A Master of Djinn (Part 1)
STATS
Title: A Master of Djinn
Series: N/A
Author(s): P. Djèlí Clark
Genre: Fantasy (Historical)
First Printing: 2021
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
SPOILER WARNING
Mild spoilers will be included throughout this review, through I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labelled sections.
STRUCTURE
This will be another multi-part review. However, it will not be anywhere near as extensive as The Empyrean books; I didn’t take a break from Iron Flame just to pump out a behemoth of equal bulk. Rather, we will be keeping this to a mere three parts.
Part 1: Premise, Rating, Content Warning, Genre
Part 2: Themes, Action, Prose
Part 3: Plot, Worldbuilding, Character, Conclusion
PREMISE
As usual, we are going with the Barnes & Noble version:
Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer.
So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world forty years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.
Alongside her Ministry colleagues and a familiar person from her past, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city—or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems…
Reaction
This is one of the most accurate premises that I have ever read. Nothing was exaggerated or overemphasized. What you see here is exactly what you get in this book. Hats off to Clark (or whoever it was who wrote this up) for accurate marketing.
… that being said, after finishing the book, I can’t ignore one phrase from that first paragraph.
… especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer.
It sure sounds like this book is at least the second book in a series, isn’t it?
However, this is Clark’s debut novel. There are no prior books.
That’s not the say that this book isn’t a sequel. Specifically, it is a sequel to a short story called A Dead Djinn in Cairo, published back in 2016. I’m not sure where it was published, but I think it safe to assume that whatever publication picked it up was not one read by the average reader who finds A Master of Djinn in a bookstore. The reason I believe this is that my e-book copy of A Master of Djinn includes A Dead Djinn in Cairo in the back, after the epilogue and acknowledgements but before the author’s information. The publisher realized that the average reader would not have easy access to this short story.
I’m going to come back to this in the Plot. For now, I’ll say that, yes, reading the short story is required reading. There are multiple aspects of A Master of Djinn that lean on A Dead Djinn in Cairo. In isolation, these cannot support their own weight.
I did not read A Dead Djinn in Cairo before reading A Master of Djinn. I did not do this because nothing in the premise told me that I should. I shall therefore judge the merits of A Master of Djinn as it stands on its own. That is what the author and the publisher assured me that I could do by marketing the book in this manner.
(Having finished A Master of Djinn, I refuse to read A Dead Djinn in Cairo. I am not going to abuse myself with another 33 pages of Clark’s writing. I did skim over the first few pages, but as we will get to in Themes and Characters, what I saw retroactively made A Master of Djinn worse.)
RATING: 3/10
This book is exhaustingly amateurish.
Big Debut
Over the past 20 months, we have reviewed multiple debut novels. Notorious Sorcerer, The Stardust Thief, Son of the Storm, Blood Heir, and The City of Brass were all debut novels for their respective authors. The Licanius Trilogy’s first book, The Shadow of What Was Lost, was not only a debut novel but was originally self-published before being picked up by a traditional publisher for a reprint. And, of course, Shadow of the Conqueror was a self-published debut (which, by contrast, has not been picked up by a traditional publisher).
The thing is, at no point while reading these books was it screamingly obvious that the author had never before written and published a full-length novel. Their flaws could be chalked up to a lack of talent, skill, discipline, or professionalism, but never to the writer being ill-prepared for the medium itself. Shadow of the Conqueror, for all its glaring flaws, at least read like it came from someone who knew what he was doing; Shad’s reach merely exceeded his grasp. Notorious Sorcerer, a book where the author is on record about prioritizing her self-indulgence over all else, read like Evans understood what makes for a good novel. She merely didn’t care to put in the effort. Son of the Storm was a serviceable attempt to do the bare minimum - it just happened that the bare minimum in that case was ramming Twitter posts and lazy shortcuts into a fictional narrative.
A Master of Djinn is a very different beast. This book oozes with inexperience, immaturity, and a sheer lack of self-awareness. It does all of this while pretending to have deep and compelling characters, timely themes, and exhilarating action. The resulting mess is something I would find disappointing if one of my fourth graders had written it. That an assistant professor of a university, who is five times the age of said fourth graders, could publish something so profoundly sloppy is appalling.
