Loved this book so much everything from the plot to the word building to the characters was great and I loved the romance between the two main characters I'm definitely excited to read more books by this author.

First of all. LOOK AT THAT COVER. it`s so beautiful, like it beholds a story unilke any other.
And, it dose. This book is so beautiful a story about a Jinni and the daughter of the salt king and their forbidden impossible love, but also freedom, dangerous magic and more. I just love the characters so, espesially the main character. But the side-characters were also written so very well, i found myself hating the salt king, i found myself disliking, but also understanding Sabra and feeling happy for Tavi. It was so many more characters ofcourse, and some were so infuriating, some were kind and did not deserve to die. I did cry, i was frustrated, i held my breath and i was so happy... i had so many emotions going through this book. Emel was my favorite character: brave, strong, fierce, wounderable and loving... and her love with the Jinni was so well written, it did not feel rushed or forced...it just magically and sometimes, slowly and aching...grew. So so beautiful.

I look forward to the next book!

What an entertaining and compelling read! The setting was this book felt very unique and had me captivated right from the start. Furthermore, I really enjoyed the journey of discovery and reclaiming of agency that the main character had on her journey. I like that this story felt fresh, and not confined to any traditional idea about how things should go. I really enjoyed all of it, though I think the pacing was a bit slow at times for me.

Not quite what I was expecting, but not too bad. I felt similarly to it as I did to The Bird King, The City of Brass, The Crooked Kingdom, etc. Strong start and then it struggles a bit to keep my attention as it moves along. I think this is a preference of mine more than anything else, I think once the political intrigue becomes too prominent, I find myself yearning for more of the magic. Perfectly enjoyable but a bit lost in the sea of similar titles.

Daughter Of The Salt King is a fantastic debut novel from A.S. Thornton.

This Arabian inspired fantasy book begins the story of Emel, one of the Salt King's many daughters and her many struggles to free herself from her father's strict control over her life and the whole world surrounding her, it also follows her subsequent discovery of a enigmatic and alluring jinni also under her father's control.

It is a beautifully woven tale with so many curated twists and turns that keep the pace flowing swiftly and succinctly in a world created with confidence and indulgence for a debut author. Her characters are rich and well though out and her writing has a lovely, easy to read flow edge to it which keeps you gripped to the story being told and totally engaged throughout.

As a beginning to a new series this really is a exciting start and will a series that I will definitely be following closely based on this entrance piece of storytelling. This is a story I heartily recommend!

The Daughter of the Salt King takes place in a desert where the village and palace are made up solely of tents. The people here value salt more than coin and trade with it. The king is the only one who has access of the salt for trade, but no one knows where he gets it. His secret is an enslaved Jinni who granted him his wish to be the greatest ruler of the dessert. The Jinni the gave him salt to trade and become the most rich and powerful king.

The king is an awful man who has many wives and children. Our main character ,Emel, is one of his daughters. Emel and the kings other daughters are known as “ahira.” The ahira are basically treated as slaves of the King. They are groomed to please other noblemen, princes and kings in the hopes of being chosen to be their wife.

After a chance encounter with her father’s jinni vesel, she learns her father’s secret. He is know as Saalim, and tells Emel she is his master after she unknowingly freed him from his vessel. She sends him back into his vessel fearing her father will find out. Saalim tells her she is still able to make wishes because she is a former master.

Emel comes to spend more time with the Jinni and realizes she wants a different life and to be free from her father’s rule. She is willing to do what it takes to free her family and village from the Salt King.

I really enjoyed this book and the world Thorton created! Emel was an enjoyable main character who fights for freedom and a better life after treated as a slave.. I loved her and Saalim’s chemistry. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book!

Thank you #Netgalley for this review copy in exchange for my honest review!

I enjoyed this book so much?? When I read the synopsis, I knew this would be an interesting read. An adult fantasy book set in an ancient desert with strong female lead and a wish-granting jinni? Sign me up!

