book discussed

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor)

Spoilers for the first chapter and (but not too explicitly) the ending

This was our Mythopoeic Society book discussion topic for today's meeting, and I read the whole thing (well, with a lot of skimming in the middle). That's a test that few novels pass for me these days, but I don't consider it a very high bar. So while the world-creation was provocative and fairly well-done, I didn't find this a satisfying read because the plot and characters weren't very interesting.

The opening chapter is entirely different from the rest and promised a different book from what we get. It introduces us, in some detail so we think he'll be a major character, to a man, an Englishman living in Cairo in 1912, mostly among other expatriate English. Clearly, too, this is an alternate universe, with magic and advanced technology that puts Egypt, not Europe, at the top of the civilized world.

But then it turns out that the chapter is going to depict a mass murder and our viewpoint character is one of the victims. Apart from references to some paperwork he left behind, that's the last we ever hear of him.

More glaring is this at the end: "... their screams filled the room. Not just their screams, Archibald realized. Because he was screaming too."

Oh, come on. You don't incidentally notice that you're screaming. You're screaming because you're in terrible pain or distress, and that should be occupying all your attention. It's weirdly emotionally detached sentences like this that make me wonder if the author has ever met a human being.

Also really, really annoying to me is references to a character, one of the expatriates, who is called both "Lord Alistair Worthington" and "Lord Worthington." You can't be both. Later we're told he was the younger son of a duke, so the former is correct, the latter is not. Christ, if Clark had only read the stories of Lord Peter Wimsey, who is also the younger son of a duke, he'd know that the character is always called "Lord Peter" for short, never "Lord Wimsey." Same should apply here. And don't tell me "it's an alternate universe." There is nothing in this universe that explains why the centuries-old established rules of British noble nomenclature should be changed to match the ignorance of an American author.

At this point, everyone you've met being dead except the (unidentified) murderer, the story switches gears and becomes a police procedural detective story to identify and arrest that murderer. This is where it started to bore me. I don't read formula mystery novels (I only like Sayers insofar as her books aren't mysteries), I'm not interested in plodding investigative work to piece together clues. I didn't find the detective very attractive or interesting, nor her partner, nor her girlfriend. It goes on for quite a while. I took to skimming a lot.

Eventually a character previously noted for being a wallflower is revealed as the villain and suddenly erupts into a monstrous wielder of powerful magics who meets an end when the magics turn on the wielder in what should make a spectacular light & magic climax when this book becomes an animated movie.

A lot of the characters are not humans, they're djinn. They're kind of a lower-class servant caste. I was reminded disturbingly of American Blacks in the Jim Crow era. There are some scenes of "hey, your best friend might be a djinn in disguise" and "djinn have feelings too" but I saw nothing to suggest that we should feel really uncomfortable with the second-class citizen bit. Making it worse is the presence of some American Black proto-jazz musicians hanging out the way in our world they hung out in Paris. They like being in Cairo because there's no Jim Crow there. Well, not for Blacks.

Kaiser Wilhelm II is in town for some conference and makes a couple cameo appearances. He doesn't much resemble the original, who was the Donald Trump of the turn of the 20C.

This book is a finalist for the Hugo Awards this year. Well, worse novels than this have actually won the Hugo, but it doesn't encourage me to read the other finalists.