Book Review: A Tempest of Tea, Vampires, a Heist, and the Family you Choose
As a first time reader of Hafsah Faizal, who’s heard only amazing things about her other fantasy duology (We Hunt the Flame and We Free the Stars—still very high on my TBR), I had a lot of high hopes going into this. There’s vampires, and heists, and found family—all things I love in my fantasy reads. However, as I started reading, I realized it was going to be virtually impossible for anyone who has read Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom, to not compare the two. There are are a lot of similarities in the characters and even the situations they find themselves in. Now, I realize nothing is new under the sun, and obviously there are common tropes, but it definitely seemed like one inspired the other…heavily. Unfortunately for me, Tempest didn’t live up to the perfection of the Six of Crows duology, and I’ll explain why below. However, I still enjoyed reading this story, there were some refreshing takes on vampire lore, and I look forward to the next one because that cliffhanger was brutal. I’ll give it a solid 3 stars. If you’ve never read Six of Crows, you might absolutely love this book. So let’s get into it…
Things to Know:
Book one in an unfinished duology
Vampires
Found family
Arthurian legend nods
A Heist
Colonialism and its effects is a big part of the story
Cliffhanger ending
***MINOR SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT—YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!***
We meet the main character Arthie (aka Kaz Brekkar in a female form) who has major family trauma, and runs a gang of miscreants out of her ‘tea house’ (aka The Crow Club) in White Roaring (aka The Barrel), which also serves the vampires of the city at night. Her gang deals in secrets mostly. Jin (aka Jesper Fahey) is her closest companion, whom she sees as a brother. He’s also had a tragic past and owes his life to Arthie. He’s super charismatic and always cracking jokes, is a very adept fighter, and even does the Jesper coin-over-the-knuckles party trick. I’m being a little cheeky here because I’m 100% positive it’s just coincidence, but some of the characters did feel very copy-paste, including Flick’s character (aka Wylan), the privileged rich kid who’s parent is supremely disappointed in, and who gets recruited to join the gang for a heist. She also happens to be a love interest for Jesp—I mean, Jin.
Oh, and it’s casually thrown out at the beginning that Arthie has also pulled this magical gun from within a rock (here’s the Aurthurian bit, along with her name), and it has magical properties to shift into whatever object or weapon she made need. It’s never really explained how she was able to do it, but there is a prophecy around it which says the person who can pull it out and carries it, is the true ruler of Ettenia. I’m still not sure where all of that it going unless it’s going to be very on the nose.
One thing I did really enjoy was the rather refreshing take on vampires. I’d never heard the coconut water theory before (apparently this is a thing), but it was new and interesting to me. Also loved that they weren’t all-powerful and the mystery surround their disappearances had my interest piqued.
However, throughout the entirety of the story, I didn’t feel ready to ride or die for any of these characters. Jin probably came the closest for me, because he was given a super detailed backstory that did make me feel for him and understand more about his motivations. But I wasn’t super invested like I’d want to be when reading. There’s a pretty big reveal about Arthie that readers will guess a mile away from all the bread crumbs Faizal leaves, but I was able to listen to an interview Faizal did with her husband and she mentions she tried to make that reveal obvious to distract from her much bigger reveal at the end of the book. And I have to say, I didn’t expect The Ram’s reveal, so my hat’s off to her for that!
As I mentioned above, colonialism also plays a huge part of this story and it’s mentioned so many times, you can feel the anger seeping through the pages. It almost feels like the whole point of the book is to use this story to project the effects of it in our own world. Maybe that is the point?
A few quotes I loved (some very clever quips and moments):
“Weapons?” the butler asked, palm outstretched. “No thank you,” Arthie smiled. “I have my own.”
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“She almost felt sorry for him, until he looked up at her and wiked slowly, with vanity. “Every good love story starts with a bullet to the heart.”
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“His smile was the edge of a knife, and she was ready to bleed.”
I’d definitely recommend this book to people who are looking to diversify their reads with a multicultural cast of characters and are just getting into fantasy. It’s also quite a quick read, so would probably be great as a palate cleanser between longer books. Again, I do believe I would have liked it more if I didn’t have Six of Crows being a constant comparison in my mind.
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