A Master of Djinn (Part 3)
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.
PLOT
Much of the problems with the plot of A Master of Djinn are really issues with the Theme and the Action. I’m going to try not to repeat myself, yet I do want to reframe and build upon the previous to understand why they have such a detrimental effect upon the story being told. If you don’t feel like you need the deeper breakdown, I will cover three issues that are disconnected from the Theme and Action first, and then you can skip to Worldbuilding after that.
Required Reading
For the first half of A Master of Djinn, the fact that it is a sequel to A Dead Djinn in Cairo is not an issue. It’s referenced in a way that gives both the world and Fatma’s character a sense of depth and history. At the absolute worst, there were moments where I thought, “Hmmm, was I supposed to have read this other story first?” or, “We’re really stretching the boundaries of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ here.” This was mitigated by the fact that the plot of A Master of Djinn wasn’t leaning on that past narrative.
Quick Catchup
As indicated back in Part 1, I have not read A Dead Djinn in Cairo (and have no intention to do so). I will instead provide you with the abbreviated version that Clark feeds to the audience within A Master of Djinn.
Prior to the events of this book, Fatma met Siti while investigating a case that led to an angel named Maker. (I haven’t mentioned the angels previously because their role within A Master of Djinn is so limited and it mostly entwined with this issue we are now discussing.) Maker was working on a device called the Clock of Worlds, which he used to open a portal to “some nether-realm” in a bid to wipe out humanity. Fatma and Siti closed the portal and killed Maker. The Clock was taken by Fatma’s ministry and sealed in a vault.
As backstory goes, that’s not too bad, is it? It shows that Fatma has experience. It hints at deeper layers of the world.
And that would have been fine, except that, in Chapter 15, nearly halfway through the bok, Clark turns to us and expects us to be emotionally invested in the events of A Dead Djinn in Cairo.
Unsupported Weight
As part of the action in Chapter 15, the imposter steals the Clock of Worlds, with the assumed intent of reassembling it. This terrifies Fatma. We are supposed to understand that this is a horrific thing.
I’m sure that someone who read A Dead Djinn in Cairo would immediately empathize with Fatma. All I could think was, “This backstory wasn’t enough. Why were we not SHOWN this thing earlier?”
I think, on some level, Clark knows that this wasn’t adequate. In the very next chapter, he rehashes Fatma’s backstory again, recycling previously established information with a few additional details. It’s an inadequate solution. This is a textbook example of why Show, Don’t Tell became conventional writing wisdom. Repeating, “It’s really bad, guys. You should be as scared as Fatma is,” is no substitute for demonstrating how bad the clock is and allowing us to experience that fear with Fatma. At this point, Clark might as well have introduced some brand new MacGuffin with no ties to any previous stories. It would have had the same results. (Arguably, it would have better results, as there would be no frustration from realizing that there was required reading when we were previously led to believe that there would be no required reading.)
But okay, fine. The Clock of Worlds is bad news. At least that’s the only thing we have to -
There Are Angels Now
The end of Chapter 21 makes the angels relevant to the story … more than halfway through the narrative. Chapter 22 has Fatma meet with said angels, bringing with her all the bad blood from dealing with Maker.
This is where the required reading really got annoying. A new faction has effectively been added to the story out of nowhere, and we are supposed to be onboard with Fatma having trauma that their mere presence provokes. Yes, the angels had been established as existing in this world, and yes, Fatma’s history with Maker was established, but the angels as a group were not connected to the plot. Their introduction radically shifts the stakes and calls into question what is and isn’t possible.
To fully express why this doesn’t work, consider The Prince of Egypt. The first half of that film presents us with a world that is utterly mundane. Yes, the Hebrews and the Egyptians both speak in fairly religious terms, but we aren’t shown any signs, miracles, or sorcery outside of Hotep and Huy making Zipporah appear at the banquet (and that’s at least implied to have been a parlor trick). When God shows up in the burning bush, it feels like a literal Deus ex Machina, fundamentally shifting the very nature of the story. However, this works for a simple reason: the entire premise of The Prince of Egypt is that it is the Exodus story. The target audience either knows the story already or is being shown the film by someone as a means to teach them that story. Even someone with zero understanding of the Abrahamic faiths will most likely understand that it is an adaptation of a religious text, so God showing up is really not that big of a shock. On top of all that, the idea that Moses will be the deliverer of his people is foreshadowed for the audience through Miriam’s faith that he will be the deliverer. Therefore, God showing up pays off the entire setup of the narrative.
A Master of Djinn does not establish that same foundation. There is no expectation that the angels will be relevant. No groundwork is laid to make them relevant. There is no emotional connection to them. Thus, unless you have read A Dead Djinn in Cairo, their sudden injection into this story is jarring.
Again, as with the Clock, Clark would have been better off making up some new faction that Fatma had no history with. It would have avoided this frustrating mess. Better yet, Clark could have used a faction that is already involved in the plot. For example, the temples of the ancient Egyptian gods are a faction that is introduced and then get barely any use in the story. They could have taken over the angels’ role in the plot.
Remember When?
Near the climax, Clark once again tries to wring emotional value out of A Dead Djinn in Cairo, this time to bolster Siti and Fatma’s relationship. We are explicitly told to see the climax of A Master of Djinn as a callback to that short story.
“You realize we’re both wearing the same thing from last time?” she asked. “When we went to confront that rogue angel. You had on that exact combination. I had on this.”
Fatma looked down to her suit - light grey, with a matching vest, chartreuse tie, and a red-on-white pin-striped shirt. She remembered now. Siti in the same brown boots, tan breeches, and kaftan. That was oddly coincidental.
As someone who did not read A Dead Djinn in Cairo first, this callback feels like a complete waste of time. I did not experience these events. I was led to believe, by the marketing of this very book, that I did not have to experience these events. I therefore don’t care when Siti stops to reference them. Frankly, given the scenario in which this takes place, this disconnect turns the callback into a baffling waste of time. The villain is about to win, Siti. Deal with the problem at hand before you grasp at straws.
Also, at the start of Chapter 26, Clark references A Dead Djinn in Cairo in a manner that sounds like an editing mistake.
Siti leaned casually on the odd bike, dressed in snug tan breeches and a short red kaftan for a top, with a familiar long rifle strapped to her back.
At no prior point in A Master of Djinn did Siti possess, handle, or fire a rifle. I can’t remember her touching any guns at all. She relied entirely on hand-to-hand and some Egyptian variant of neko-te claws. If you have not read A Dead Djinn in Cairo, then this line is nonsensical, as is Siti being a skilled sharpshooter with said weapon during the climax.
That’s Not All
A Dead Djinn in Cairo might not be the only story that Clark expected us to read before this book.
When Siti shows up to whisk Fatma to the climax, there is a strange reunion between her and some of the secondary characters.
“Alba?” Of all people, it was Hamed. His uniform had taken a beating. But he paid is no mind, instead starting at Siti. Wait. Had he just called her by name?
“Agent Hamed,” Siti greeted amiably.
He returned a bemused half smile. “How o you know Abla?”
Fatma’s eyebrows rose. “How do you know Abla?”
Before she could get an answer, Onsi sauntered up, beaming good naturedly - as if an entire house hadn’t just collapsed on them - with a string of greetings to Siti. Fatma started in bewilderment.
“Abla helped us with a case this past summer,” Hamed explained.
“She helped you with a case?” Fatma repeated.
Siti shurgged. “Just gave some advice. There was a problem with a haunted - what was it? A bus? Trolley?”
“Tram car,” Fatma, Hamed, and Onsi repeated as one.
“Yeah, that.”
“Never got a chance to thank you properly,” Hamed said. “When I returned to Makka’s you were gone. What are you doing here?”
Siti looked on the verge of saying something clever, but Fatma had heard enough.
This can’t be the same case as A Dead Djinn in Cairo, as Fatma would have known if her fellow agents were involved in a case she was working on. (A basic awareness of recent cases would also allow her to know about the tram car without being involved herself.) Additionally, a quick keyword search shows that Makka’s, a restaurant that appears in A Master of Djinn, is not referenced in A Dead Djinn in Cairo.
At best, Clark is trying to add depth to the world by implying history between Siti and tertiary characters, doing so at a moment that disrupts the tone of the scene. At worst, there is another story out there that was required reading, and this one isn’t packaged with the novel.
Concerning Sequels
To be clear: there is nothing wrong with a book being a sequel.
The problem is when a book is marketed as a standalone novel when it absolutely needs the support of one or more prior stories.
I feel like Clark should have just rewritten A Dead Djinn in Cairo to serve as an extended prologue for A Master of Djinn. The short story is only 33 pages, where the novel is currently 345 pages. Trimming a little fat from both works would allow them to be consolidated without causing bloat. This would have eliminated the required reading issue by giving us all of the necessary information within a single narrative.
Mystery into Catastrophe (Heavy Spoilers)
As touched upon earlier, the mystery element of this book is functional, especially if one approaches it as a police procedural rather than a thriller. There is a crime. Fatma interviews people and searches for clues. Conclusions are drawn, and twists are revealed.
The climax, though, is from another genre entirely.
Suddenly, instead of solving the mystery of this imposter claiming to be al-Jahiz, Fatma and Siti are racing to stop a towering djinn-mech with the Clock of Worlds installed in its chest. And then these giant fire monsters called the Ifrit Lords show up. And then all the djinn in Cairo do battle with the Ifrit Lords. And then a giant water mech arrives to fight the Ifrit King. And then -
The story completely jumps the rails. We are no longer following Fatma as she does detective work and battles against magical criminals. We are bouncing along through a chaotic mess of toys being rammed together by an overenergetic seven-year-old. It is ever bit as incoherent as the back half of Fourth Wing, only this time, the chaos is condensed into a mere 44 pages.
This sort of shift, from mystery to world-ending action, is not impossible to pull off, but it requires either gradual buildup, something to ground the more over-the-top events, or (preferably) both. There also needs to be a clear sense of cause and effect. As it is, this book ceases to be story sold to us in the premise and stops making sense in general, all in the name of a flashy final battle that is ultimately ended through Deux Ex Machina.
Let’s Talk It Out (Heavy Spoilers)
During the chaos of the climax, there is a rather bizarre sequence.
Between the Ifrit Lords arriving and the Cairene djinn battling them, there is a scene where a growing number of djinn refuse to bow to the Ifrit Lords. This sets off a cascade of dissent that leads to the battle. The mere concept of this scene is cliché, but in execution is insufferable. It is incredibly drawn-out. It features moments such as:
Immortal Ifrit Lords needing the words “philosophy” and “pacifist” explained to them.
A djinn stunning the Ifrit Lords speechless by explaining how she’s an artist.
Other djinn chiming in to praise this djinn’s artwork.
I was dumbfounded as I read this. The climax had screeched to a halt just so that the djinn could take a long time to explain, “No, thanks, Ifrit Lords, we don’t want to conquer the world with you.” I was legitimately worried for a second that the book would end on this moment of bathos. When the Ifrit Lords got fed up and lashed out at the djinn, setting off the battle, it was a relief, yet I then found myself wondering what the point of that baffling display was. Had the djinn collectively refused to bow in the first place, and immediately broken into the, “We will not be slaves!” chant that ends this bizarre sequence, then we would have skipped multiple pages without anything being lost.
There’s nothing wrong with resolving a story with people talking things out, but it actually needs to fit the story being told. The same applies to false resolution. Clark chose to develop this story as one where action drives the plot forward, and he build up this climax as an epic action showdown. To even suggest that it would end on such a bland note just saps the energy from the story.
Formula and (the Absence of) Consequence
The handling of the action in this book actively saps investment in the story being told.
I think that this story could have worked just fine without the action. Police procedurals can go entire episodes with little or no action, putting the emphasis instead on the mystery and the human drama. Off the top of my head, the only action in NCIS Season 2 Episode 4, “Lt. Jane Doe” (the one that subtly engaged with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell) was Tony spilling coffee on himself.
If, however, a story is going to have action - is going to have fights, is going to have peril, is going to show us destruction and threaten us with mass loss of life - then it needs to follow through on it, and the action needs to make sense.
Because the action in A Master of Djinn was so arbitrary, because obstacles and consequences alike were swatted aside so casually, investment in the text erodes swiftly. When the action scene in Chapter 15 started, I wasn’t swept up in the peril; my reaction was, “Oh. I guess it’s time for action to happen again.” When no one died in the aftermath of that scene (which involved blowing up a building with people still inside said building), my reaction evolved into, “What was the point of any of this? Do I really need to be here?”
If Clark didn’t want to have to deal with the consequences of action scenes or to abide by the restrictions he set down to govern the action, then he should have just cut the action altogether. Dragging the audience through a formula where nothing even matters just results in time wasted.
Not A Twist (Heavy Spoilers)
Clark’s handling of theme mangles an otherwise serviceable story.
He laid out all the pieces for a mystery with a satisfying resolution. He made his red herring believable, and he put all the clues in place for the last-minute reveal of the true culprit to make sense. The twist reveal could have been satisfying.
Instead, Clark chose to prioritize theme over all else, and he did so in such an incredibly unsubtle way that ruined his twist. Of course the true imposter was going to be a woman, not a man. That’s the only logical conclusion when the narrative bends over backwards to punch men down so that woman look better by comparison.
What I didn’t mention back while talking about Themes is that Clark also all but screams this twist at us. What’s worse, he does so between the declaration of the obvious red herring and the reveal of the true imposter, thereby going out of his way to ruin the twist at the last second.
One of the cryptic clues that Fatma was given to look into by a witness in the case is The Tale of Lady Dhat al-Himma. She does not know this story, but as she and her fellow agents of law enforcement are headed to arrest the red herring, a fellow agent summarizes it for her. The relevant bit is that a queen disguises herself as a man so that she can punish her son’s hubris by defeating her in battle. There’s no subtlety to this. Clark might as well have screamed, “HEY! I’M ABOUT TO SUBVERT THE EXPECTATIONS THAT I’M SURE YOU STILL SOMEHOW HAVE!”
A Master of Djinn is a great example of how the themes prioritized in mainstream entertainment media have become shackles for creativity and originality. If your themes become so loud that they eclipse the actual plot, then the number of directions in which the plot can do diminishes. Otherwise functional plots and foreshadowing become anvils to the head of the readers, disrupting the reader experience.
WORLDBUILDING
The worldbuilding of A Master of Djinn is its strongest aspect. Ignoring for a moment the preferences of the publishing industry, I’m willing to bet that this is the reason that the book was published, despite its myriad flaws in other aspects. It’s not perfect, mind. We’ve already touched upon the modernity of the supposedly historical time period and how the prose unnecessarily mystifies things. However, unlike with the plot, I don’t think the worldbuilding suffers enough from these issues to necessitate that we revisit them. We can focus on celebrating what actually works.
Time and Place
This alternate version of 1912 Cairo is more than a rising superpower. It is a crossroads of the world - both in the sense of different cultures of the mundane world meeting and in that it is a bottleneck through which the magical flows into the mundane world. I can’t comment on authenticity for the mundane aspects, but I can confirm that Clark convincingly sells us on the idea that many different cultures are mingling together.
While the immersion runs so deep as to be mystifying, Clark does deviate from it when necessary to feed critical information to the audience, and he usually does so in a manner that is justified within the narrative. The Tale of Lady Dhat al-Himma may have further damaged the twist, yet at least he didn’t assume we already knew it - he had it come up as a clue that Fatma needed to investigate, and since she herself wasn’t familiar with the story, she asked a colleague to look into it and give her the Cliffnotes. There are also a few points where Clark pauses to provide summaries of historical events that would be necessary to understanding who al-Jahiz (and, by extension, the imposter) is, events which conveniently lay the real-world groundwork to understand what Egypt was like prior to the point of divergence from our own history. This world’s culture may be so inaccessible as to contradict the themes, but you will at least understand the geopolitics that make the story possible.
Djinn
Within this setting, the djinn (who, despite calling humans “mortals”, are not immortal, just long-lived) are a race that can assume many fantastical forms. Most are presented as being humanoid, with diverse sizes and exotic heads (animals or extra eyes being common), though a few with stranger body plans or composed of the elements are mentioned. They have mostly integrated with Cairene society, and their magic and engineering have allowed Egypt to gain its independence and accumulate immense power, wealth, and influence.
