Rebecca Zahabi is a mixed-heritage writer (a third British, a third French and a third Iranian, if the mix is of interest to you). She started writing in her home village in France at age 12 - a massive epic which set out to revolutionise feminism. Since then, she has slightly re-jigged her expectations of what she can achieve with a keyboard and a blank page. After honing her craft in a variety of genres - playwriting, short stories, interactive novels - she hopes to write books that can make a difference. Her first YA book was shortlisted for the Northern Writers' Award in 2019. Her adult debut, The Collarbound, was longlisted for The Future Bookshelf program at Hachette UK before being acquired by Gollancz.

I really enjoyed this book! The plot was more thoughtful than it was action-packed, but the pages still raced by as I was reading. A fascinating, mind-based magic system sets the stage for a story filled with the grim, understated conflict that exists in a world experiencing the tense, fraught "calm" before the storm of all-out war. Zahabi deftly creates a fully-realized and richly described world, providing a quiet yet striking exploration of the way inequality and injustice often serve as the bedrock of systems of power. The characters that populate the world of THE COLLARBOUND are nuanced and complex, each an exile in their own way, struggling to find a path forward in a world that balances on the knife's edge of war and chaos.Anyone looking for a book with all the intrigue and gorgeous worldbuilding of high fantasy and a thoughtful, measured prose and characterization style suggestive of more literary fiction should definitely give this one a read!

Rebecca Zahabi is a mixed-heritage writer (a third British, a third French and a third Iranian, if the mix is of interest to you). She started writing in her home village in France at age 12 - a massive epic which set out to revolutionise feminism. Since then, she has slightly re-jigged her expectations of what she can achieve with a keyboard and a blank page. After honing her craft in a variety of genres - playwriting, short stories, interactive novels - she hopes to write books that can make a difference. Her first YA book was shortlisted for the Northern Writers' Award in 2019. Her adult debut, The Collarbound, was longlisted for The Future Bookshelf program at Hachette UK before being acquired by Gollancz.

I really enjoyed this book! The plot was more thoughtful than it was action-packed, but the pages still raced by as I was reading. A fascinating, mind-based magic system sets the stage for a story filled with the grim, understated conflict that exists in a world experiencing the tense, fraught "calm" before the storm of all-out war. Zahabi deftly creates a fully-realized and richly described world, providing a quiet yet striking exploration of the way inequality and injustice often serve as the bedrock of systems of power. The characters that populate the world of THE COLLARBOUND are nuanced and complex, each an exile in their own way, struggling to find a path forward in a world that balances on the knife's edge of war and chaos.Anyone looking for a book with all the intrigue and gorgeous worldbuilding of high fantasy and a thoughtful, measured prose and characterization style suggestive of more literary fiction should definitely give this one a read!

Rebecca Zahabi is a mixed-heritage writer (a third British, a third French and a third Iranian, if the mix is of interest to you). She started writing in her home village in France at age 12 - a massive epic which set out to revolutionise feminism. Since then, she has slightly re-jigged her expectations of what she can achieve with a keyboard and a blank page. After honing her craft in a variety of genres - playwriting, short stories, interactive novels - she hopes to write books that can make a difference. Her first YA book was shortlisted for the Northern Writers' Award in 2019. Her adult debut, The Collarbound, was longlisted for The Future Bookshelf program at Hachette UK before being acquired by Gollancz.

I really enjoyed this book! The plot was more thoughtful than it was action-packed, but the pages still raced by as I was reading. A fascinating, mind-based magic system sets the stage for a story filled with the grim, understated conflict that exists in a world experiencing the tense, fraught "calm" before the storm of all-out war. Zahabi deftly creates a fully-realized and richly described world, providing a quiet yet striking exploration of the way inequality and injustice often serve as the bedrock of systems of power. The characters that populate the world of THE COLLARBOUND are nuanced and complex, each an exile in their own way, struggling to find a path forward in a world that balances on the knife's edge of war and chaos.Anyone looking for a book with all the intrigue and gorgeous worldbuilding of high fantasy and a thoughtful, measured prose and characterization style suggestive of more literary fiction should definitely give this one a read!