I have not cut the authors of any of the previous debut novels that I’ve reviewed any slack (for being debut novels, at least). I therefore shall not show the Disgruntled Haradrim (yes, that is Clark’s Twitter nickname at the time of writing review, and it is also the name of his personal blog) any special consideration.
The Disappointment
The sad thing is, the premise and the world of A Master of Djinn are compelling. There are elements here that are great. Clark is open about the amount of research he did for this project, and that hard work shows. I want to give due credit to these moments of good as this review progresses.
While I didn’t find the opening as compelling as, say, Notorious Sorcerer, what we started out with wasn’t bad. I was able to tell myself that all my problems were subjective, that this book was a 7/10 or, at worst, a 6. It’s just that, much like Notorious Sorcerer, things snowballed. Annoyances bloated into immersion-shattering distractions; artistic choices devolved into chaos. A protagonist that tried way too hard (and ultimately failed) to be interesting became a parody of a self-insert Shounen character.
Ultimately, the only reason I did not rate this book lower than a 3/10 is that, at the very least, A Master of Djinn is not actively eating itself. Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are self-contradictory stories where each aspect of the writing is at war with the others. A Master of Djinn, for all its flaws, is at least focused and coherent in being flawed.
A Note to the Author
Mr. Clark, you have produced objectively poor work, yet I have more optimism about your ability to improve as a writer than anyone else whose work I’ve reviewed thus far. When the flaws in your work can be chalked up to a lack of experience in writing novels, then I think it’s logical to assume that you’ll rise above said flaws as you gain that experience. Find yourself some good beta-readers who are unafraid to give harsh feedback, and commit to honing your craft. If you do, then I’m confident that most of the issues that we are about to cover will fade from whatever future novels that you may choose to write.
CONTENT WARNING
Violence
This book includes multiple fight scenes and scenes of mutilation. A hand gets bitten off by a crocodile. Someone carves into and later severs his own tongue. The inciting incident of the book is a mass murder where one man’s neck of gruesomely snapped and several other people are burned alive.
Despite this carnage, there is a sense of weightlessness to it. Things are presented in a way that seems intended to provoke knee-jerk emotional reactions, but there is no follow-through. Injuries are magically healed between scenes (and, in at least one instance, mid-action scene). We are shown events that should kill or injure many people before being told there were no casualties. The inciting incident is almost fetishistic in its delivery - not graphic, mind, just that they feel as if the author really wanted to inflict that harm on someone without worrying about the associated human toll. (More on this when we get to the Themes.) At the end of the day, only the tongue-mutilation is treated at all seriously, but even that is only for the two scenes in which it surfaces. It is a footnote after that.
This handling of violence is one of the reasons this book feels so amateurish. It reads as though Clark doesn’t actually understand how to use violence effectively. I feel like he just throws these things in out of a sense of obligation, as if he doesn’t trust the mystery elements of the story to keep the audience engaged.
Swearing
A Master of Djinn features no foul language that I could identify … in English.
One aspect of this world’s immersive worldbuilding is that there are many works in non-English languages, at least one of which is Arabic. Given the situations in which this is spiced into the dialogue, I can’t rule out that some of these are obscenities.
If you don’t speak any languages from the Middle East or North Africa, I doubt you will notice anything objectionable here. If you do, proceed at your own risk.
Sexual Content
This book features at least one sex scene (after the first one, it’s hard to tell when sex is actually being implied). Outside of moments of mounting sexual tension before said scenes, everything is handled with fade-to-black. Nothing more explicit than kissing is shown. Additionally, there are multiple innuendos and sexual comments, but they’re nothing you wouldn’t find in, say, a Bond film. We’re not looking at a repeat of the oversharing from The Empyrean.
That being said, all of these moments pertain to a homosexual couple, namely a female-on-female pairing between Fatma (our main character) and a woman named Siti (the “familiar person from her past” from the Premise). The sexual content, limited though it is, is also written to convey desirability rather than emotional depth. I therefore count this as yet another example of an author of one sex exploiting homosexuality in the opposite sex for a personal fetish.