Much like The City of Brass, Clark does explore the idea of djinn granting wishes, operating on similar principles. The djinn do not have magic designed to grant wishes; rather, they have magic that they use as they please, and stories of wishes granted to mortals refer to cases where a djinn used magic on a mortal’s behalf. The one except to this is the legendary Seal of Sulayman, an item that can bend the djinn to the will of a human wielder.
Angels
The angels are presented as manifestations (or, perhaps more accurately, definitions) of certain ideas. They occupy elaborate mechanical bodies and enact powerful works of magic bound by contracts, two factors that together gave me strong vibes of the Inevitables from Dungeons & Dragons. Their magic outstrips that of the djinn, and it is implied to be linked to “silent partners” from another reality, ones whom the angels aren’t keen to talk about.
While I don’t think the inclusion of the angels was good from a plot perspective, I think they are useful for the worldbuilding. With how the djinn and their magic have integrated into the mundane Cairo, it is easy to forget that all the mystical powers in play are, in fact, mystical powers from another world. The angels preserve a sense of otherness. They not only remind the audience that there is far more to this setting than just the worlds of humans the djinn but also leave the door open for new types of stories that deal with them and their magic more directly.
Ancient Egyptian Gods
Clark appears to be going for a, “All the gods are real,” approach with this setting, as the Egyptian gods do appear to exist in this world. There is a small yet growing religious movement within Cairo of people who worship this pantheon, believing that the Egyptian gods are entombed within the desert and will rise when enough people worship them again. These deities are very real, as their adherents, including Siti, draw magical power from them. A character named Ahmad, a priest of Sobek, even experiences physical changes as he gives himself over more and more to his god, resulting in his transformation into an increasingly crocodilian form.
My opinion on the Egyptian gods and their followers within this setting is somewhat of an inversion of my opinion on the angels. As mentioned before, I feel like they should have played a larger role within the story. Clark takes the time to set them up as an important faction, then he only uses them to explain Ahmad’s physical transformation and to hand-wave away any consequences from the action scenes. The angels displace their importance within the narrative. At the same time, I don’t think that the Egyptian gods broaden the setting or open up new possibilities for stories. When a setting has an “All the stories are true” vibe, with a Goblin Court in Germany, Fae in France, daevas in Persia, and rumors of dragons in multiple locations, then the reveal that mummified gods are entombed in the Egyptian desert just sort of fades into the background.
CHARACTER
While there are certainly many characters in A Master of Djinn, very few are worth discussing. The poor handling of themes squashes the nuance out of almost all of them. Four remain that have anything resembling depth. Let’s go over them in order of decreasing relevant to the narrative - which, as it turns out, is also my personal ranking of worst to best.
Fatma el-Sha’arawi
Fatma is a bland, self-insert Mary Sue whose personality begins with her wardrobe and ends with whining about men. She is validated constantly for her specialness, never called out for her many deviations from her culture (a culture that, by the rules set within this very book, is perfectly happy to call people out for deviating from the accepted norms), and ultimately saves the day with her inherent goodness.
Given that this book is written primarily in Fatma’s POV, I really should have more to say about this character, but there’s very little to her outside of the flaws in her execution. We’ve already covered how:
This character doesn’t fit within this setting.
The Whedonistic attempts to make her likeable are ultimately grating.
There are no stakes or consequences to invest us in her well-being.
Her status as a hypocritical racist is never challenged or even acknowledged in a story that is supposedly preaching about how bad racism is.
There are only two things left worth exploring: how her Sue status breaks the finale and how she is very clearly a man with breasts.
Seal of Sue-layman (Heavy Spoilers)
Remember how I said earlier that the incoherent climax is resolved with a Deus Ex Machina?
Fatma is the one who executes that Deus Ex Machina. This is ultimately the factor that convinced me that she is a Mary Sue, rather than merely a very bland self-insert character who gets a lot of validation.
In the midst of that incoherent climax, the only way to stop the Ifrit Lords is to use the Seal of Sulayman. The problem? It can only be used by a person of indomitable will, and it will also corrupt anyone who gives into personal temptation over the power it wields, necessitating that the heart of the user be pure.
