A Master of Djinn (Part 2)
STATS
Title: A Master of Djinn
Series: N/A
Author(s): P. Djèlí Clark
Genre: Fantasy (Historical)
First Printing: 2021
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Rating: 3/10
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.
THEMES
A Master of Djinn is every bit as shallow in its themes as Son of the Storm.
I would not classify any of the themes covered here as virtue signals. It’s clear that Clark actually did want to comment upon racism, feminism, religious intolerance, colonialism, classicism, and mental health awareness. It’s just that he couldn’t be bothered to actually say anything about these issues. What he puts forth is as two-dimensional as these ideas can possibly get:
Racism is bad.
Sexism is bad.
Religious intolerance is bad.
Colonialism is bad.
Classicism is bad.
Be respectful of mental health issues.
I can’t even begin to criticize the handling and delivery of these ideas. They are so basic that there is nothing to actually criticize. Even if I wanted to be contrarian and dispute the ideas themselves, I would need to fabricate strawmen just to give myself something to argue against. Such strawmen would do more on behalf of Clark’s causes than he has bothered to do here, as at least they would have some depth to them.
Irrelevance (Heavy Spoilers)
What makes these flat themes all the more annoying is that most of them are not relevant to the story being told. Racism and sexism are brought up mainly so that characters can complain about them; even when it is coming from an antagonist, it’s just sprinkled on top of the interaction, not presented as an obstacle to overcome. The religious intolerance is only referenced. The classicism is mainly used as rhetoric by the imposter, save for one scene about feeding the hungry that could be cut from the book with minimal impact. The mental health themes are confined to a few paragraphs.
Colonialism is the closest one to relevance. The antagonist’s master plan is to enslave the djinn of Cairo in the name of Europe, thereby allowing a colonial empire to be reestablished. This might have worked in terms of rhetorical argument (antagonist represents the “wrong” idea, the protagonist clashes with the antagonist, and the protagonist’s victory demonstrates the “right” idea), except that Fatma does not actually embody an anti-colonialism theme. If anything, because Egypt is a superpower in this setting, all Fatma does is preserve the status quo. Her victory is not the defeat of colonialism so much as a statement that colonialism is okay when her chosen group does it.
Gotham Knights (Heavy Spoilers)
The handling of feminism is this book spoils the big twist at the end of Act Two.
Clark follows the Disney model of feminism. He has no idea how to actually empower or build women up, only how to tear men down to make women look better by comparison. As a result, nearly male character is incompetent, weak, stupid, arrogant, fraudulent or otherwise deeply flawed. The only male characters exempted from this are those who are milked to serve one of the other themes or who are submissive to women. The most noteworthy example of this are the American jazz musicians who play at a nightclub Fatma likes to frequent, as they allow Clark to spout bottom-of-the-barrel reminders about how bad Jim Crow laws were. Female characters regularly complain about the problems men cause and how much better everything would be if women were in charge, to the point that a total stranger comments upon this very thing to Fatma at a social engagement, as if the Sisterhood is just expected to all hate men. Fatma’s internal monologue, presented through the narrative voice, is full of disparaging comments and descriptions about men.
So, the moment that Fatma thinks she’s cracked the case, that a male character who has already been pummeled down for being a racist colonizer was actually the imposter, my immediate reaction was, “Obviously, he’s just another man taking credit for a woman’s work. His sister must be the true imposter.”
It’s a shame because, as mentioned last week, the sister being the true imposter is not a bad twist. It make sense. It builds on the available clues. You could actually figure out that she is the culprit on your own, just by considering the evidence. Unfortunately, because Clark hammered away at breaking down all the male characters to make the female ones seem better by comparison, any investment I had in that twist died the moment he tried to pretend a man could accomplish anything. The many pages between Fatma thinking she cracked the case and the actual reveal of the twist became an insufferable slog, wherein Clark tries to make her seem intelligent by humiliating her suspect even further. It was a waste of time.
