About This Book:
Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura refuses to believe it and shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seas—a portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mother’s cautionary tales. Yet they aren’t nearly as treacherous as her mother made them out to be, because Nura is invited to a luxury jinn hotel, where she’s given everything she could ever imagine and more.
But there’s a dark truth lurking beneath all that glitter and gold, and when Nura crosses the owner’s son and is banished to the working quarters, she realizes she isn’t the only human who’s ended up in the hotel’s clutches. Faisal and the other missing children are there, too, and if Nura can’t find a way to help them all escape, they’ll be bound to work for the hotel forever.
*Review Contributed By Jan Farnworth, Staff Reviewer*
Portal fantasy with heart
What I liked:
Nura and the Immortal Palace is a solid Muslim-based portal fantasy debut for author M.T. Khan. Nura is a strong character who is determined to bring her family out of poverty by finding the enormous cache of mica in the mines. She wants to see her two younger siblings educated, maybe find out the power behind a school pencil, and never worry about food again. But all that changes when the mines collapse, and she whisks away to the world of Jinn.
Final Verdict:
M.T. Khan has created a world full of characters with hearts, a magical, rich world of the Djinn, and an accurate tale of striving for a better life. The theme of poverty, child labor, and lack of education resulting in a vicious cycle told through a fantastic fantasy story was impressive. An own Muslim voice debut middle-grade fantasy set in Pakistan with a djinn hotel hiding dark secrets, Nura and The Immortal tale is a debut from 2022 you should pick up today.