Fatma just … is … that perfect person to use it. There’s no arc that builds up to this, not even one of those superficial arcs about insecurity that the writers of self-insert Mary Sue use to pretend that said character has flaws. It’s just, “Oh, we need someone to wield the ring. Fatma, you’ve got this, right?” and she does. She immediately accesses its full power, forces the Ifrit Lords to go back to their own dimension, and then shrugs off all temptations, giving up the Seal without any hesitation.
What a waste of the audience’s time.
Written as a Man
I feel like the issue of men not being able to write women and women not being able to write men is something that gets overblown in our modern era. It does exist. Examples of the problem are not hard to find. I just feel like the propagation of those examples through social media has made the problem seem more pervasive and intense than it actually is.
It is for this reason that I’ve barely commented on the issue in past reviews. For the most part, as well-written character is a well-written character. Differences exist between men and women, and that is going to affect an author’s ability to write about the opposite sex, but in the majority of scenarios, this isn’t going to be a noticeable issue. There’s good reason why the examples we see of such writing done badly are sexual in nature: sexuality is one of those few scenarios where the issue becomes obvious (as was the case for both Siyon and Anden). However, even in this aspect of writing, it’s very possible to maneuver around any elements that would make the character feel off.
Fatma is a special case. It is very clear that Clark wrote her with one or both of the following mindsets:
She was conceived and written as a man back in A Dead Djinn in Cairo, only to be changed to a woman at the last minute, and then Clark didn’t bother to rework her characterization when he got around to writing a full novel about her.
Clark assumed that homosexuality turns a woman into a man.
I was first tipped off to this by Fatma’s state of dress. By the standards of her time, her suits should be undeniably male clothing. Her lack of head covering (the bowler hat doesn’t count, as she takes it off in public) should also put her in violation of the standards of dress for a predominant religion of her city, a religion which Clark takes pains to tell us is intolerant of other religious groups and oppressive towards women. Simply pointing out that Fatma has a boyish appearance does not address this, as any time we are shown someone being put off-balance by her appearance, they recover and acknowledge her as a woman a moment later. Why, then, does no one comment upon this obvious deviation from enforced standards?
There is also the matter of Fatma being in a homosexual relationship with another woman. Why does this story never acknowledge that homosexuality is, mildly put, frowned upon by the predominant religion of Fatma’s city, a religion which Clark takes pains to tell us is intolerant of other religious groups and oppressive towards women?
The prose doubles down on this. Fatma reads like a man with low testosterone - not a masculine woman, not even a feminine man, just a man devoid of masculinity. This is most evident in her interactions with Siti. Their entire romance (which we will discuss in a moment, when we get to Siti) reads like the relationship between a rather soft man and a tough, badass temptress. The feminism angle of the story also lets this slip. Whenever Fatma and Hadia discuss feminism (or, indeed, whenever any female character complains about men), it feels very mechanical. I found myself wondering if Clark just transcribed stereotypes about women and feminism, rather than actually thinking about how real women in such an era would think and act.
Change Fatma to a man, and the above issues are instantly resolved.
Why does no one comment upon the fact that Agent el-Sha’arawi wears Western suits? Well, we agree that his obsession with foreign fashion is a bit odd, but it’s not like he is dressing inappropriately. Besides, he does it to be racist towards our former colonizers, so we won’t get in his way.
Agent el-Sha’arawi is in a relationship with an idolater of the old Egyptian gods? Yes, the idolatry is our only issue with this. What else is there for us to complain about?
Agent el-Sha’arawi exhibits a sycophantic self-hatred of his existence as a man and believes women should rule the world? Well, he has been assigned to baby-sit our diversity hire. I’m sure he’s saying whatever he must to avoid being dragged to HR.
Clark has copied Disney’s playbook of feminism. This book pretends to elevate female characters, but even its self-insert Mary Sue is really a male character wearing only the skin of a female character.
Now, I do have a personal reason for grinding away at this aspect of the analysis for so long. I happen to know Fatma. I know two Fatmas: a couple of homosexual women with boyish aspects who served their government with distinction and broke glass ceilings. At no point, in decades of interactions, have I ever seen any hint that they think or act like Fatma. They aren’t men with breasts - they are undeniably feminine, even in aspects of their behavior that might superficially sound masculine. I also can’t recall them ever spouting such weak talking points on feminism or hating on men in general, despite the fact that they actually would have had to deal with the obstacles that are so limply preached about in this book. Compared to them, the idea that Clark’s self-insert Mary Sue is a woman is, at best, absurd.