I do realize that it is an unfair double standard to judge the inclusion of sexual content based upon the sex of the author. However, I don’t think it is unreasonable to point out that this represents yet another example for a rather disturbing pattern: middle-aged writers writing about young (possibly illegally so) homosexual couples of the opposite sex from the writer. We got it in Foundryside. We got it in Notorious Sorcerer. We got it in Son of the Storm. Going back to a year before this blog began, there was Django Wexler’s Ashes of the Sun, where one only had to go a few chapters into the text before before Wexler started setting up a sexually charged romance between two girls who were explicitly underage (both by our standards and the standards within his setting). It is very clear what the authors’ true priorities are in each of these cases. Contrary to what a certain Disgruntled Haradrim might signal on his blog (while using the grave of Beren and Luthien as a soapbox, no less), it is not Representation or Diversity or anything else that could be considered a higher cause.
My content warnings are to prepare you for the subjective experience. I don’t appreciate having fetishes pushed into my face. If you share my lack of appreciation, please read something else. You will experience far less nausea.
GENRE
Historical Fantasy
The premise doesn’t bury the lead. “Cairo, 1912” immediately tells us that A Master of Djinn is a Historical Fantasy. What’s more, we are told up front what the point of divergence is from real-world history:
Al-Jahiz transformed the world forty years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown.
I feel like the Historical Fantasy element is the strongest and most compelling aspect of this story. Clark chose a point of divergence that is far enough back to allow for radical changes in the world yet not so far back as to guarantee an alien world. Real-world events before the point of divergence (that being 1872) are used to lay a strong foundation; other events, such at the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire and the rising tensions that led to WWI, are given a new context but otherwise flow naturally from that established history. It reminds me a lot of Scott Westerfield’s Leviathan series, where the introduction of genetic engineering and a reactionary revolution in mechanical engineering set the stage for a WWI where hybrid animals battled against mechs.
But what exactly is this new world?
Well, the reintroduction of magic into the world brought with it a tide of djinn, who integrated into Egyptian society. This allow Cairo to enter a new golden age, with Egypt gaining independence from the British several decades early and growing wealthy from the magic and fantastical engineering that the djinn made possible. Other countries that were client-states of European powers in this era, such as West African nations and India, also benefitted from this magic and were able to stage their own revolutions. The influence of Europe and the United States, while not erased from the world stage, is therefore diminished, with only Germany making a serious and open effort to seek magical power of its own.
Perhaps someone with more awareness of this era of history in that part of the world would be able to find flaws in this alternative history. For my part, I find it to be mostly functional.
Mostly.
A Touch Deluge of Modernity
This is a quality that surfaces as early as Chapter 2 (that being Fatma’s introduction chapter), and it only compounds as the book progresses. Despite being a predominantly Muslim city in the Middle East / North Africa in 1912, the characters in this book have attitudes far more fitting of a liberal university campus in modern-day Connecticut.
One of Fatma’s only character traits is her obsession with Western suits and bowler hats. Clark takes time and effort to describe her vast wardrobe in great detail. He also makes a point to tell us that Fatma takes the bowler hat off, outside of the privacy of her own home, on many occasions.
At no point does any character comment upon this bizarre state of dress. No one calls out the fact that this practicing Muslim is operating well outside of the acceptable limits of dress for women. Everyone just accepts and ignores it. No explanation is even given for why Fatma chooses to dress this way (unless one has read A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and as we’ve covered above, the marketing for this book does not tell the audience to do this). What Clark does do is call attention to these problems. Fatma is given a sidekick, Hadia, who is both more devout than her and actually does operate with the acceptable limits of dress. Hadia even lends Fatma a scarf to cover her hair so that they can go into a mosque, thereby confirming that Fatma is indeed breaking the rules and that Hadia is aware of that fact. What’s more, Fatma asks at one point why Hadia hasn’t inquired about the suits, and Clark covered up the hole by having Hadia lampshade the mere idea of such a question.
This is a minor complaint, though. I could roll with it.
Then Fatma and Hadia open their mouths.
As we will get into later, this book has superficial commentary about racism. Fatma and Hadia each get a line where they whip out the “bigot” card to simplify the characterization of another character. Each time they do this, I am no longer in Cairo, 1912. I am on a liberal university campus in modern-day Connecticut, listening to some entitled twenty-something screech about how everyone who disagrees with her is evil.
