[Reading] P. Djèlí Clark's - A Master of Djinn

[yuuago]

I finished reading P. Djèlí Clark's A Master of Djinn the other day.

This novel was very fun. Once it got going, I found it hard to put down. It's set in a magic-filled, alternate-history version of our world, in 1912 Cairo. An agent of the ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and the Supernatural has been tasked with tracking down a murderer claiming to be the person who reintroduced magic to the world forty years ago.

The worldbuilding is very fun; if you like technology mixed with your magic, this is worth a look - aside from the djinn and various other magical elements, it's full of clockwork and airships and whatnot. The possibility of a world war looms in the background.

I enjoy Agent Fatma as a character; she's fun. And her developing friendship with Agent Hadia is great - after the rocky start. And also I enjoyed Fatma's relationship with Siti. (If you like F/F, there is F/F in this, and yeah, the relationship is pretty nice!)

A discussion I came across described it as "you can tell the author is just putting everything he likes into this book" and... yeah, I think that's fair, actually. But I found the result pretty cool, so it works for me.

This is the first novel in this series; there are other works in this world though - novellas and short stories. I'm really looking forward to reading The Haunting of Tram Car 015, which I've heard is pretty good.

The fact that most of the author's other works are shorter does show - toward the end the plot unravels a bit, the pacing is kind of off, something like that. Some discussions that I saw about it were really bothered by this, but I wasn't particularly fussed. Good to know that the short works are even better, though!

So, yeah. Fun novel, and I'm looking forward to reading the author's other works. My main disappointment is that there isn't much fandom related to this series; I was hoping to find some cool fanarts of the world and also of Fatma and her stylish suits, but so far haven't turned up much. What a bummer. :V

Comments

[kanadka]

Yesssss nice!! I meant to come back to this book too, I've only read the short stories, meant to read this one, but then wandered away. I liked the shorts a lot (and they don't suffer from the plot unravelling so much), and I'm not surprised to see Fatma in a F/F relationship for this one, as one of the novellas alludes to it iirc.

Sad there's no fandom for it :'(

[yuuago]

Hopefully you'll like it when you get around to it! <3 I'm really excited to read the other stuff in the series, ngl.