Siti
Siti is the action-girl love interest. She is a temptress who wears provocative outfits, slings about innuendos, and is very sexually assertive. She always manages to show up just in time for a fight, regardless of the distance or difficulty involved in making it to the location in question.
Much like with Fatma, there’s not much to go on with Siti. The reason I like her more than Fatma has less to do with the quality of her writing and more with how she is used. She’s not the POV character. We aren’t bombarded by efforts to make her seem clever or likeable. We also aren’t being asked to accept an obviously male character as a woman. Clark at least thought of Siti as a woman.
A part of me wonders if the reason why Siti is better-written than Fatma is that Clark wasn’t actually trying to make her likeable. She’s ultimately just a doll that Clark’s self-insert Mary Sue to kiss. This sort of character doesn’t need to be likeable - she needs to be desirable, which is a much easier task. I think Clark is successful in that regard. I can understand why Fatma (who is, again, just a man with breasts) wants Siti. Thus, while Siti herself provides no reason for me to get invested in her, Fatma’s desire for her at least translates well enough for me to not want Siti to die.
Unfortunately, this last part backfires. Siti is the main recipient of the story’s lack of consequences. Whenever Clark needs a character to be hurt in an action scene, it is Siti. By the next time she appears, she is back to full health, regardless of how little time has passed. It quickly erodes any investment that Fatma’s desire might have build up. Nothing is left by the climax. By that point, it is obvious that Clark will not let anything happen to Siti, so why should we care if the in-world equivalent of Balrogs are using her as a scratching post?
The Relationship
All right, now that we’ve covered Fatma and Siti, what does this relationship contribute to the narrative? Let’s ignore that fact it doesn’t fit the setting and is likely the author’s personal fetish material. What value does it add?
Almost none.
The folding of romance subplots into non-romance works is nothing new. It is often used to help build investment in the characters involved in the romance. However, I don’t think it is successful in this instance, as there is no actual conflict to drive the subplot.
Externally, there is nothing threatening this relationship. Everyone is supportive of homosexuality. Everyone is supportive of the interreligious relationship (despite the fact Clark wants us to believe that religious intolerance exists in this setting). The fact that Siti operates outside of the law, while Fatma is an agent of the law, is glossed over. We can’t even worry that either Fatma or Siti will die during the consequence-free action scenes.
Internally, it’s the same situation. The fact that religious differences could split these two apart is paid mere lip service. There is a one very brief argument between the pair early in the book, which is immediately followed by them grinning about how they just cleared a relationship milestone (their first fight) and agreeing to have a make-up date that evening. Much later in the book, there’s a brief Liar Revealed moment, but it’s immediately forgiven.
I think it was Ya Boi Zack (from Comics MATTER w/Ya Boi Zack) who pointed out that writers of homosexuality in modern Marvel and DC comics are afraid to show any challenges in homosexual relationships. Every side character is supportive, even when that violently clashes with established character motivations, and there is no genuine strife within the relationships. External threats exist for messaging purposes and are easily overcome. Reading this book, I got the same sense. Clark paid lip service to conflict and danger, but he refused to commit to anything real. The result is a relationship that gives the audience no real reason to get invested in its outcome.
Hadia Abdel Hafez
Hadia is the plucky young partner whom is foisted upon Fatma, who prefers to work alone, by their ministry. (This assignment plays into the feminism theme - Hadia acknowledged within the story itself to be a diversity hire, part of an effort to rush more female agents into service.) She had four discernable character traits.
She is the dedicated, hard-working, bookish member of the duo.
She is an example of traditional Muslim values, serving as a foil to Fatma.
She is a feminist activist.
She will drop the second trait whenever it would bring her into conflict with Clark’s self-insert Mary Sue.
I do like Hadia. There is an earnestness to her. What’s more, out of all of the characters in this book, she is the only one whose spouting of feminist talking points doesn’t feel stereotypical (even if the arguments aren’t anything original). We learn early on that Hadia is a member of a feminist organization, trying to preserve the momentum gained by women gained the right to vote (which, much like independence from the British, came to Egypt much earlier within this timeline). It makes sense that she would feel passionate about this.
