Kingdom of Sleep by E.K. Johnston

I don't think I quite enjoyed this book as much as its prequel, A Thousand Nights, but it was still an intriguing, beautiful story!

Kingdom of Sleep, or Spindle, depending on where you live, follows Yashaa, Arwa, Tariq and Saoud, on a quest to return to their crumbling home of Karuf and save the Princess, Zahrah. At her fifth birthday party, she was cursed by a demon who intended to possess her once she had learned everything she needed to be a ruler, forcing her kingdom into ruin and resulting in the banning of spindles (this is where the Sleeping Beauty references come in), as the demon pronounced that once Zahrah learned to spin, she would be ready for inhabitation. Yashaa, Arwa and Tariq's families, who were spinners, were forced to leave their home at this point, but now the three of them along with Saoud are determined to break Zahrah's curse. 

A Thousand Nights was very much a slow building story, and whereas Kingdom of Sleep was also slow, there was still a lot more action in it. It was definitely more of a "journey story", focusing on the development of the characters and their relationships with each other rather than on the plot. I did struggle to get into this book at first, mostly because I wasn't expecting some of the differences between it and A Thousand Nights (for example, I assumed that the characters would all remain unnamed as they did in the previous book) but once I got into the book I really enjoyed it and began to connect with the characters a lot more. 

Although I thought the ending was a bit too rushed, the very last chapter really made the book for me. With A Thousand Nights, the thing that really stuck with me was how beautiful and poetic the writing was, and I'm so glad that Kingdom of Sleep still had such beautiful writing, even though it was written in quite a different style and voice. 

This definitely isn't a sequel to A Thousand Nights, but a companion novel - it's set in the same land, but quite a long time afterwards (hundreds of years, as far as I'm aware) and although key events are mentioned from the previous book, you could definitely read this as a standalone and have no trouble at all understanding what's happening. I'd also just like to mention something about the Sleeping Beauty comparisons - Kingdom of Sleep is marketed as being inspired by/a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, and I think this may have put some people off, but in my opinion, the two stories couldn't be more different - literally the main similarity is that in both stories, spindles are the triggers in the Princesses curses. Because of this, I would definitely not let the Sleeping Beauty inspirations embedded in this book put you off reading it, as like I say, they're barely there! 

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Have you read A Thousand Nights or Kingdom of Sleep/Spindle? What did you think?

love Becky @