Colonizer or Colonized? Racist or Victim?
Schrödinger’s Victim
The handling of colonialism and racism in this work is contradictory.
We are told, from the very first chapter (from the perspective of an Englishman who identifies himself as a “racialist”, no less), that Egypt’s star is rising while Europe’s wans. We are told that the Egyptians now look down on these Europeans.
Thirty years past [Egypt] had been ripe for becoming another conquest in His Majesty’s Empire. Now Egypt was one of the great powers, and Cairo was fast outstripping London, even Paris. Their people swaggered through the stress - mocking English as “that dreary little isle… And they delighted in pretended not to understand English when he knew they very well could!
The book will double down on this. We are told how Europe’s colonies throughout Africa and India have staged revolutions, with magic giving an overwhelming advantage over firearms. What’s more, Egypt is sending missionaries to the United States. This is not presented as a spiritual mission to spread Islam - rather, it is worded as though the United States economy is struggling, and the Egyptians need to step in to help minorities who would otherwise be neglected.
What’s more, we get confirmation later on that most of Europe is waning, overwhelmed by the powers of Africa and India, too stuck in the old way of doing things to pose a threat. Only Germany is not taking this lying down, having sought out and made an alliance with goblins. Reference is also made to France and Russia making their own overtures to magical beings within their borders, albeit in secret. Europe has, in short, been broken. Those who acknowledge Egypt’s supremacy and attempt to imitate it have hope for survival, while all other European powers are shadows of their former selves.
In short, this version of Cairo is Clark’s Wakanda, as Wakanda existed after revealing itself to the wider world.
Why, then, does Clark choose to say, “Racism bad. Colonialism bad,” in terms that would make far more sense in real-world Cairo in 1912, where Europe controls the world and Egypt is at its mercy?
English expats who have spent years in-country speak no Arabic, or at least, Arabic that is so terrible that it seems to have been written precisely so that we could mock it. They have no concept of how the traditional clothing works. They make casually racist remarks. They have not read the works of Arabic scholars, only European scholars who didn’t understand the source material. The headquarters of the slain brotherhood is emphasized as being full of Orientalist stereotypes.
Any of these elements could potentially be explained by the choices of specific characters. All of them form a pattern, especially since this is the only way that the Europeans are presented in the story. We are meant to view this as the norm.
So which is it, Clark? Is Egypt a superpower, or is it a victimized colony that the mean racists don’t respect?
What’s particularly baffling is that we have a real-world comparison from roughly the same time period: the Meiji Reformation. Japan had closed its borders back in the 1500s because, much like how Europe is presented in this book, it wanted to hold on to its traditions. This was a response to Europe’s rising power. When Commodore Perry showed up in Edo Bay in the 1800s and threated war on Japan if they didn’t open their borders, Japan changed tactics, rapidly modernizing on their own terms. They readily adopted those elements of the West that they found advantageous.
Why aren’t these Europeans, whose borders are already open, learning Arabic for political survival or simply to be fashionable? Why do they not adopt Egyptian dress while in Egypt, even if it’s a modified form that suits European tastes? (Per the Japan example, very few Japanese people wear traditional dress anymore, outside of special occasions.) Why do they not have access to the works of Arabic scholars, translated into their native languages (or, at least, into English) by these fluent Egyptians who are sending missionaries abroad? This is made particularly jarring because, at it is presented, at least some of these expats are making an idealistic if misguided effort to emulate the local culture. Why don’t these individuals have at least the basics right after years in Cairo? Why are the racist remarks and the Orientalism not presented as oddities that these idealistic expats view with distaste, much like how those of us who actually live in Japan cringe at weeaboos?
Clark clearly wanted things both ways. He wanted Cairo to be his Wakanda, yet he also wanted to whine about ignorant colonizers.
And then he progresses to progresses from this to vengeful spite and hypocritical moments of outright racism.
