The Blood of Stars is a series of fantasy YA books based on East Asian folklore written by Elizabeth Lim. They received praise for avoiding many tired YA tropes and their fast paced writing. The series is a duology consisting of Spin the Dawn and Unravel the Dusk. After the second book was published, Lim came out with Six Crimson Cranes, another fantasy book set in the same universe as the Blood of Stars duology.
Maia Tamarin dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. Her fate is forever changed when the Emperor announces a competition for the position of royal tailor. With her father well beyond his prime and her brothers all either killed or crippled when serving in the Emperor's five year war against the insurgent Shansen, she decides to pretend to be her brother and participate.
Maia must compete against twelve other tailors for the position who are willing to lie and cheat using magic to win, but the complications do not end there. The competition's organizer and judge is the Shansen's daughter, who's betrothal to the Emperor is the kingdom's best chance at peacefully ending the war once and for all, but to say she doesn't seem happy with the arrangement is putting it mildly. Maia soon finds that she may wield magic, and the emperor's Enchanter, Edan, soon discovers this as well.
In order to win the competition, Maia will have to journey across the land and gather the finest of materials for her gowns, as some of the fabrics that the competition demands are the literal stuff of legends.
This work contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Lady Sarnai, the Shansen's daughter and one of his fiercest fighters. Maia slowly becomes a dangerous fighter as the story and her curse progresses.
- Arranged Marriage: Between the Emperor and the daughter of the Shansen, Lady Sarnai. Lady Sarnai is not happy about it, which she vents by killing the Emperor's prize falcons and asking the tailors for impossible outfits.
- Arsenal Attire: The dresses respond to Maia's will and burn demons.
- Bargain with Heaven:
- Maia makes at four different bargains with Amana across the duology, all of which cost her dearly. First in vowing to break Edan's bonds even though it means she will be a demon herself. Next in sacrificing the three dresses, which cost her a bit of herself every time she does and eventually kills her.
- Maia's mother makes her own bargain of allowing Maia to live if Maia can reverse the tear in the heavens. Unlike the others, this actually works out for all parties.
- Cavalry of the Dead: In the final part of Unravel the Dusk, Maia's dead brothers arrive with an army of ghosts to counter the shansen's own ghost army.
- The Corruption: In Unravel the Dusk, Maia's deal is slowly but surely turning her into the demon Sentur'na, with it growing stronger whenever she gives into her anger or uses her magic. She fights valiantly and even manages to delay it by destroying Lapzur, but tells Lady Sarnai to kill her the moment she turns fully. In the end, she kills herself at the moment she crosses the threshold, but is brought back by Amana.
- Dead Person Conversation: At the end of book two Amana allows Maia to converse with her dead family. Her mother gives her the option of being the tailor to the gods and living with them in paradise immediately, or going to live out the rest of her days with Edan and her surviving family.
- Deal with the Devil: Wielders of magic who become corrupted by evil or cursed turn into Demons, extremely powerful and dangerous magical creatures. The Shansen's millitary might comes from one such deal.
- Disguised in Drag: This element of the plot has lead many to describe the book as Project Runway meets The Ballad of Mulan. Maia is eventually discovered and the Emperor doesn't bother having her hide her gender after she succeeds in making the dresses.
- Does Not Like Magic: Lady Sarnai despises magic after seeing her father corrupted by demons.
- Exact Words: Edan makes sure to word his request to help Maia to the Emperor such that the Emperor only forbids him from directly acquiring Amana's gifts—not from going with Maia or helping her in other ways.
- Fairytale Motifs: Maia replacing her brother in the Emperor's court is a shout out to Mulan, while Lady Sarnai trying to delay her marriage by asking for dresses made of the sun, moon, and stars is one to the Grimm fairy tale "Allerleirah". The ending implies that Edan and Maia's story will be combined with an existing fairy tale into "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl".
- Glamour Failure:
- The Emperor goes from extremely handsome and charismatic to rather homely and weak looking when Edan leaves his side for a time.
- Norbu's magnificent creations for the competition are actually the result of illusion-creating paint, which Maia ruins when she throws a pot of tea on his last entry. (It also happens to wear off after a few days; he's been skating by because Lady Sarnai never actually intends to wear anything that comes out of the challenges.)
