This is a weird one to review and I don’t really know how many stars I should give it. Jones’ prose continues to be snappy and readable, but the benignly intended yet still offensive exotification of middle eastern culture was pretty off-putting. I actually quite like Abdullah as a character. He’s got an unreliable steak that made the narrative more engaging, but… yeah I don’t know, man.

It was nice to see Sophie and Howl again, but it begs the question of why the book couldn’t just be about them.