Book Review: A MASTER OF DJINN

TITLE: A Master of Djinn

AUTHOR: P. Djèlí Clark

500 pages, TorDotCom, ISBN 9781250267689 (hardcover, e-book, audiobook)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): 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 50 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 her clever girlfriend Siti, 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....

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5

MY THOUGHTS: In his first full-length novel, P. Djèlí Clark expands the alternate-history, steampunk-flavored Cairo he introduced us to in the short story “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” and the novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015. Characters from both “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” and The Haunting of Tram Car 015 appear in the novel in various lead and supporting roles, but one does not have to have read those previous stories to understand what’s going on in A Master of Djinn. (Although I will say that reading the short story and novella will enhance your enjoyment of the world and understanding of the characters’ personalities and inter-relationships.)

Clark has crafted a multi-layered murder mystery that the formidable Agent Fatma, along with her mysterious lover Siti and newly assigned work partner Hadia, must solve before the city of Cairo, and perhaps the entire world, fall into chaos. Thanks to an opening chapter that presents the mass-murder from the perspective of one of the victims, the reader heads into the story knowing more than the investigative team – but that’s not the same as knowing everything. The clues necessary for the reader to solve the mystery are there to be found, as are the requisite number of false clues and moments that seem to mean more than they really do. The case takes several interesting twists before the ultimate reveal. I had my suspicions early-on about who this person claiming to be al-Jahiz really was, but there were also moments where I thought I could be very wrong. This delighted the mystery fan in me: I love having my guesses turn out to be wrong as much as I love being correct, because being wrong means I can re-read the book to see where the correct clues were. Of course, I am not a fan of mysteries where all the clues are red herrings and the answer is something the reader could never have guessed. But that’s not a trap Clark falls into, thankfully.

I’d have been happy enough with A Master of Djinn being a straightforward mystery set in this alternate world. But the book provides so much more. There’s a rich history to be explored, with Egypt becoming a world power based on the revival of magic into the world and Colonialism being overthrown in some parts of the world earlier than in our own timeline. It’s 1912, and the international conclave hosted in the middle of the book gives us interesting looks at what a “World War One” would look like in this setting. There’s a magic system that I think we’ve only scratched the surface of in the tales told so far: not just various types of djinns and other Middle Eastern magical beings, but goblins in Germany and hints at other types of beings al-Jahiz’s actions released into the rest of the world as well. These magical beings have been involved in some of the fights for regional freedom mentioned, so you know these world powers will put such beings to use when full-scale international war does break out (with the possible exception of America, where Puritanical beliefs seem to have essentially outlawed magic use). The Colonialist mind-set of the era, the European fascination with “adopting” local culture while disdaining the actual people, is on full display throughout the book and Clark does not let his characters leave it unremarked (at least among themselves, even if politics prevents them from saying anything to the actual perpetrators).

The character relationships are also beautifully established. Fatma is essentially a loner. She has eschewed being assigned a partner for this long mostly on strength of personality and successful cases, but department policy can’t be pushed off forever. Hadia’s arrival at the crime scene the day before she’s supposed to officially meet Fatma creates a wonderful level of friction between the two women that plays out as one of the sub-plots. First impressions give way to shared experiences, and Clark charts that growth subtly through dialogue and body language. Fatma at the same time is learning more about Siti, their sexual relationship moving into the romantic – but Siti has secrets of her own that influence both the relationship and the main plot of the novel, which I will not spoil here. We also learn a lot more about Fatma’s past thanks to her interactions with both Siti and Hadia, but there’s plenty we still don’t know about all three women that I look forward to seeing revealed in future books set in this universe.

Clark further develops the Ministry beyond the vague structure and mission established in the previous short story and novella, giving us more intimate looks at Fatma’s immediate superior, the Ministry’s support staff (including a delightfully surly Djinn librarian), and fellow investigators (including the stars of The Haunting of Tram Car 015, Hamed Nasr and Onsi Youssef). Hamed and Onsi are supporting characters here but I hope we’ll get more of their own adventures in the future. Likewise, Fatma’s main contacts outside of the Ministry, bookie/underworld contact Khalid and Cairo police Inspector Aasim Sharif (who reminds me, perhaps intentionally, of Holmes’ Inspector LeStrade), are further developed from their previous appearances, although they play smaller supporting roles than Hamed and Onsi. I was also intrigued by the details revealed about an all-female criminal organization, the Forty Leopards, and the hierarchies and interactions of various temples dedicated to Egypt’s earlier, pre-Mohammedan, gods.

Excellent alternate-history fantasy world-building, multi-dimensional characters, on-point political commentary, and a top-notch murder mystery combine to make P Djèlí Clark’s debut novel a must-read. Go get it!

NOTE: Although I’m posting this review after the release date, it is based off an electronic advance reading copy I received from NetGalley.