Petty, Vengeful, Hypocritical
This book is one of those mysteries where we are actually shown the inciting incident, rather than arriving in its aftermath. Time is taken to characterize the member of the brotherhood that the imposter murders. In short, we are told that they are ignorant and racist, dressing up in Orientalist trappings for their own self-indulgence rather than any genuine interest in the local culture. When the imposter arrives, the most racist of the brotherhood’s members gets his neck snapped, while the rest are burned alive.
On a first read, something about this felt off to me. It felt mean-spirited. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Clark was enjoying hurting these people.
This is something I was fully prepared to write off. Perhaps modern Hollywood has left me overly sensitive about these things. Nowhere is it written that we must like the victims of a murder - many mysteries feature the murders of outright criminals, with the law enforcement compelled by duty to uphold the law despite feeling that the world is better off with said criminals being dead. Perhaps there will be a good reason given for why Clark felt it so important to tell us that these were bad people, why it seems like we’re supposed to think they deserve their fate.
Except, no. That never comes.
Then we get hit with the contradictory information on colonialism that was covered above. It feels almost as those Clark is demonizing Europeans for wanting to embrace other cultures. Ignoring all the contradictions for a moment, we are meant to cringe at how badly these Europeans fail in their efforts and be relieved when they stop trying to be anything but Europeans.
Halfway through the book, Clark delivers a line that really ties everything together. There is a scene where Fatma attends a formal event. Those idealistic expats are also in attendance. This is how Clark reintroduces one of those expats.
Fatma turned to find a tall woman striding toward her. Abigail Worthington - who’d thankfully decided to not make a mockery of local customs. She wore a rose-colored evening gown that flowed with the airy feel of chiffon and satin.
So … in other words … after demonizing the Europeans for not understanding Egyptian culture, implying that this represents prejudice and arrogance … after mocking this specific individual for her poor grasp of the Arabic language and her failed efforts to wear Arabic clothing … Fatma notes that it’s a good thing that said European is dressing like … her own kind.
That’s … well, frankly, it’s racist.
Lest you think I’m reading too much into things, this is an idea isn’t limited to this one book. Remember how I mentioned skimming through A Dead Djinn in Cairo? It is there that we get Fatma’s explanation for why she wears suits.
Fatma closed the watch, tucking it away and sitting back. “When I was in school in Luxor I would see these photographs of Englishmen and Frenchmen who visited Egypt, before the djinn came. Mostly they were in suits. But sometimes they’d put on a jallabiya and headscarf. I found out they called it ‘going native.’ To look exotic, they said.”
“Did they?” Aasim cut in.
“Did they what?”
“Look exotic.”
“No. Just ridiculous.”
Aasim snickered.
“Anyway, when I bought my first suit, the English tailor asked me why I wanted it. I told him I wanted to look exotic.”
Aasim gaped at her for a moment before erupted into barking laughter. Fatma smiled. That story worked every time.
In other words … our main character’s most defining trait is an act of petty, hypocritical payback against people who explicitly lived before Cairo became a great power … people we are meant to find ignorant and racist … and we are meant to think this pettiness, this hatred of a past generation being used to mock their descendants, is a good thing.
Meaning that, if one does do the required reading, then there is no ambiguity. Fatma is a “bigot” (to use her own words). In her eyes, it is not acceptable for the white man (or woman) to try to emulate the culture of her elite group, but emulating the white people purely to mock them IS acceptable.
There is nothing objectively wrong with having the main character be racist. It could be a flaw to overcome. It could even be a flaw that is not overcome, merely coloring in the character in a way that we aren’t meant to celebrate, merely acknowledge. There’s likewise nothing wrong with a character being a hypocrite.
However, when one is using “bigotry” as a line to segregate … I mean, separate the enlightened, diverse, cosmopolitan Cairenes from the ignorant, intolerant outsiders, this sort of hypocrisy destroys characterization and warps narratives.
The Takeaway
Themes are not the enemy of good writing. They are a treasure. However, those themes must not sabotage the integrity of a story, nor should they be so hypocritically presented as to invalidate their own message. Make the effort to integrate your themes in a natural way that is relevant to and strengthens the story being told.
