I read the previous novella in this series, A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and really enjoyed the world that P. Djeli Clark created in it. I have a few friends that, whenever we get together, we compare “what we’ve been reading” lists, and in one of those conversations a friend brought up A Master of Djinn, and based on her recommendation and my previous experience with the author’s work I immediately added the book to my Libby queue.
Picking up a bit after the initial novella, A Master of Djinn opens on a meeting of a “secret society” of mostly old white men who are bent on collecting (i.e. often stealing) artifacts connected with al-Jahiz, the mysterious historical figure who opened up the veil between the human world and the realm of djinn, “angels,” and other magical creatures. The meeting is ended quite suddenly (not to mention brutally) when a veiled man dressed all in black appears claiming to be al-Jahiz himself, and magically murders the entire party.
Cut to our erstwhile hero, Fatma el-Sha’arawi, one of the few women investigators working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. From here on out the novel is pretty much a basic murder mystery (albeit set in Clark’s wonderfully imagined fantastical alternate universe). Fatma joins forces with her girlfriend, Siti, and her newly assigned partner, Hadia, to untangle a mystery that is ultimately deeper and of more far-reaching than any of them could have anticipated.
A Master of Djinn was really fun, and P. Djeli Clark gets an A+++ in my book for world-building and character development. Fatma is fierce and funny, and we get to see her confront some of her own preconceived notions and emotional blockages. The slightly steam-punky and highly fantastical alternate Cairo that Clark has created is also a blast to get to explore, and I have a dream that the book will get a big-budget HBO mini series adaptation so that we can visually immerse ourselves in the universe. The plot, unfortunately, for me was a bit “meh” – not bad by any means, but the pacing was sometimes slow and the plot a bit more twisty-turny than seemed necessary.
Even though the plot was not my favorite, I would still recommend this book to either fantasy or mystery fans. The characters and world-building are so, so fun that for me it made up for having to be a bit more patient with the plot than I would usually be.