My issue with Hadia is that there is very little to her outside of being a supporting character. The closest she comes to having conflict is when she blows up at Fatma for not supporting a fellow member of the Sisterhood against the Patriarchy. This resolves immediately, after which, she just follows Fatma around and gives Fatma someone to talk to. There is also the matter of that last trait. If any character in this book should have criticized Fatma’s attire and should have objected to homosexuality, it should have been Hadia, yet she lampshades the mere idea of asking about Fatma’s suits, and she is openly supportive of Fatma’s relationship to Siti once she figures out that they’re a couple.
I can’t help but wonder how much better this book would be if Hadia actually called Fatma out for deviating from traditional values. There’s so much rich opportunity to explore characters and the world there. I also can’t help but wonder how much better this book would be if it were told from Hadia’s POV. Until Fatma, she has a personality. Between her complaints about being oppressed by the Patriarchy during her training and the many references to her extended family, I also feel like there’s generally more interesting material to explore there than in Fatma’s relationship with Siti.
Ahmad
This is my favorite character in the book, yet he’s also one of the least relevant characters in terms of the plot (falling far behind not only the characters mentioned here but also many who weren’t).
As mentioned previously, Ahmad is a priest of Sobek. His involvement with the story comes from his relationship to the murder in the inciting incident: one of the members of the brotherhood, the only woman, was Ahmad’s lover (or, at least, he was love with her). He surfaces multiple times throughout the text, revealing himself in a “creepy” manner each time before delivering information or advice to help more the plot alone. He then shows up in the climax to attack the imposter. In each appearance, he becomes more crocodilian, giving more of himself over to Sobek.
Ahmad is almost completely unnecessary to this story. I feel like Clark had the idea of this crocodile-man attacking the imposter in the climax and forced him into the rest of the story so that there would be some emotional weight to that engagement. I applaud this conceptually, yet the utilitarian nature of things shouldn’t be this apparent.
And yet, he is my favorite.
The thing about Ahmad is that he is the most sympathetic and endearing character in this book. He lost the woman he loved and is desperate to take revenge, doing everything he can to help Fatma bring down his target. Given that the woman in question got barely any dialogue, and was part of a group of people we are supposed to dislike, this shouldn’t really work, yet Clark manages to make Ahmad’s suffering and desperation convincing enough to overcome this hurdle. There’s also his giving himself over to Sobek. It’s at least implied that he did this in exchange for the strength to defeat the imposter, who is very obviously a magical threat. He literally gave everything he had in pursuit of his vengeance.
Much like with Hadia, I can’t help but wonder how much richer this story would be if told from Ahmad’s point of view. At the very least, I feel like adding in a subplot that follows his POV (perhaps removing some of those action scenes) would have made the narrative much stronger. It’s a shame that his story closes in such a way that his return in any sequels is doubtful (not impossible, such doubtful). An opportunity was missed with his character.
CONCLUSION
A Master of Djinn is exhausting amateurish, and that is a real shame.
Clark put effort into building this world. He understands at least the basics of writing a police procedural. He had ambition to explore some deep themes. While I have a lot of criticisms as to how poorly those themes were executed, I don’t think there’s incompatible with this setting. There are narratives one could write that would make proper use of them.
In the end, I simply don’t think Clark was ready for a full-length novel. At the very least, he wasn’t ready for THIS full-length novel. I think he needs more time to hone his craft before he tackles a project like this again.
Still, if a writer’s biggest problem is a lack of experience, then perhaps experience will allow him to produce something phenomenal in the future.
Only time will tell.
BACK INTO THE WARP
I hope everyone enjoyed this vacation in the glorious worldbuilding of an alternative Cairo, because on June 7th, we are returning to the virus-bombed nightmare that is Navarre.
Part 2 of Iron Flame opens with pornography.
After that false start, we get two chapters that are functionally identical to the two opening chapters of Part 1, establishing a new status quo. It feels like an entire new book is beginning. Perhaps the strangest aspect of this new foundation, though, is the things Yarros tries to keep the same. The story may have left Basgiath, but Yarros isn’t ready to let go of the school story premise just yet.
It’s coming your way next week. I hope you are rested and ready. Have a good day.