- Good Is Not Nice: Lady Sarnai is both politically ruthless and personally a Jerkass save to the very few people she likes, thanks to the trauma of the Five Winters' War and being demeaned as a woman all her life. But at the end of the day she will still honor her agreements, still wants to save the people, and still serves as The High Queen to A'landi.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Maia's main power is using the scissors to craft fabric. She still manages to use it in battle, crafting a rope to haul herself out of danger and a thicket of brambles to block enemy arrows.
- Hero of Another Story: Lady Sarnai could have been the protagonist of her own story. She's the beautiful daughter of a man who rebelled against a corrupt and selfish king, and a more competent warrior than any of her brothers on the battlefield, and is very conflicted about the conflict, as her father is being corrupted by a demon and his motivations for rebelling were also selfish. Despite already having fallen in love, she's being forced to marry said king in order to bring peace and is trying to find a way from within the palace to escape the arranged marriage and live for herself. One thing that sets this book apart from more typical YA faire is that she is almost as integral to saving the kingdom as Maia is.
- Identical Stranger: Maia and the Shansen's daughter look extremely similar and even have the same measurements.
- Impossible Task: Lady Sarnai's final challenge to Maia, to gather the Laughter of the Sun, the Blood of Stars, and the Tears of the Moon and to make dresses from them, is designed to be this.
- Karma Houdini: Norbu, the tailor who sabotages Maia and gravely injures her is only ejected from court.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Edan devolves into having the mind of a hawk after too long spent in that form. Maybe a little smarter than a real hawk could actually be, but still just a hawk.
- Misplaced Retribution: Lady Sarnai puts impossible challenges up to the candidates for tailor out of frustration at her marriage.
- Mistaken for Gay: During the competition, it's obvious to the maids that Edan and Maia are interested in each other (however much Maia claims otherwise), but they think Maia is a boy. She lets them assume this, because if they think she's gay they'll stop worrying she'll harass them and relax around her.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Lady Sarnai requests the dresses of Amana in a last-ditch effort to postpone her wedding. She was in no way prepared for the dire consequences of Maia actually succeeding.
- Not Brainwashed: Lady Sarnai's hatred of magic comes from how the demon Gyui'rak corrupted her father the shansen into a shadow of himself. When he's free, however, he pretends to be cured to try and kill her, revealing that his brutal, hateful ways were all his own. She kills him in return, but the experience is what convinces her to let go of her hatred of magic.
- Older Than They Look: Edan's magical vow has maintained his youth, and the Emperor has him use his magic to keep him looking young and healthy. Downplayed with Edan, however, as the amount of time he's spent trapped as a hawk means that he hasn't actually experienced most of the time he's been alive, making him mentally quite close to the age he appears.
- Pimped-Out Dress: All of the gowns Maia makes, but especially the Gowns of Amana, the magical dresses she makes using the materials she finds on her quest.
- Production Foreshadowing: Edan mentions a princess he once knew who had paper magic and had to suffer in silence to save her brothers. This is the plot of the next book in the A'landi saga, Six Crimson Cranes.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Enchanters who have sworn to serve a master but don't currently have one are trapped in their animal forms until someone acquires the artifact the oath is bound to.
- Sweet on Polly Oliver: Anni, the palace maid who befriends Maia, falls in love with her guise as her brother Keton, but eventually comes to the conclusion that "Keton" is gay and accepts that. Ironically, she later gains a crush on the actual Keton.
- Tired of Running: Lady Sarnai is convinced that nothing can stop her father or his demon, and thus decides to run for it with her lover even though it would re-ignite the war. After the carnage drags on for months, she realizes that even if she can't win, it's her duty to at least try.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Maia calls out Lady Sarnai for running, comparing her unfavorably to Emperor Khanujin, who at least fought and died for his people. It works.
- Willfully Weak: Maia at first refuses to use her magical scissors, because she doesn't like the idea of winning based on magic instead of her own merits. Eventually she accepts that the scissors' magic isn't separate from her creativity and skill but actually works because of them, and comes around to using them more.
