Colleen Mondor Reviews A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
A Tempest of Tea, Hafsah Faizal (Farrar Straus Giroux 978-0-374-38940-6, hc, 336 pp) February 2024. Cover by Valentina Remenar.
Hafsah Faizal has written a banger of a caper novel with A Tempest of Tea. Her tale of thieves, forgery, and political malfeasance set in the town of White Roaring takes readers on a ride with twists and turns they can never expect. Reminiscent of 19th-century London, White Roaring has a host of relatable problems such as grinding poverty and class stratification but the bigger issue for self-described siblings Arthie and Jin is the powerful security force (AKA ‘‘the Horned Guard’’). The city’s leader, the unknown but all powerful Ram, wants the Casimirs out of business and their gossipy teahouse shut down. To save the home they love, they must partner with a hashashin who is passing as a loyal soldier, threaten a powerful vampire to get inside information, and rely on a forger to pull off a near miracle. The fact that everyone has secrets (and I do mean everyone!), just makes their plan all that much more difficult to execute. Faizal keeps readers guessing until the final page where a cliffhanger ending is delivered with great panache.
While told in various points of view from Arthie, Jin and Flick, the forger, A Tempest of Tea is mostly about cover star Arthie, who years earlier managed to make all of White Roaring believe she pulled off a miracle, (which I read as a nice homage to Arthurian legend), and always manages to be one step ahead of the bad guys. Wicked smart, incredibly determined and harboring a backstory about the horrors of colonialism that permeates the book, Arthie is both a physical badass and one very smart cookie. Jin is her perfect partner, suave, dashing, and also quite talented in a fight. There is no romance between the two (that is mostly reserved for Jin and Flick) but a solid foundation of friendship and love that has made them a sister and brother bound by tragedy. But Arthie’s secrets are so big that Jin cannot possibly prepare for them. The reader will also be surprised, which is part of what makes A Tempest of Tea so very good.
I love a caper where all the moving parts must come together with everyone doing their job as effectively as promised. Faizal delivers that and more as, of course, a few elements of the complex crime go awry at just the wrong moments. (You can’t plan for everything.) I would say there is one big twist but really there are so many big and small, that readers will be forgiven if they think Faizal can’t keep all the bombshells in the air but… she does! And the ending – the ending! – is another revelation. I can’t wait for the next visit to White Roaring which will arrive next year, with A Steeping of Blood.
This review and more like it in the August 2024 issue of Locus.
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