I don't know where to start but I'll mention the world-building as the first thing that captivated me. I loved how the writing brought vivid images in my head on how enchanting and mesmerizing the world was. I felt like I was there at the hot and dry desert in every twists and turns. It definitely has the potential to be explored more in the sequel.

Another thing that stood out is the characters. For a moment, they were real. Their pain and joy as well as their desires and dreams filled me. I didn't read this book just for my own entertainment but also for them.

Emel was one of the daughters of the Salt King. I really adore how strong and brave she was. Her development througout this book amazed me because she learned from her mistakes and turned out to be the better version of herself. I do hope she'd get her happy ending in the sequel, Emel deserves it!

Saalim surprised me with his past and character depth. At the beginning, I thought he'd just be the jinni who would end up with the main character. But I applauded Thornton for giving him a bigger role and purpose in the story rather than just be Emel's love interest. I can't wait to know more about him!

I loved how complex the relationships in this book were. Emel's love for her sisters wasn't easy and without its challenges. She did get mad and at times chose herself over her sisters but that's what happen in real life. Sometimes, I too would done what Emel did but at the end, we'd stand by them no matter what.

I liked the friendship between Emel and Firoz because I think it was precious. They were so supportive and would do anything to protect each other. Meanwhile, Emel and Saalim's romantic relationship was too fast for my taste but they grew on me eventually. I especially loved their moments nearing the end because it showed how much they trust and love each other.

Overall, Daughter of the Salt King was a thrilling and magical adult fantasy book. It offered a unique tale with awesome world-building, lyrical writing, and interesting characters. I really liked it and cannot wait for the sequel of this promising duology! This is perfect for you who enjoy The Wrath and the Dawn or for those who are looking for a fast-paced, addicting fantasy read.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an eARC!

3.5 stars

I love a desert based fantasy, so I was really excited about Daughter of the Salt King! While I really enjoyed many aspects of this book, like our main character Emel, the world building and magic system, and the prose, I did feel a few things were off.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the pacing or the romance. With the romance that is completely a personal preference, but the pacing at times went from being really fast paced to quite slow and I felt as if I were getting whiplash.

Other than that I really appreciated our main character and her striving to live a life that she had control over rather than marrying a stranger and only surviving the day to day. I also really liked how the magic system felt organic to the story and learning about it felt seamless to the overall story.

I also loved the writing style, it felt so lyrical and fit well with the overall tone of the story itself. I genuinely am looking forward to more!

This book was a good read, a bit too slow for my liking at times but sill very nice. The romance, characters and world building are well developed and ineresting. I recommend you to read this book !

Couldn’t get passed the rape scenes. Would be good to have trigger warnings prior to reading.
This is a suggestion for future reads. It is important to know if such content is included.

Daughter of the Salt King is a desert fantasy, about a girl who falls in love with a jinni with the power to grant wishes. I really enjoyed this book at the beginning, but ultimately found myself wishing for a book that actually lived up to its feminist promise.

To start with, I think Thornton is a solid writer with a knack for description: this book evokes a sense of the great, endless desert stretching far out onto the horizon, as well as the suffocating nature of the palace where the main character, Emel, resides. I really love settings of this type, so if you’re looking for something other than the typical medieval fantasy, I would typically recommend this book.

However; the actual world-building that sits under the prose felt lazy, due to a heavy reliance on tropes. This is a fantasy novel set in a desert, so of course the king is a cruel despot with a harem of wives, the daughters are routinely forced to provide sexual pleasure to sleazy old men, and the only gay couple in the books could be put to death if they’re caught. I don’t mind stories that explore sexism and homophobia through the lens of a made-up world, but this book didn’t really shed any light on these issues. Frankly, I’m tired of reading books where women’s (lack of) rights to bodily autonomy are an accepted part of the setting, without no or limited critique.

