Author: Alina Boyden
# of Pages: 346 (paperback)
Genre: Romance, Fantasy, LGBT
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: In a different life, under a different name, Razia Khan was raised to be the Crown Prince of Nizam, the most powerful kingdom in Daryastan. Born with the soul of a woman, she ran away at a young age to escape her father’s hatred and live life true to herself. Amongst the hijras of Bikampur, Razia finds sisterhood and discovers a new purpose in life. By day she’s one of her dera’s finest dancers, and by night its most profitable thief. But when her latest target leads her to cross paths with Arjun Agnivansha, Prince of Bikampur, it is she who has something stolen. An immediate connection with the prince changes Razia’s life forever, and she finds herself embroiled in a dangerous political war. The stakes are greater than any heist she’s ever performed. When the battle brings her face to face with her father, Razia has the chance to reclaim everything she lost…and save her prince.
Review: I definitely have conflicting feeling about this book.
I picked up this book on a whim; I was looking for a fantasy book that would help me in my reading rut. I saw this had decent ratings on Goodreads compared to the other books available to me. Skimming the back cover synopsis, I didn't realize that this book had anything to do with the LGBTQ+ community let alone attempting to make groundbreaking progress in transwomen fantasy literature. If that weren't enough, Boyden also worked with the trans Indian and Pakistani community and took it as inspiration in writing this book.
From skimming other reviews for Stealing Thunder, I have seen it receive a lot of backlash for being a trans white woman telling a trans Asian woman's story and other controversial topics on whether this lives up as a good representation for the cultural or LGBTQ+ community. I believe this issues are too big of a conversation for this review, so I will be focusing on the story rather than its representation of marginalized groups or the author's background.
Surprisingly, controversy aside, I was addicted to this book. I just couldn't put it down. I have ALWAYS been a huge fan of cheesy romance, and this book is no exception. This book is MUCH more of a ROMANCE than a fantasy book; there's not much world building as I was hoping for. The romance itself is not even anything original; just two people who clearly love each other very much with only the world against them. But like I said, I am a sucker for cheesy romance.
Now if I put my own feeling aside, I would be giving this book two stars. The protagonist, Razia, seems to be a transwoman pipe dream. She is able to do it all PERFECTLY, and everyone always seems to be blown away by her hidden abilities. It's just not realistic, not relatable for the reader at all. That being said, I guess the whole riches to rags to riches again story is not very relatable in general; it's not that inspiring to hear about an underdog who experiences a rise in status when the so called underdog came from a privileged background. This is further magnified by how the character who had less privilege failed to rise in power like those who did.
Not only that, but Boyden seems to reiterate the same points OVER AND OVER AGAIN throughout the story (e.g. Razia will make an observation about something, then she will tell everyone else, and then she will internalize the thought again...).
In general, the story was predictable; there's very little stress while reading about whether things are going to work out in Razia favor because due to her many many talents, of course she's going to solve all the problems and save the day.
I wouldn't recommend this book, but I cannot deny that I enjoyed reading it due to the romance.
