You would think a fantasy/ steampunk detective story with multiple strong female leads set in an alternate history where Cairo is the most powerful city in the world in the early 20th century would be right up my alley.
Somehow, though, P. Djélì Clark‘s A Master of Djinn (2021), falls short for me. It’s a great premise: in the late 20th century, an opening between our world and that of various magical forces (most notably, Djinn) was created, propelling Egypt into prominence as the most technologically advanced nation in the world, with the British empire fading, and both the European powers and the United States scrambling to find ways to compete.
The protagonists work for an arm of the Egyptian government tasked with investigating and managing magical phenomena, and the plot centers around the sudden appearance of someone who seems able to control and manipulate the Djinn to their own ends.
Clark’s Cairo is well described, especially in how they navigate the overlap of the daily practice of Islam and Middle Eastern mythology made real. But it also falls short, for me, of ever truly evoking the country or the city. In some ways, while N.K Jemisin‘s The Killing Moon (which I just realized I have not written up yet, whoops, adding it to the list) is far more fantastical and bears far less direct resemblance to 20th century Egypt, it also feels more deeply Egyptian. Part of this may reflect on Clark’s use of near-caricatures for the non-Egyptian characters. On the one hand, sure, turnabout is fair play and all that; on the other, it feels like we’ve moved beyond that to a place that demands that, if one group is presented with a certain realistic richness, all should meet that same level.
Clearly, this is a very subjective reaction. The whodunnit side of A Master of Djinn works well, and the various plot twists are handled well, without telegraphing the final turns too overtly. There are at least one more book in the series.