Happy Friday!!
It seems like the only time I’m in the blogosphere these days are to host blog tours. It’s what’s keeping me writing. I keep telling myself I’ll be back here, writing and posting back-to-back, only to postpone it to the next month. I have been a little active on my booksta, but every plan I had for my blog has been on hold since March this year. It’s disappointing, but I’m trying to get back here his month.*fingerscrossed*
What have you all been reading or watching this week? I finished watching EXO ladder S3 and am planning to watch Stranger Things S4 this weekend. Have you watched the show or planning to? What are your thoughts on it?
Before we start this post, there are many folks who are part of this blog tour with some great content. Do stop by their blog if you’re interested through this tour schedule.
Book DETAILS
► Title: Nura and the Immortal Palace
► BY: M.T. Khan
► Published: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
► on: july 05 2022
► GENRE: Middle Grade Fantasy
► Standalone ► pacING: fast
► paGES: 272 ► aGE: 10+
► Rating: 4/5 ★
Aru Shah and the End of Time meets Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away in this mesmerizing portal fantasy that takes readers into the little-known world of Jinn.
Nura longs for the simple pleasure of many things—to wear a beautiful red dupatta or to bite into a sweet gulab. But with her mom hard at work in a run-down sweatshop and three younger siblings to feed, Nura must spend her days earning money by mica mining. But it’s not just the extra rupees in her pocket Nura is after. Local rumor says there’s buried treasure in the mine, and Nura knows that finding it could change the course of her family’s life forever.
Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura refuses to believe it and shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seas—a portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mother’s cautionary tales. Yet they aren’t nearly as treacherous as her mother made them out to be, because Nura is invited to a luxury jinn hotel, where she’s given everything she could ever imagine and more.
But there’s a dark truth lurking beneath all that glitter and gold, and when Nura crosses the owner’s son and is banished to the working quarters, she realizes she isn’t the only human who’s ended up in the hotel’s clutches. Faisal and the other missing children are there, too, and if Nura can’t find a way to help them all escape, they’ll be bound to work for the hotel forever.
Content Warning: child labor,bullying
ADD TO GOODREADS
I received an eARC of this book from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, courtesy of TBR and Beyond Tours in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
REP: Pakistani Main and side characters
This book opens with our MC Nura digging the Mica mines tirelessly to beat the guy who always ends up with the best haul. After learning that there’s a treasure buried somewhere in the mine, she has all the more reason to work harder. She needs every penny she could get to run her family and, of course, to eat gulab jamuns. Every time jamun was mentioned in the book, I wanted to eat them as well even if it was well past midnight. Reading about desi foods in books is always comforting.
The only upside of her life was shouldering some of her mother’s responsibilities and seeing her younger siblings fed. When her siblings are happy and smiling, she doesn’t mind working in the mines, despite her mother’s objection, to put that look on their faces.
One day when she is consumed by her work digging faster, heeding the strange whispers to dig more, she ends up collapsing the mine, trapping the kids along with herself. She gets out safely, but her best friend Faisal is nowhere to be seen and a few other kids also go missing.
She’d give anything to go back in time. To have her friend by her side. She doesn’t lose hope and goes back to search for her friend, only to get pulled into a parallel world of trickery and magic. She arrived right on time to join the Jinn with their festivity at the Sijj Palace, which was a very interesting place. It’s built with some sci-fi elements which was mind-boggling to perceive.
The Jinn realm was eerie. Her life may have been very dull and colorless before, but everything in this realm was alive, colorful, and full of things she has wanted in life. A very tempting place offering her a way out from her poverty. But she doesn’t let her guard down easily. She encounters Jinn of every kind not to forget her own Qareen.
Qareen were soul companions who looked like you but misguide and trick you into doing questionable stuff. They were trouble but brilliant creatures. Nura got into a complicated situation because of their trickery. This situation was no different from her real life, which was saddening. But Nura, ever the quick thinker, comes with a plan to untangle herself and her friends from the mess she landed them in.
There was a very strong message this book conveyed along with the value of friendship and family. Nura who has hated education all along realizes how important it is in one’s life only when she was battling the Jinn. Ultimately, it wasn’t the battle of muscle that set her and her friends free but the battle of wits that kept them alive in the Jinn realm, which is a eureka moment for her, and she accepts it with grace.
Overall this book was adventurous, promoting a good message. It was also my first middle-grade SFF book which was magical and scientific at the same time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M.T. Khan is a speculative fiction author with a penchant for all things myth, science, and philosophy. She focuses on stories that combine all three, dreaming of evocative worlds and dark possibilities.
When she’s not writing, M.T. Khan has her nose deep in physics textbooks or glued to her CAD computer as she majors in Mechanical Engineering. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, she currently resides in Toronto, Canada, with a hyperactive cat and an ever-increasing selection of tea. Her forthcoming debut, NURA AND THE IMMORTAL PALACE, hits shelves on July 5th 2022 from Little, Brown.
website | twitter | instagram | GoodReads |Tiktok
Let’s Chat:
Have you read this book or is it on your TBR?
“Some things become, without ever being. The world only provides questions and rarely ever the answers. And in our world, you shouldn’t hope for anything more than a likely story.”
― M T Khan, Nura and the Immortal Palace
paperbacktomes 
lovely review!! cannot wait to read NURA myself soon <33
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