Tales from the Circle Volume 1 by Noor Al-Shanti

Most of the narratives in the book have that flaw: sudden skips, almost like pages or sentences had been dropped from the text. I could handle that jump, though I was disappointed (I wanted to read about how the rescue happened), but every few pages the story jumped again and again until I no longer understood the plot and lost interest in the story. For example, in the first story the heroine has been captured and is on the brink of rescue, when suddenly the story jumps to after the rescue. Which leads me to the problem I had with this book: I often felt like important scenes or important parts of scenes were left out. I also liked most of “Nyarai: Traveler of the Circle.” However, the plot kind of rambled and one critical scene-a rescue-was skipped over, for some reason. I loved the sea and storm imagery and the poetic aspects of the prose. Again, it is a relatively short story with a plot I could follow. It is short, has tight plot, and has the feel of a traditional fairy tale told with a modern dry humor. My favorite story is “The Renegade King”. But some of the stories were almost surreal, and I don’t think that was the intention of the writer. I also was fascinated by the rich culture she created: the Wanderers, the Travelers, the Renegades, and other castes in the sort-of medieval setting. I like the author’s writing style: simple, direct descriptive language that creates vivid scenes.

This is a hard book for me to review because there was so much I liked, but also so much I found incomprehensible.

I highly recommend Al-Shanti’s stories to readers who love immersing themselves in exquisite world-building. The author provides backstory without bogging the individual tales down, but there is a lot of information to absorb and some is simply provided as a matter of fact without explanation. The stories are complex, and I’m glad I read a previous book so that I had some familiarity with the world. There’s a small conclusion, a new magic skill, a battle won, but in each case, the story must continue in defiance of the Mad Sorcerer. For this reason, the stories don’t end like standard short stories.

Each is a slice of life taken from characters in different parts of the map or belonging to different groups. The stories are loosely connected through the world-building but otherwise don’t overlap. I’ve read Children of the Dead City and recognized many aspects of the world, it’s politics and its people.

In this collection of 5 short stories/novelettes, the author introduces the reader to the world that forms the basis of her longer novel(s). Al-Shanti writes beautiful prose and her world-building is both vast and intricate.

Tales from the Circle Volume 1 by Noor Al-Shanti