Eighteen-year-old Maia Tamarin "was born with a needle in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other" and dreams of being the emperor's master tailor. However, because she is a girl, the best she can hope for is to "marry well." When her frail father, a once highly respected tailor, is summoned by the emperor to the palace, Maia poses as her brother and takes his place. Upon arrival, she learns she will be competing against 11 others to become the court's imperial tailor. Maia manages to survive the sabotage, treachery and deceit of the cutthroat contest, but her ultimate undoing may be the impossible final challenge: journey through the kingdom to collect materials from the sun, moon and stars, and make three dresses "no human hands had ever made."
A contest that hinges on a dangerous journey, an inadvisable romance, a world filled with ancient magic and legends.... In her epic first novel, Spin the Dawn, Elizabeth Lim balances it all, effortlessly knitting together magic, romance, political intrigue and mythology. Lim's superior storytelling is rich with detail ("When the bridge collapses, the stars will bleed dust from the sky") and her use of tailoring metaphors--"trees that were sleeved with red, gold, and orange leaves"--feels like a natural extension of Maia's being.
While this impressive series opener deserves its comparison with Mulan, it's important to note that Lim's world is wholly her own, populated by characters who live, love and fight by the dictates of their fictional universe. Lim uses the girl-dresses-as-boy trope to kick off Maia's intense, high-stakes competition, then puts it on the back burner as act two unexpectedly explodes into action. Throughout, Maia discovers that she not only has worth, but that her talents are, in fact, priceless. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader