Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A stunning debut novel and an impressive feat of storytelling that pulls together mythology, magic, and ancient legend in the gripping story of a mother’s struggle to save her only daughter

Nadine is a jinn tasked with one job: telling the stories of the dead. She rises every morning to gather pomegranate seeds—the souls of the dead—that have fallen during the night. With her daughter Layala at her side, she eats the seeds and tells their stories. Only then can the departed pass through the final gate of death.

But when the seeds stop falling, Nadine knows something is terribly wrong. All her worst fears are confirmed when she is visited by Kamuna, Death herself and ruler of the underworld, who reveals her desire for someone to replace her: it is Layala she wants.

Nadine will do whatever it takes to keep her daughter safe, but Kamuna has little patience and a ruthless drive to get what she has come for. Layala’s fate, meanwhile, hangs in the balance.

Rooted in Middle Eastern mythology, Rania Hanna deftly weaves subtle, yet breathtaking, magic through this vivid and compelling story that has at its heart the universal human desire to, somehow, outmaneuver death.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Mythology that tantalizes with its familiar outlines, and its very intriguing shifts, is always going to get my attention. Nadine has a very unusual job as a Hakawati jinn who must tell the story of the dead before their spirit can move to the next world. This is very appealing to me, as the medium of delivery is pomegranate seeds that fall from the sky. This use of the many-cultural pomegranate as a deliverer of information about the dead in its very numerous, sweet-fleshed seeds seemed like it should be used in more myths!

Demeter and Persephone add their cultural mite to the familiarity stakes as Nadine, our jinn mother, needs to keep her daughter from being drafted to assume the role of the soul-sickened, dying, Death. I don't guess any mom wants her little girl to grow up into a being universally feared and loathed. The tension seemed logical if overplayed: In the quest to save her half-human child from becoming Death, Nadine takes us through an afterlife of surprising charm and a weird kind of gentleness. I guess when Death and her court are female, that is what happens...? As a side note, the men here are one-dimensional walk-ons. I was fine with that, others might not be.

I kept thinking that Death sounded like a fine ruler, where do I go to learn necromancy? Nadine was way ahead of me. Lots of the stories in this very literary fantasy novel center on death as a bargain, making deals, and the like. That is not really something I think is factual, but this being fiction not religion I have no kick with it. The book is short enough that its one note, Motherlove, does not become tiresome. She needs to make some hefty decisions with serious consequences to keep her daughter safe, including the hail-mary pass of digging up her dead partner's horrible father, but in the end only truly good people can help Nadine do good things.

Does it all make sense? Not to me; but I am a cynical old man who thinks the job of being Death sounds spiffing. There is a lot of time spent doing the same thing a couple different ways...go with it. Be in the flow of the story. I recommend this quiet, loving story for US mother's day, as a gift or as a celebration of a deeply missed Mom. ( )