Book #40 of 2023: Lioness of The Dust

[thistlechaser]

Lioness of The Dust by KK Lautner. I didn't read this eight hour book overnight, this was the one I had almost finished when my vacation started, but it was lost when Kindle deleted all my books. Happily I found it again so I was able to finish the last 10% or so.

I'm not sure if this was set in "Earth but with magic" or "fantasy world with Earth-like cultures", but either way it was set in what seemed a North African country. The naming formats and religions all fit for a Muslim country. I loved the setting, it was so interesting!

The plot followed a djinni who, unlike others of his magical race, loved humans and wanted to help do the best for them. First he served a ruler of a good country (until it was destroyed by a band of warlords), then he served a small woman-only village (which was also under threat by warlords, the world was a lawless place).

Suleizon, the djinni, was an interesting main character because the human world was pretty foreign to him, so he wanted to do good, but often there would be things that confused him. The women of the village were interesting as well, I would have liked to have spent more time with them. Plus there was a demi-god camel, and how could you go wrong with that?

The book's biggest issue, and the reason I'm not continuing with the series, is the editing. The author did the thing I really, really hate in self published books: They paid for editing for the first 20% of the book, then the rest just got worse and worse and worse. By the end of the book, the errors were so frequent, I would have DNFed it if I hadn't been so close to being finished.

It's so dishonest to pay for only the beginning of the book to be edited. Have the whole thing edited or none of it, don't try to fool people into thinking the whole thing is edited, don't try to hook them and then bait and switch them into an unedited story.