ACTION
The chief flaw with the action in The Empyrean is that Yarros constantly toggles variables on and off the milk emotion and tension without having the bear the associated costs. She also contrives the scenarios in which these fights take place. The actual choreography of the fights is not terrible. It’s not The Shadow of the Gods-tier, but you at least understand what’s happening at any given moment.
A Master of Djinn does not have choreography. It toggles variables even more frantically. The contrivances are so extreme that at least one fight scene is completely pointless. As a result, scenes that are likely intended to be epic and engaging set pieces are meaningless and dull noise, wherein the audience watches action figures smash together and waits for Clark to tell them who won.
The action was another of the variables that tipped me off to Clark’s lack of experience. The Stardust Thief lacked in choreography, too, but outside of the final battle, it was at least clear what was happening and what the stakes were at any given moment. Here, every single clash is like that final battle. It reminds me of a handful of action scenes that I’ve beta-read in first drafts written by writers half Clark’s age, individuals who are only starting their writing journey and thus have not yet honed their skills, where the action is little more than, “And then they fight,” with colorful vocabulary stapled onto it.
You Go, Girl
While Clark does ignore the physical differences between men and women in his fight scenes, I don’t think that this harms the action. He doesn’t emphasize the advantages of masculinity to ramp up the tension before ignoring the comparative disadvantage for his action girls. He also grants his action girls force equalizers to mitigate any disparities: Fatma has a sword concealed in her cane, Hadia is an expert martial artist, Siti has power from the Egyptian gods (we’ll double back to this in Worldbuilding), and guns are a thing. Maybe if the choreography was better, I’d have something to criticize here. As it is, I don’t find it jarring that these women aren’t getting curb-stomped by every monster, djinn, or male human opponent they encounter.
That’s not to say that the feminism theme doesn’t hurt the action at all. In order to make the women look better by comparison, Clark will often have them be accompanied by men who are grossly incompetent. These men might have terrible aim, be easily bulldozed aside and knocked out in the opening seconds of the fight, or simply be easy prey for an open-handed slap to the face when they are supposedly on alert. It is to the point that, in one scene where a pair of male agents volunteer to assist Fatma against the imposter, I knew immediately that they would be useless. (These are the two who were bulldozed over, mere pages later.)
Completely Pointless
The first fight scene of this book is arguably the worst, due in no small part to the fact that it is tacked on.
In Chapter 7, Fatma and Siti attend a rally being hosted by the imposter. He’s riling up the people with rhetoric about class inequality. Then, he looks into the crowd, spots Fatma, and for no reason at all, orders his henchman (something called an ash-ghul) to attack her. This henchman charges into the crowd. Fatma defends herself before stabbing the ash-ghul through the chest, only to discover that it doesn’t bleed. Then, for no reason at all, the imposter calls off the henchman and flees. Siti tries to pursue, but the imposter conjures up a wall of fire to dissuade her.
No one is hurt. No one is killed. No one is captured. In short, nothing happens that could move the narrative forward.
What, then, was the purpose of this fight? What did Fatma do to prompt the attack? Why, after ordering the ash-ghul to attack, did the imposter call it off before Fatma was maimed or killed? If he recognizes Fatma as a threat, doesn’t want to kill her, and plans to retreat anyway, why not open with the retreat and the wall of fire?
Clark tries to justify this ridiculous situation by having a character say, “I think their intent was to send you a message, nothing more.” The issue is that this message was literally spelled out by the wall of fire.
The brick was scorched, but in some places the stone had remained untouched, leaving script written from top to bottom.
“Okay,” Siti admitted. “That’s a message.”
As Fatma read the words, she felt her teeth clench along with her stomach:
BEHOLD, I AM AL-JAHIZ.
AND I HAVE RETURNED.
