4.0
The Steel Seraglio
ByPublisher Description
This is the story of the legendary City of Women, told through the tales of those who founded it, championed it, and made it flourish. When the city of Bessa undergoes a violent coup, its lazy, laissez-faire ruler, Bokhari Al-Bokhari, is replaced by the religious zealot Hakkim Mehdad. With little use for the pleasures of the flesh, Hakkim sends his predecessor's 365 concubines to a neighboring sultan as a gift.
But when the new sultan discovers the concubines are harboring Al-Bokhari's youngest son—a child who might grow up to challenge his rule—he repents of his mercy and sends his soldiers to slaughter the seraglio down to the last woman and child. What he doesn't count on is a concubine trained in the art of murder—or the courage and fortitude of the women who will rise up with her to forge their own city out of the unforgiving desert.
It's an undertaking beset with challenges: hunger and thirst, Hakkim's relentless hate, and the struggle to make a place for themselves in a world determined to underestimate and undermine them. Through a mosaic of voices and tales, we learn of the women's miraculous rise, their time of prosperity—and how they carried with them the seed of their own destruction.
"A thrilling tale." —
"A masterful, engaging and utterly fascinating story by three wonderful writers." —SFRevu.com
"
brings its alternate world of struggle, politics and magic very much to life." —
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Steel Seraglio Reviews
4.0
Maggie MM
Created about 1 year agoShare
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“This is my all time favorite book!!! There are so many different types of strong women in this book it's amazing. It so much fun to read because they will stop the main story to go on fun little tangents and give back stories so you never get a chance to get bored with the story. And I love the writing style. I love the contrast of contemporary language with an older world setting. And when you consider who is telling the story it makes sense it's written that way.”Hannah
Created about 2 years agoShare
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“This is a book that I bought back in 2017 or so, apparently read some of because there's dog eared pages, and completely forgot everything that I had read. Anyway It's been taking up space for years and I figured now's a good time to crack it open. After reading about 40 pages I decided I couldn't take the textbook orientalism anymore-- Edward Said wake up! We need you!
This novel's got everything:
-a mixture of Arabic, Persian, and some other MENA language names that are all treated like they're from the exact same/interchangeable culture
-I genuinely thought this was set in a fantasy world because of how impossible it is to place what time period it's in and only realized it's supposed to be our real world when there was a vague reference to "Arabia"
-this is supposed to take place in some MENA country... of course there's no indication which one, it's just a vague approximation of Arab cultures
-related but there is also remnants of vague spirituality but no actual examples of real world religions that came from the MENA area like all of the Abrahamic faiths hello? So is this the real world where real actual Arabs were Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian etc or is this a fantasy world that also just happens to have the Persian Empire. Quickly.
-the men are all either bloodthirsty and cunning or hedonistic sex pests. Cool.
-the women are all either dark and mysterious sex babes, or passive babes that sex happens onto. No one has ever thought of this before.
I imagine it only gets worse but wasting my time on the rest of this when I could be reading like, real literature feels like a sin so I simply had to stop.”
Phillip Harris
Created almost 6 years agoShare
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Matt
Created almost 7 years agoShare
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About Mike Carey
<B>M. R. Carey</B> has been making up stories for most of his life. His novel <I>The Girl With All the Gifts</I> was a <I>USA Today</I> bestseller and is a major motion picture based on his BAFTA-nominated screenplay. Under the name Mike Carey he has written for both DC and Marvel, including critically acclaimed runs on <I>X-Men</I> and <I>Fantastic Four</I>, Marvel's flagship superhero titles. His creator-owned books regularly appear in the <I>New York Times</I> bestseller list. He also has several previous novels, two radio plays, and a number of TV and movie screenplays to his credit.
Other books by Mike Carey
Louise Carey
Louise Carey read English at University College, Oxford, and holds a master’s degree in psychology from Oxford Brookes. She has been writing since the age of fifteen, when she coauthored the graphic novel
with her father, Mike. She has since cowritten two fantasy novels with her parents,
and
. She currently works as a writer and editor, dividing her time between freelance projects and the Dungeons & Dragons blog Tabletop Tales, which she runs with her partner. Her debut trilogy of novels has just been commissioned by Gollancz, with the first installment,
, due out in January 2021.
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