CBR 14 BINGO: Rec’d. MsWas recommended this one to me, and I will be recommending it to others. I also saw this recommended on NPR’s list of best sci-fi and fantasy books of the last decade.
In 1912 Cairo, collector of antiquities, lover of the exotic, and all around British-colonial caricature Lord Worthington meets with his Brotherhood of al-Jahiz, a group whose noble purpose is to “recover the most sacred wisdom of the ancients, to create a greater tomorrow.” Worthington’s group has taken to collecting sacred items belonging to al-Jahiz, a famous mystic who, decades earlier, opened the veil between our world and the world of magic before vanishing. At this particular meeting, Worthington unveils the sword of al-Jahiz to the awed appreciation of all in attendance before the mystic himself (or someone claiming to be him) crashes the party and teaches this group of imperialists not to mess around with powers they don’t understand.
Something similar happened to the Nazis when they opened an ark not intended for them.
And that’s just the first 12 pages! After this bang-up opening that had me immediately hooked, we meet Agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi, from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. Fatma is not only a woman in a man’s world, she’s also the youngest woman ever to work for the Ministry. She wears stylish British suits and a bowler hat and makes sarcastic comments, and I love her. In her young career, Fatma has already made a name for herself in dealing with magical crime, so she’s called in to help solve the Worthington case. As she’s taking in the crime scene, Fatma is blindsided by the arrival of Agent Hadia Abdel Hafez, her new partner. *Record Scratch*
For you kids out there, TV Tropes offers the following explanation of the record scratch trope: The plot is moving at a predictable pace. . . .Suddenly, something shocking happens, disrupting the action and going off somewhere totally unexpected. With the sound of a phonograph needle being pulled violently across a vinyl record, the background music, along with everything else, comes to a screeching halt.
One might expect Fatma to be pleased at the presence of another female agent, but she is oddly disgruntled. Number one, she works alone. Number two, this youngster is just going to hold her back. Number 3, one gets the sense she kind of likes being the tough chick on the force. Could this be a setup for a buddy cop story?
If Fatma were two weeks from retirement, we’d really be cooking!
Fortunately, the tension between Fatma and Hadia resolves fairly early in the novel when Fatma realizes she’s being a hypocrite and Hadia proves that she’s more than capable of handling herself. As if these two weren’t enough, we also meet Siti, Fatma’s sometimes-lover, whose crazy-good athletics and fighting skills might be hiding a deeper secret. This feels a bit condescending to say, but I marveled that author P. Djèlí Clark included so many awesome women in his novel. I haven’t seen this level of female badassery since season 2 of West World.
Throw in a few djinn, and this could be a perfect television show.
Clark plays with a lot of mystery/cop show tropes in this novel, but they all have a magical, steampunk spin. I appreciate great world building, and I found myself wanting to live in this world. On top of the aforementioned badass women, Clark’s Cairo is home to a supercilious djinn librarian, a crocodilian god, and mechanical “angels,” who aren’t really angels but who wield tremendous power nevertheless. Clark also uses the story to touch on themes of poverty, imperialism, and feminism, and while I appreciate the effort here, what draws me most to this novel is that it’s simply fun.
One word of caution: I didn’t realize until I started reading that, although A Master of Djinn is the first full-length novel in the Dead Djinn world, it does follow the novelette “A Dead Djinn in Cairo,” and the novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015. My copy of A Master of Djinn includes “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” at the back of the book, and I wish I had read that first. While Master works as a stand-alone novel, reading “Dead Djinn” first would have helped me become more familiar with the way this universe operates. Also, Master gives away who the main bad guy is in “Dead Djinn,” so if you don’t want that spoiled, you need to read the short story first.
Finally, my one complaint about this book as a mystery is that “Who is the al-Jahiz imposter?” is not terribly difficult to guess. Any reader paying attention should be able to work out at least the basic culprit, if not the motives and supporting points, before the inspectors do. But again, the ride is what’s important, and A Master of Djinn is an e-ticket.
For you kids out there, in the early days of Disneyland, the park required separate admission tickets for each attraction. E tickets were reserved for the most popular rides in the park. Now you know.