Illumicrate Change Your Stars – May 2021
Hello, it’s me…
It has been just over a year since I posted here, I thought it was longer. So much has changed, I guess that there is a lot to talk about but for now, I am catching up with some older content that I put time and effort into back in the day to share with you, that was until life went a little bit topsy turvy. I hope you don’t mind too much that several posts to follow relate to releases a year or more so ago, however, it seems a shame not to share the content and to just delete it. So, without further ado, I thought I would share with you the Illumicrate Change Your Stars box from May 2021. I know, it is going back a bit.
So, at the time of this box’s arrival, it was only my second Illumicrate box. I’ve had a fair few since then but at the time I was still really excited for it to arrive, it contained a book that I was curious about and of course, I wanted to see what bookish items it contained. For each monthly box, there is a theme. The May theme was ‘Change Your Stars’ and it featured the book The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri. Each book within these boxes almost always has special features which are exclusive to Illumicrate, this obviously can make them quite collectable, although perhaps not so much these days as I think their subscription numbers must be quite high by now. The book itself came in an exclusive hardback edition (it was only available in paperback upon publication), along with stencilled edges and foil embossing on the naked hardback. It also had a signed bookplate which I am personally not a fan of but it is better than nothing. The cover was the same as the original which is a bit of a shame, however, I do like it so I can look past that element.
So, what is the book about? I’ve taken the summary from Goodreads:
“Author of Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess’s traitor brother. Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.
Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides. But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.”
Like all Illumicrate boxes (full boxes at that) there are a number of bookish items within. First up in this box, there is the Staryk Castle Book Sleeve with artwork by Pauhami, this is inspired by the book Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. This is actually one of my favourite items I have received in the Illuicrate boxes to date. I did end up going to book only after about a year or so and did donate most of the stuff out of the boxes to charity as I just didn’t have a use for it, however, I did end up keeping this particular item as I really like it, plus, it protects my books!
The second item is an enamel pin inspired by the book Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan and designed by Blissfully Bookish. Now, I quite like enamel pins and kept all of them from boxes until they stopped being included, but I have a feeling I got rid of this one as I wasn’t a fan. I just felt it was a bit random to have a dress as a pin, that is just my opinion of course.
The next item was the WIlder than Memories sketchbook designed by Renata Krawczyk (her work is beautiful by the way) inspired by one of my favourite books, The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue by V.E.Schwab. I’m pretty sure I still have this knocking around somewhere as I thought I may find a use for it, however, I haven’t which is a shame.
Some of my favourite items that Illumicrate have done today are the tea tins. This particular one is the Elemental Creatures tea tin with artwork by Shirley, it is inspired by the mythical creatures in the Daevabad trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty which I keep meaning to get to. I have a couple of these tins now but haven’t yet put them to use, I really should do as they are quite pretty and I have a collection of different flavoured teas in my kitchen.
The most random item for me is the M-bot Illumikey designed by Danielle and inspired by Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. I have to say, I don’t know what the purpose of this was, I believe it was a new collectable that Illumicrate started and I assume will not finish as to my knowledge there have not been any more since. I’m going to guess it wasn’t very popular. I got rid of mine.
Lastly, we have The Jasmine Throne inspired enamel pin designed by Stacey McEvoy-Caunt, now this is a pin! I think this is really pretty so of course I kept it.
Overall, for my second Illumicrate box, I was quite pleased with what I got. I liked most of the items so I think it was overall a decent box.
You can read more about Illumicrate here.