My issues in this regard extend to Emel’s character. When we first meet Emel, she is trapped in the palace with twenty-six other sisters, and her only hope of escape is to be married off to one of the rich and powerful men from the neighbouring lands who come to court them. Emel is desperate to escape the confines of the palace and see more of the outside world, but she also defines her entire self-worth in relation to men – her desire to please her father, and her terror at potentially being thrown on the scrap-heap and deemed worthless if she doesn’t secure a husband soon. The djinni, Saalim, offers her a chance at a better life, but soon all Emel’s wishes are bound up with him – another man, even if this one isn’t quite human. By the end of the book, Emel’s desire to leave the palace simply to adventure becomes almost a secondary goal. There simply isn’t a lot of character growth; Emel’s sister Sabra, and her friend Firoz have much more interesting character arcs that we barely get to see.

For what it’s worth, I did enjoy the romance – Thornton captures the sheer overwhelmingness of falling in love well, and Saalim’s backstory is slowly unfurled throughout the book, allowing him to maintain an air of tantalising mystery. Saalim’s story is also intrinsically linked to the desert setting, which helped bring the world to life. I just wish more time had been dedicated to developing Emel’s character and poking holes in the sexist world she lived in.

Note: I received an ARC from CamCat Books. Daughter of the Salt King was released on 2 February 2021.

Such a good story, though it was a little slow in the beginning. I found the premise to be so interesting and the romance, absolutely loved it!

Women giggle inside a tent surrounded by a desert as they share innuendos, but the laughter is tinged with trauma. Their father, the king, sits upon a throne of salt, and his children are just as numerous. He builds his army with his sons, but his daughter are a precious commodity. At night the king lends the women to the wealthy nobles, and if the men are satisfied, they may marry the daughter to further strengthen the king's alliances. Emel, one of his many daughter who dreams of more, discovers the king's jinni and begins to dream of a life of love and freedom. The longing dragged through me as physical pain, the author perfect for giving voice to such enamored longing. However this book will be polarizing. The women are treated worse than slaves and are little more than prostitutes, and those who truly familiar with the trauma might not feel that it was dealt with fully. The supposed lover still lashes out against Emel, and yet Emel only makes excuses for his abusive behavior, forgiving him before he even recognizes his error and asking for forgiveness. The desert's setting and Emel's longing were as tangible as the book in my hand, and I couldn't put it down.

Daughter of the Salt King is filled with political intrigue, deception, and a wonderfully detailed world. It should have been everything I love in a book. However, the characters, places, and conflicts, I found it difficult to hold onto the threads. Nothing felt explained enough, I kept losing track of the plots and characters, and after finishing I couldn't say much of what happened in the plot or world.

I want to start with the positives of this book because it was filled with intriguing mysteries that I thoroughly enjoyed. Firstly, I appreciate how rich the world is. You can tell that the authors know every detail of the setting they've constructed. The city feels alive, bubbling with different groups, rivalries, conflicts, and alliances. Morally grey characters are the best, and no one can convince me otherwise.

But it was as if I was being given information, but no reason to care about any of it. Constant info stopped me from being able to recognize what was important and what was just background noise. It was only at the very end that I began to understand how the world functioned, and by that point, I was tired of trying.

Despite really enjoying this book as a whole there were parts I had to read multiple times to fully understand what was happening. I’m not sure if this was something not quite clicking in my brain or if things weren’t as clear as they could be but for me it detracted slightly from my rating. However I wouldn’t let this out others off as it could have been an issue on my part.

What a beautiful tail of forbidden love and heartbreak. The life of an ahira is not one I would like to live. To be forced into such horrible acts to win the love of a man is not something I would be able to do and it definitely caused great empathy for those characters you get to know well.

Saalim was an absolute angel. I adored his character and his relationship with Emel, the genuine love and care they developed for each other was so heartfelt and pure.

The tense drama built up through for over throwing the king came to a wonderful yet slightly upsetting end when all of Emel’s worst fears come true but I would really love a follow up book to see what comes next!

Wow this was fantastic! I honestly wasn’t expecting this totally different out of the box story. I mean WOW.... there isn’t a review I can give it that will give it justice. It was a whole box full of complex emotions, I laughed, cringed, angry, insulted, impressed, heartbroken, confused...... but I will say it ends with a big WTF ??? I beg on my knees there is more to come.

