Review: The Weavers of Alamaxa by Hadeer Elsbai
Blurb:
Following up on one of the most exciting fantasy debuts, The Daughters of Izdihar, Hadeer Elsbai concludes her Alamaxa Duology—inspired by Egyptian history and myth—with a tale of magic, war, betrayal, sisterhood, and love.
The world is on fire...but some women can control it.
The Daughters of Izdihar—a group of women fighting for the vote and against the patriarchal rule of Parliament—have finally made strides in having their voices heard...only to find them drowned out by the cannons of the fundamentalist Ziranis. As long as Alamaxa continues to allow for the elemental magic of the weavers—and insist on allowing an academy to teach such things—the Zirani will stop at nothing to end what they perceive is a threat to not only their way of life, but the entire world.
Two such weavers, Nehal and Giorgina, had come together despite their differences to grow both their political and weaving power. But after the attack, Nehal wakes up in a Zirani prison, and Giorgina is on the run in her besieged city. If they can reunite again, they can rally Alamaxa to fight off the encroaching Zirani threat. Yet with so much in their way—including a contingent of Zirani insurgents with their own ideas about rebellion—this will be no easy task.
And the last time a weaver fought back, the whole world was shattered.
Two incredible women are all that stands before an entire army. But they’ve fought against power before and won. This time, though, it’s no longer about rhetoric.
This time it’s about magic and blood.
Review:
The Weavers of Alamaxa is the second half to The Alamaxa Duology. When we left Alamaxa in The Daughters of Izdihar (also a great read!), Giorgina and Malak had just broken out of prison and Nehal was stabbed in the neck by Attia, who you may remember was in cahoots with the Ziriani ambassador. Most of that isn’t a spoiler since it’s also summed up in the blurb: But after the attack, Nehal wakes up in a Zirani prison, and Giorgina is on the run in her besieged city. (Side note - it does seem that the GR and Amazon blurbs are slightly different. So to clarify, this is in the GR blurb.)
Through Nehal’s storyline, we get to see what’s going on in Zirana and it’s bad. Their monarchs are just vile. Ok well, one is vile. The other is the king so in love with his wife that he backs her bad ideas. And they’re so bad. Of course, this is a world of rebellion so naturally we meet the Zirani rebels hoping to overthrow their oppressive monarchy and wouldn’t you know, they’ve got just the perfect noblewoman in their country now to help! As you might expect, this also goes so badly. I won’t spoil how, but given the peaceful march in The Daughters of Izdihar ended up with their parliament burning down, you can probably imagine how off the rails this gets. Like the rails are just entirely gone. There are no rails anymore. As for Nehal….well she’s Nehal. She still runs head first into things, she’s loud, she’s proud and sometimes makes questionable decisions, but they all make sense for her. Plus I think that her methods compliments Giorgina’s and Malak’s as well really, in the best way.
You could argue that Daughters was more Nehal’s story and her relationship with the wider world. This time it is our favourite earthweaver (or is she? - the earthweaver part, not the favourite part. That’s confirmed.) taking centre stage. I loved Giorgina’s development in this book. Like, I LOVED it. We see her go from the quiet, don’t rock the boat, stay towards the back character to standing up in her way to make change. And by ‘in her way’, I do mean keeping those qualities that were so endearing in The Daughters of Izdihar. None of this is more evident than towards the end of the book where she delivers her not-quite-ultimatum to the Prime Minister character. Her character was brilliant and I wanted more for her after Daughters and got it in Weavers. Why have I written less about her in comparison to Nehal? Because Giorgina is so incredibly key to so much of this book that if I gushed about her as much as I could want to, you would literally have nothing left to experience in the book. I will end on talking about her by saying in my GR review of The Daughters of Izdihar, I said “I want to see Nico come into his own,” and it is almost entirely down to Giorgina (with a bit of prodding from Nehal) that this happens. And oh, Nico. You did your best and Hadeer did you dirty.
One of the things I really enjoyed was there was never any of the competition I expected to see between our focal weavers. We know Nehal didn’t want the marriage to Nico, we know Giorgina had Nico’s heart first and always, and part of me always expected that their difference in status, in experiences, relationships with Nico would result in some kind of typical Mean Girl competition. I really expected some heated confrontation or properly catty interaction between the two. Instead, we have a strong connection between the two and they do support each other while everything is on fire. Could that be because their relationship is largely based on being members of two different spurned classes within Alamaxa? Maybe. Should I have known that because the reviews from industry names talk about this story of ‘sisterhood and struggle’? Also, maybe. While there is endless sisterly and romantic love, none of this is to say the characters we spend the most time with, Malak, Nehal, Giorgina, Etedal and even Bahira, aren’t critical of each other’s actions and plans. It’s just that none of it is done with malice. The arguments, interactions, support, chastisement, all come from a place of concern.
Overall, The Weavers of Alamaxa continued to tick all the boxes that I loved about The Daughters of Izdihar. Hadeer gave us a gorgeous Egyptian inspired world a magic system to take us back to our Avatar the Last Airbender days (a completely complementary comparison), she said ‘Oh, but make it sapphic’ and I loved every page of it. I always say I’m sad to leave a world when I finish a book/series in it, and this duology is no exception. This is one I would love to come back to. If Hadeer revisits this world in 100+ years, I want all the legends and stories about what happened with our core quartet of suffragettes from the moment we left them at their dinner table.
