For those of you who started reading the Desert Nights series while it was still in novella form, it might seem a bit confusing that we now have a new series out under the same name!
I’ve had a couple of questions about whether these are the same books in an omnibus edition or something completely different, so I’ve put together an explanation here of what we’ve done and why.
Here’s everything you need to know…
Why are we relaunching the series?
We really enjoyed the process of writing the novellas, but the feedback we had from readers was that they prefer longer, novel-length books. We wanted to make sure we did Zadie’s story justice, so decided we would relaunch the series as a set of four, novel-length books in place of the twelve novellas we originally had planned.
This has also given us the opportunity to make it a bit clearer with the new cover and blurb that this isn’t a straight-up retelling of Aladdin, but an epic fantasy story inspired by the mythology of Aladdin and A Thousand and One Nights.
So is it the same content, or something new?
It’s actually somewhere in between! We really wanted to make sure we weren’t short-changing readers by just giving them three short stories bundled up together (as opposed to what felt like one, long book), so we’ve done a lot of work editing the original content.
In short, we’ve cut some sections, edited others, and written entirely new content where we felt it was needed.
Some of the novellas sat more naturally together in the “shape” of a novel (so book 1, Throne of Sand, is fairly similar to the first three novellas), while others needed completely reworking (you’ll recognize some of the novella content in book 2, Palace of Wishes, but much of it is completely different!).
Queen of Djinn (book 4) will be completely new content.
I started reading the novellas – does that mean I need to re-read the books?
We’ve tried to make sure that if you read all of the novellas we released, you’ll still be able to read book 4, Queen of Djinn, without missing anything or needing to go back and read the longer novels if you don’t want to.
If you didn’t read through all of the novellas before we delisted them, or you want to check where you had read up to, this is roughly how the novellas and novels relate to each other:
Novellas 1-3 = Throne of Sand (book 1)
Novellas 4-7 = Palace of Wishes (book 2)
Novellas 8-10 = Princess of Smoke (book 3)
As mentioned, what we had intended to release as the final two novellas (11-12) will now be released as one book, Queen of Djinn.
Where can I read the new versions?
I’m glad you asked! The new versions are available on Amazon now and are free to read on Kindle Unlimited:
