A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal * * *
A Tempest of Tea takes place in a fantasy world that has very obvious parallels to cultures and countries in our own. Our main character, Arthie Casimir, originally comes from Ceylan, which is based on Sri Lanka, while she now lives in the city of White Roaring in Ettenia. Ettenia has much more of an English feel to it, complete with its own history of colonialism. Arthie is young, ambitious, and already a fairly successful criminal. She runs Spindrift, a respectable tearoom during the day that becomes an illegal bloodhouse at night, serving blood to the vampires of White Roaring. She is also a collector and trader of secrets, which gives her a surprising amount of power for someone who is otherwise an outsider in Ettenian society.
She has built a small family and criminal network around herself. Jin Casimir is her adopted brother and closest companion, whom she met on the night he lost his own family. Flick is a talented forger from a much more privileged background. Matteo is a vampire and one of Spindrift's regular customers. Then Laith Sayaad arrives with information that gives Arthie the possibility of saving everything she has built, because Spindrift is under threat. The building is being taken from Arthie and Jin, giving them only two weeks before they lose their home and business. Weirdly, relocating Spindrift never seems to be a serious option, so Arthie's solution is considerably more dramatic.
There is a secret ledger containing information that could potentially be used against the Ram, the masked ruler of Ettenia. Unfortunately, the ledger is kept inside the Athereum, the heavily protected centre of White Roaring's elite vampire society. Arthie therefore assembles her crew and plans a heist, and this is where the book and I ran into a slight problem. I am just not particularly interested in heists.
I keep thinking that maybe I will encounter the heist story that finally changes my mind, and apparently A Tempest of Tea was not it. There is planning, infiltration, deception, secret identities, hidden motivations, and the constant question of who can actually be trusted. All the necessary pieces are there. I understood the stakes and I wanted Arthie to succeed, but I just never found myself terribly invested in the mechanics of getting into the Athereum and stealing the ledger. The worldbuilding interested me much more.
I particularly liked the existence of vampires as a known but marginalised part of society. They are not simply hiding from humans because humans do not know vampires exist. People know perfectly well that they exist. Vampires have their own spaces, social structures, prejudices surrounding them, and a complicated relationship with the human population. Spindrift becoming a bloodhouse after dark is therefore not just a fun vampire gimmick. It is part of this entire underground world that Arthie has created for people who cannot safely participate in respectable society.
There is also a clear colonial thread running throughout Arthie's story. She is not originally from Ettenia. She comes from Ceylan, a country that suffered under Ettenian colonialism, and that history directly shapes who she is. Arthie has built a life in the very empire responsible for destroying so much of her original home, and her anger toward that system is always underneath what she does. I actually found this side of her much more interesting than the criminal mastermind aspect. The problem is that, although I liked Arthie, I never became particularly attached to her, and unfortunately, the same happened with the rest of the characters.
Jin is charming and deeply loyal to Arthie. Flick has an interesting conflict between the privileged world she comes from and the criminal world she is entering. Matteo gives us a much closer connection to the vampires themselves, while Laith arrives carrying enough secrets of his own that we are never entirely sure what his real motives are. They are all perfectly good characters. I just didn't fall in love with any of them.
That is probably the biggest reason this remained a three star book for me. There are books where I finish reading and immediately miss the characters. I want to spend more time with them. I want another book simply because I am not ready to say goodbye. That never happened here. I liked these people while I was reading about them, but we did not become best friends. And I do not think that is something a reader can really force. You cannot decide that you are going to become emotionally attached to a fictional character any more than you can decide to fall in love with someone in real life. Sometimes a character simply catches hold of you, and sometimes they don't. These didn't.
The writing itself worked well for me. It is descriptive enough to create the world without becoming excessively flowery, and it is direct enough to keep the story moving without feeling flat. I never really noticed the prose getting in the way of the story in either direction, which in this case is a compliment.
What will probably bring me back for the second book is the story itself, especially because the ending is a serious cliffhanger. By that point, the book had also opened up much larger questions about Arthie, the vampires, Ettenia, and the political situation beyond the original heist. I am curious about what happens next. In fact, I think I am more curious about the world and the overall plot than I am about any individual character. So yes, I will probably continue with the series.
Overall, A Tempest of Tea was good. It has an imaginative fantasy world, vampires, colonial politics, criminal schemes, found family, secrets, and a fairly elaborate heist at the centre of everything. Readers who particularly enjoy heist stories will probably get much more out of that part of the book than I did. For me, though, it never quite became more than an interesting story populated by characters I merely liked.
Three stars. I enjoyed visiting this world, and that cliffhanger makes me curious enough to return, but I am still waiting for one of its characters to make me care whether I ever leave.
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