has plenty to recommend in itself. If you haven't read Twelve Kings , Of Sand and Malice Made is actually not a bad place to start. You'll very quickly be introduced to Çeda, a young girl - who appears to be fifteen in this book and nineteen by the time we get to Twelve Kings . Çeda is however already making preparations for her life mission to destroy the Twelve Kings of Sharakhai who she believes are responsible for the death of her mot...

Norse mythology and medieval sword and sorcery tends to dominate the look and feel of the typical fantasy epic, but there are growing sub-genres that are now providing serious competition for the traditional format. In many ways the exotic Arabian Nights Asian and Oriental setting of Bradley Beaulieu's Twelve Kings even feels like a far more natural world for all the adventure and magic of a fantasy epic, but perhaps that's just down to how inventively Beaulieu makes use of the riches that the setting provides. Twelve Kings is set in the desert city of Sharakhai, where ships and schooners sail on seas of sand. The desert is still no place for a city, and indeed we soon find that the origins of the creation of Sharakhai and the Twelve Kings that rule it are shrouded in mystery and deals with dark forces such as the wraith-like asirim. The person who is going to delve into the heart of this dark mystery is an interesting figure herself. Nineteen year old Çeda is an orphan (natu...