What part of this necessitated attacking Fatma, who was in a middle of a crowd of people the imposter was trying to win over? Sending the message was independent of the combat. All the imposter had to do was exit stage right and ignite the message as a flashy exit.
And what was the point of the message, anyway? The imposter was hosting a rally. The crowd was already saying that he was al-Jahiz. Why bother with burning the message into a wall when he could simply shout, “Behold, I am al-Jahiz, and I have returned!” and then use the pyrotechnics for a flashy exit?
Weightlessness
What makes the action all the more frustrating is that nothing matters. To provide a brief list of examples.
Oh, no! Fatma is trapped in a crowd or in the midst of a riot? It’s okay. Everyone conveniently gets out of the way so that she can fight her current opponent without any obstructions, and no one gets in the way when she chases after the imposter.
Oh, no! Siti has been injured? It’s okay. She’ll be fully healed by her next scene.
Oh, no! Monsters have overrun the building, and a bomb is going off? It’s okay. No one dies.
Oh, no! A great horde of djinn is about to overwhelm out heroes? It’s okay. The mind control magic strong enough to summon all these djinn and force them to attack suddenly makes them so clumsy and weak that they can be battered aside with ease.
Again and again this happens. Clark will establish something to generate stakes and tension and then remove that variable the instant that there would be actual consequences. This gets so bad in the climax that he has Siti hacked apart of his book’s version of Balrogs on one page, only for Fatma to jump to the illogical conclusion that she can hand Siti a Hyper Potion (and be right about that ridiculous conclusion) and restore Siti to full health on the next page.
Obligation
I can’t help but wonder if Clark isn’t actually interested in writing action.
That’s not to say that I think these scenes were a last-minute addition (outside of maybe that first one). I’m certain that they were part of whatever outlines he prepared while writing this book. It just feels as though Clark only included action scenes because he thought that a Fantasy had to have action, must in the same way that the final battle in The Stardust Thief felt like an oligation.
The lack of choreography and consequences is only a small part of this. It’s the pacing of the book that really clued me in. The action scenes occur in the following chapters:
Chapter 7
Chapter 11
Chapter 15
Chapter 18
Chapters 25 through 29 are one extended sequence of action scenes
There’s a regularity to how the first four of these action scenes are spaced out. It’s almost as though they’re being use to anchor the story. When one then considers that everything prior to Chapter 7 is Act One introductions and setup and that the bulk of the actual detective work happens from Chapters 19 through 24, this book’s narrative structure feels very formulaic.
It would not surprise me if Clark was working off of a template when outlining his plot. Perhaps he didn’t trust his mystery to keep the audience engaged, or perhaps his beta-readers outright told him that they wanted more action. Whatever the reason, it feels like he chose a template with regularly positioned action scenes, warped his mystery around it, and then plugged in the fights.
The Takeaway
Back in the Iron Flame review, I pointed out how comparing pornography to action scenes does not redeem pornography, given that action scenes can be just as pointless as pornography if mishandled. I feel like the action in A Master of Djinn is a good example of this. If one must include action in a story, it needs to make sense (both in terms of the audience’s ability to follow it and its occurrence within the story) and have consequence. Otherwise, one is better off finding other means to make a story engaging for the audience.
PROSE
Google Translate
One of the elements that we’ll get into with the Worldbuilding is that Clark does a good job at developing an immersive environment for the readers. The prose is an important contributing factor here. The narrative voice is rich with words and concepts that help to transport the reader into the Middle East. By keeping these elements in their original languages (I assume most of it is Arabic, but I could well be wrong about that) rather than translating everything into English analogs, Clark maintains the identity of the region.
That being said, much as was the case in Hostage of the Empire, there can be too much of a good thing.
So much is kept in the original languages that it’s very hard for someone not from this region to properly picture things, and Clark doesn’t spare time to give adequate descriptions. The burden is on the audience to muddle through with context clues. Sometimes, Clark does this with things that have names in English, names that are already identified with the region, and yet won’t even reference the English name to help the audience understand. He effectively obscures information from the audience for no practical benefit.