Review of RING SHOUT

TITLE: Ring Shout

AUTHOR: P. Djèlí Clark

192 pages, Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250767028 (hardcover, e-book, audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: P. Djèlí Clark has become an author I just trust will deliver great supernatural alternate-history narratives. The Black God’s Drums, The Haunting of Tram Car 015 and “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” all blew me away with strong characters, intriguing magic systems, recognizable locations (New Orleans and Cairo) and high stakes. I’m very much looking forward to A Master of Djinn (forthcoming in 2021), which continues the adventures of characters from Haunting and “Dead Djinn.” In the meantime, we have Clark’s latest novella, Ring Shout.

In Ring Shout, Clark gives us a new magical alternate-history setting.  The year is 1915, the place is Macon, Georgia. The story starts with action: Marlyse Boudreux and her compatriots Chef (the Harlem Hellfighter) and Sadie (she of the foul mouth and the perfect aim) take down a trio of Ku Kluxes – demonic beings in human form who move among humans fomenting hatred and discord. Ring Shout is not a non-stop action ride. There are plenty of quiet, thoughtful scenes interspersed. But this opening sets the tone: very little is at is appears and the threat is everywhere albeit hidden to most eyes.

That threat is about as Lovecraftian as one can get: unknowable beings from another dimension send minions to infiltrate and influence a human cult to bring about their own ascension on the Earthly plane. That the cult in question is the historical Ku Klux Klan is no accident but rather a pitch-perfect rendering of H.P. Lovecraft’s often blatant racism into this fictional world. Clark also takes Lovecraft’s penchant of making black characters nameless stereotypes and applies it to the people in this story that Lovecraft would have identified with. I don’t think we learn the name of a single human Klan member in the entire story, and most of them are described with as little detail as possible. The human Klan members are nameless, featureless tools of the cult leader, Butcher Clyde. We get a lot of detail about him as the main protagonist, but he’s as inhuman as the feral Ku Kluxes he controls on behalf of his masters. Clark also makes it clear that while this threat is supernatural, the supernatural is not responsible for the historical atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan. There are multiple mentions that Butcher Clyde and the Ku Kluxes are simply feeding off an irrational hate for non-whites that the human Klan members already harbor. It’s that hate that allows the Ku Kluxes entry into the human world, and that hate that allows their presence to go unnoticed by the people they are using.

It's apropos that the threat is generically Lovecraftian while the powers that fight against the threat are specifically culled from across the African Diaspora. The magic Maryse and her partners access is drawn from music, from storytelling, from the shared history of slavery and pain. The “ring shout” tradition that gives the book its title in front-and-center in the narrative, more than just a historical allusion. In fact, the chapters are bookended by descriptions of various “shouts” translated from the Gullah dialect into modern English by one of the few characters in the book who is white (which mirrors the way slave and sharecropper folk music was gathered by white musicologists in our world), explicating how the songs are also stories.

Marlyse possesses a magic sword gifted to her by three otherworldly “Aunties” (who, I must admit, reminded me of Mrs. Whatsit, Who and Which from A Wrinkle in Time, but who I’m sure have a much more culturally African basis of which I’m ashamed I’m unaware). But she also carries power of her own, in the memories of her brother and the Brer Rabbit storybook he gave her. Clark takes something white people are aware of via stereotype (in this case, the Walt Disney film Song of the South) and gives the power of those stories back to the people who first told them. The oral storytelling tradition among slaves also introduces the book’s possible secondary threat, the Night Doctors, who here are not just white slaveowners dressed up to scare their slaves into accepting their lot. (This is another part of the slave experience I’m embarrassed to admit I was unaware of before reading Ring Shout.)

The power of storytelling works both ways, and it’s an important story point that the Klan’s power is drawn largely from the way D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation (and the books it was adapted from) galvanized disaffected white people into the Klan movement. Clark never downplays the power of words and pictures to motivate people both positively and negatively. In our current climate this is more obvious than ever. It’s not new to the internet age just more quickly spread.

While magic powers the proceedings, it is the characters that pulled me in and kept me invested. Marlyse’s first-person narration is melodic, by turns soothing and energizing, as befits the narrator of a book whose action so hinges on the power of storytelling. Chef and Sadie are equally as important to the story and equally as well-developed because of their proximity to Marlyse. Each brings something different to the narrative in terms of personality, especially in how they handle past trauma and current danger. Elderly Nana Jean, scientist Molly and even the three otherworldly “Aunties” are distinct personalities who bring different ways of viewing the world to the table, and I hope to see more of all of them if Clark ever gives us a sequel to Ring Shout. I also hope we’ll see more of the men in the group as this world develops. There were hints of personality for Michael George, Lester, and Uncle Will, but a novella only has so much space and these characters were not as important to this particular story.

Reading Ring Shout is one of those experiences that operates on multiple levels: it’s an adventure, a horror, an educational, and social commentary all wrapped together, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I received an e-ARC of this book for review through NetGalley.