Book Review: Guns and Almond Milk by Mustafa Marwan

Meet Luke Archer, a British Egyptian doctor who struggles to be from two worlds at the same time. He's working in one of the world's most dangerous hospitals in Yemen. When rebel forces take over the city, a group of Western mercenaries take refuge inside the hospital and Luke and his team find themselves in the middle of a deadly clash. To make matters worse, leading the mercenaries is an unwelcome figure from Luke's past. After years saving the lives of others, Luke needs to face the demons of his past in order to save his own.

Set in the UK and Yemen, Guns and Almond Milk is a literary thriller that deals with identity, diversity and old coins of arguable value. It's The Sympathizer mixed with M.A.S.H by the way of Ramy. A Page Turner Award finalist.

GENRE: Literary Thriller

PURCHASE LINK: Amazon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mustafa Marwan is an Egyptian writer, aid worker and trainer. He has over a decade of humanitarian experience in more than a dozen conflict zones around the world—including most Arab Spring countries at the heights, and lows, of their uprisings.

He likes neo-noir, dark humour and books that strike the magical balance between the literary and the commercial.

Review

(Note: I don't normally list TWs/CWs, but for this book, please remember that it's set during an armed conflict, so it gets graphic. There's also a lot of talk about drugs.)

I like a good thriller every now and then, but I didn't originally plan on picking this up. A trusted book friend recommended this to me, however, and as his recommendations have never failed in the past, I decided to give this a go — and I was not disappointed!

This book was great. I really enjoyed Luke's voice, and he had a lot of quotable lines. It was also very interesting to read the medical and war bits. I learned many new things and even had (mostly horrified) discussions with some friends about them (like Captagon or what we jokingly referred to as 'super soldier serum in pill form,' thanks MCU lol). The footnotes were also a fantastic addition! I cackled at most of them. Authors should do them more, I think.

It was also nice to have a POC protagonist and have his cultural and identity struggles brought into the light. I mean, as a non-Western, non-white reader (and presently living in the West) I'm well aware of them, but now more people will get to read about them because of this book. Plus the novel is written in first person POV so it's really from that POC character's perspective, which is more potent. Some lines resonated deeply with me — like how Westerners have so many options that they don't know what to do with them, while non-Westerners have to make do because they have no choice.

All in all, this is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it!

My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️️

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Hi! I'm Marie, a Filipino SFFH author and book reviewer currently based in the UK. I’m the co-author of The Prophecies of Ragnarok, a Norse myth new adult urban fantasy trilogy, and I also have several short stories published in anthologies and literary journals.

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If you fancy a short read, I have a cozy reimagining of the Norse myths about Hel, but it's just under 70 pages and can be read in one sitting. ✨ Plus there's a swag kit coming soon! Includes a "membership card," a bookmark, a sticker, an origami dog, and an exclusive 500-word story 🫶🏼

All things end, and all must die.

But death is not always the end.

When Geiravor Lokisdottir was stripped of her name and cast out of Asgard, torn from her family and the life she had known, she thought she’d lost it all. But in the shadows of Niflheim she discovers the path to her destiny, and what it truly means to be queen.

This is a prequel short story to THE PROPHECIES OF RAGNAROK trilogy by Meri Benson and Marie Sinadjan, and a retelling of the myths involving Hel, the Norse goddess of death and the queen of the underworld.