For example, how many of you can picture what a fez is? Now, how many of you can picture a tarboosh? I spent this entire book wondering what type of hat a tarboosh was supposed to be, only to look it up in the course of writing this review and think, “It’s a fez? Why didn’t Clark just call it a fez?”
Thematically, this refusal to translate or describe things is a wasted opportunity. Clark could have used the difference in names to educate the audience in a subtle way. For example, one of those European expats could have called a tarboosh a “fez”, only for Fatma to correct them. There was such rich opportunity to actually share Middle Eastern culture with the audience. Instead, Clark locks everything behind a language barrier.
Ironically enough, by taking things this far, I think that Clark is sustaining the very misunderstanding and Orientalism that his narrative condemns. He is presenting people with an alluring and desirable world and then veiling it in mystery, rather than sharing the knowledge needed to demystify it. People are inevitably going to draw their own conclusions or look to less reliable sources for answers.
Whedonism
Fatma is the POV character for every chapter except Chapter 1. The narrative voice for the bulk of this book is therefore also a strong reflection of her character. The problem is that, in his effort to make Fatma a likeable protagonist, Clark makes a mistake that I see far too many amateur writers make: he attempts to emulate Whedonism.
“Whedonism” is a reference to the comedic stylings of Joss Whedon. Many of his works, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the first Avengers film, will juggle drama and comedy within the same scene. At his best, this produces a scenario where the comedic element blends naturally with the scenario, bleeding off tension when necessary to keep a serious scene from hitting the audience harder than desired. MauLer did an excellent analysis of this as part of his commentary of the humor in The Force Awakens (which you can find here).
The thing about Whedonism is that it is risky to juggle tones that way. Not even Joss Whedon got this right all the time. Too often, efforts to emulate it devolve into the humor seen in the modern MCU, where jokes and quirkiness actively clash with any efforts to take the material seriously.
The reason I explain all of this is that there is a pervasive sense that Clark is trying to making make Fatma seem quirky and clever. While a lot of this comes down to what Fatma says and does, it often appears in the narrative as well. Sometimes this comes down to comments, like that aside we covered earlier about how it’s good for the Europeans to wear their own culture’s clothing. Other times, he will use exclamation points outside of dialogue to inject energy. Not only do these efforts not work, but they actively damage immersion. You can feel the narrator pausing and looking at the audience, expecting us to laugh or gasp on cue.
This problem isn’t entirely confined to Fatma. Dialogue from other characters also has this problems. There’s a policeman who helps out Fatma throughout the story keeps referring to the imposter as a “villain.” By itself, I could somewhat understand this as a character quirk, yet the way he talks about this villain feels like Clark is lampshading his own story to wring out a laugh. There is also character named Ahmad whose recurring gag is that he is “creepy.” This is funny enough the first time, but when Clark insists on recycling the gag in what is meant to be a Darkest Hour scene, resulting in bathos that kills the tone.
The Whedonism is another element that makes this novel feel amateurish. Time and again, I have seen new writers make this mistake. Ultimately, when it is this obvious that the author wants to the audience to like a character or feel a jolt of levity, it has the opposite effect.
The Takeaway
Moderation is key when it comes to prose. There’s nothing wrong with using a non-English language to deepen a world, nor with juggling tone and injecting quirkiness into the text. The trick is to do these things in a manner that keeps the audience engaged and immersed.
The Meat of the Story
On May 31st, we will conclude this review of A Master of Djinn with the Plot, Worldbuilding, and Characters.
Most of the issues with these aspects of the story are extensions of the flaws that we’ve covered thus far, but there are two noteworthy issues that exist on their own. The fact that this novel is a sequel, yet is not marketed as such, cracks its foundation in multiple places. Our protagonist is also an example of something I didn’t think I’d ever take time to criticize in depth: she is a female character written by a male author who doesn’t seem to know how to write female characters.
It’s coming your way next week. I’ll see you all then. Have a good day.
