81. The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi

The Library Coven

In this episode, we discuss The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi, which was recommended to us by Melisa, one of our patrons (hey!!). Please consider supporting this work on Patreon for early episodes and a direct line to J & k via the podcast Discord.

Note: this is an adult fantasy novel that has a lot of explicit violence on the page. Repeat, this is not young adult / YA!

The Final Strife tells the story of mainly Sylah, who was trained from a young child to be a rebel with the Sandstorms, but things kind of fall apart when the family who trained her is murdered, and we see what her life has become as an adult and she’s helping a wealthy girl, Anoor, train to become a warden. Chaos ensues.

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• Recommend if you like…
  • The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (episode 15)
  • Maya Motayne’s novels Nocturna and Oculta (episode 41 and episode 65)
  • Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne – also adult fantasy, also rec’d by our lovely patron Melisa (episode 69)
• Jasbir Puar is currently a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Her books are Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007) and The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017) –– this latter one is what kelly quotes in the episode.
• Jessie mentions the book Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon
• Here is the Book Riot article Jessie refers to about the sexist miscategorization of women fantasy authors.

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