I usually read a book at least 25% before I quit reading a story but this one was different. I was ready to quit reading at 6% but I continued until 15%. I just couldn’t continue reading. Men controlling the fate of women can be a catalyst for a story but this story was so male dominant that I was not interested in the outcome. I hope the main character escaped her oppressive father and the whole system of their society but it was so offensive to me that I didn’t want to read it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

I really enjoyed reading Daughter of the Salt King. I have loved reading books set in the desert recently and felt that this was a great read for me to pick up. It was certainly darker and heavier than I expected when I did read the book.. I have seen some sites classify this book as Young Adult and it is NOT! This is definitely ADULT, maybe New Adult based on the age of our main character. There are mature themes present throughout the book that may be triggering for some. Sexual assault, abuse, gore/violence are all present in this book.

While I enjoyed the romance aspect of the book and felt that the relationship between our main character and the jinni was lovely, I wished there had been more chemistry between the two. However after the ending, I am so curious to see how their relationship will play out in the future. There is certainly going to be an interesting dynamic between the two after the events at the end. Overall, it was a quick read and I did enjoy it even though I felt that it was missing something to make it extra special.

Thank you to NetGalley and CamCat Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The theme of the review is: "I really liked this book, but I wanted more from the world that the author, A. S. Thornton, created."

There were a lot of things I liked about this book:

-I liked the world in which the story was set. The setting in the desert! The magic and the jinni! The slight hints at mythology of the world!
-I liked the relationship between Emel and Saalim.
-I liked Emel's character. She was spirited and learned to be independent; she loved her sisters, even if she didn't get along with all of them; and she tried to be herself, despite all of the times she was beaten down by her father, the Salt King, and society as a whole.
-Not a spoiler, but I liked the ending. It was open-ended but also concluded enough. I see that this book is now part of a series called Salt Chasers, so I'm hoping the author writes a sequel so we can learn more about these characters! I definitely look forward to reading more about this world.

However, I wanted more:

-The plot, world-building, and characters were all interesting, but ultimately felt a little flat. The characters, too, I wanted more from. I wanted more tension between Emel and Saalim. I wanted more about the relationship between Emel and her sisters, Emel and her mother; I wanted more about the world and why it was how it was; I wanted more about the textures of the clothing they wore, more about the servants, more about a lot of things. Everything felt too *linear*, with hardly any side stories or intricacy. The plot itself held a little bit of tension, and I honestly did not know what was going to happen from one page to the next, which is good, but I also felt that there weren't enough snippets dropped throughout to hint at any grand reveal, which made it feel not too much like any sort of climax.

If I had to say the one thing I didn't like this book, it was that it felt that, despite Emel being the main protagonist, the men in her life drove the action. Though it's a weak criticism, because in the world A.S. Thornton created, the men are the ones in power. It was still hard to see Emel look at her worth through the eyes of her father, through Omar, and the other men in her life, rather than through the eyes of Firoz, Aashiq, and Saalim. It almost felt like "only through men did I realize my value as a woman" -- both the bad and good.

Thank you to NetGalley and CamCam Books for a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wasn’t too sure what to expect going into this book, but I was captivated from the very first page.
The world-building managed to feel unique (which is rare for me, since I read such a huge amount of fantasy), and I absolutely loved the idea of salt as a currency. The writing was rich with imagery, and I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of the busy market especially.
I loved Emel as a character. I instantly felt like she was someone I could root for throughout the story, and I loved her determination and drive to escape her father’s oppressive rule. I could totally relate to her drive to explore the world.

I enjoyed the plot, and there were initially so many twists and turns that I was totally unsure about where the story would go next! I would say the story dragged slightly in the middle, and the ending will definitely be divisive. The book’s biggest positive for me was the author’s incredible writing style. It was so vivid, with the action so exciting, and I can’t wait to read more of AS Thornton’s work. I think this book set the second one up nicely, and I’ll be reading it once it comes out! This might not be the book for everyone, but I really enjoyed it.