The book’s shallow commentary on feminism falls into the same vein. I can understand this one slightly more. After all, one of the changes in this world is that Egypt’s earlier independence accelerated the progress of feminism. Hadia is a feminist activist operating within this world; Fatma and Hadia are among the only female agents in their entire ministry. The issue here is that Fatma and Hadia don’t talk like women who actually live in an oppressive society, nor are we ever actually shown them being oppressed for being women. The worst that we are ever actually shown is that the women’s gym in the ministry’s headquarters is smaller and less well-equipped than the men’s gym, which sounds more like a practical cost-cutting measure, given the few female agents who are available to use it, than actual oppression by the Patriarchy. As a result, every time this issue comes up, Fatma and Hadia come across like a pair of TikTokers who have merely been told that they are victims and are actively seeking an excuse to lash out.
This is still small stuff. They contribute to massive problems elsewhere in the narrative, but they don’t punch a hole straight through the fabric of this Historical Fantasy.
No, the bullet that inflicts that mortal wound is Fatma’s homosexual relationship with Siti.
At no point is that fact that this is a homosexual relationship in a predominantly Muslim city in 1912 ever acknowledged. We are supposed to believe that this is a city where racism is very real and relevant, where women are oppressed by the Patriarchy, where the Muslims and Copts are prejudiced against the adherents of the ancient Egyptian gods, but two women having sex with each other does not raise so much as an eyebrow. Everyone who knows about it (including at least one character who is confirmed to be a devout Muslim) is openly supportive. If anything, the fact that Siti is one of those adherents of the ancient Egyptian gods, making this an interreligious romance, is the only potential obstacle presented to this relationship.
My full commentary on this relationship must still wait until we get to Character. For now, I will simply say that, at best, this is incredibly contradictory and anachronistic. You cannot hammer on the fact that historical prejudices exist within your historical setting whilst simultaneously showing us that this same setting (one where the predominant faith is well-known for having a dim view of homosexual conduct) is marching in lockstep with the agenda of a liberal university campus in modern-day Connecticut. Clark wanted this relationship to exist, realized that he couldn’t justify or even crowbar it into his worldbuilding, and chose to simply ignore the problem and assume no one would notice. It was a poorly made assumption.
To be clear: the factors I have just described would not be objective literary flaws if, say, this was an Epic Fantasy set within a secondary world. This world isn’t that of The Empyrean. The fundamental nature of a cosmopolitan city during an age of technology revolution and social upheaval is very different from a military dictatorship that has endured centuries of ongoing conflict. It is not inherently hostile to the ideas Clark is trying to put forth. The issue here is that Clark has chosen to set this story on a historical period of the real world. He has chosen to invoke historical phenomena and real-world religious beliefs. He has then chosen selectively ignore these same elements when they would get in his way. This toggling is every bit as distracting as what we see in The Empyrean.
Mystery
The premise also spells out that this will be a mystery. Fatma must unravel the secret of who this man claiming to be al-Jahiz truly is. (Going forward through the review, I will refer to this character as “the imposter”, as that is how Fatma thinks of him throughout much of the book.) To do this, she must investigate this brotherhood of his would-be disciples, trying to find a motive behind why the imposter announced himself to the world by murdering them, while also attempting to trap the imposter whenever he surfaces in the public.
I don’t think the mystery is great, yet I also don’t think it’s bad. If one approaches it as a police procedural rather than a thriller-style cat-and-mouse game, I’d go so as to argue that it’s pretty good. Information is gradually revealed over time, and it’s even possible to decipher the twist ahead at the end of Act Two (when the imposter’s true identity is revealed) prior to that moment.
My only real complaint with the mystery is really a complaint about themes. Clark sabotages the big reveal by flashing his hand to the audience. I’ll get into this more next week.
The Takeaway
There is nothing objectively wrote with genre writing that tries to have character dynamics or deeper themes. Character dynamics and deeper themes often elevate genre writing. The trick is introducing these ideas in a manner that does not break the genre.
If you are writing a Historical Fantasy, and you plan to go out of your way to invoke history, then you need to stay within the limits of history. You can’t selectively toggle variables and expect your narrative to not feel artificial.
If you are writing a Mystery, make sure that you don’t tip your hand to the audience through factors outside of the mystery itself.
WHY AND HOW
Next week, we will dive into Theme, Prose, and Action.
These elements are where the book really falls apart. The shallow yet heavy-handed themes damage the story around them. The prose mystifies the setting in a way that isn’t to its benefit while also killing the tone with efforts to be clever. The action sabotages the stakes with a lack of consequence. So many issues with other aspects of this book can be traced by to the failure of these three elements.
We’ll get into it on on May 24th. I hope to see you all then. Have a good week.
