Shadow Spinner

Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher ISBN-13: 9780689830518 Trade Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Jean Karl Books Released: May 1st 1998

Source: Borrowed from the library.

Book Description from Back Cover:
Every night, Shahrazad begins a story. And every morning, the Sultan lets her live another day -- providing the story is interesting enough to capture his attention. After almost one thousand nights, Shahrazad is running out of tales. And that is how Marjan's story begins....

It falls to Marjan to help Shahrazad find new stories -- ones the Sultan has never heard before. To do that, the girl is forced to undertake a dangerous and forbidden mission: sneak from the harem and travel the city, pulling tales from strangers and bringing them back to Shahrazad. But as she searches the city, a wonderful thing happens. From a quiet spinner of tales, Marjan suddenly becomes the center of a more surprising story than she ever could have imagined.


My Review:
Shadow Spinner is a young adult fantasy. It fills in the story of Shahrazad and her 1001 nights of story-telling from the viewpoint of one of her servants.

The Persian-like setting adds an interesting backdrop and realism to the story. The heroine was clever, engaging, and acted realistically to the events dictated by the "known" details of the story about Shahrazad. The suspense remained high throughout the story because not only was Shahrazad's life on the line each night, but Marjan had to do some dangerous things to help her out.

There was a minor amount of "he cursed" style of bad language. There were no sex scenes. Overall, I'm recommend this fun fantasy novel.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.