Book Review
Title: A Dead Djinn in Cairo (Fatma el-Sha’arawi Book 0.5) by P. Djèlí Clark
Genre: Historical, Fantasy
Rating: 3 Stars
I have read both Ring Shout and The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark in the past and liked them although they were both missing something for me. However, A Dead Djinn in Cairo and The Haunting of Tram Car 015 are prequel short story to Clark’s upcoming novel, A Master of Djinn so I had to read them. These books are set in Egypt, 1912, in an alternate Cairo and we are following Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi who works for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities and supernatural elements are something that Clark writes brilliantly and I can’t wait to see what these stories have in store for me. Fatma is working with a local detective, Inspector Aasim Sharif to investigate the death of a Djinn and it seems that this one committed suicide which is very unusual but what is even more unusual is the fact that this Djinn is in possession of an angel’s feather which are extremely rare and hardly ever scene and to Fatma something about the Djinn’s death just doesn’t sit right.
Fatma and Aasim head to meet with an angel to learn who the feather belonged to. They end up meeting the Maker who informs them that the feather belongs to the Harvester and they need to travel into the slums in order to find him. They do just that but it is obvious that the people of the slums are spooked as they won’t guide the pair to the Harvester’s home not even when they offer to pay them meaning something isn’t right there. They manage to find the building by themselves only to find the Harvester dead and Ghuls, undead beings feasting on the angel corpse. They have to fight off the Ghuls as the angel’s metal casing bears the same glyphs as the ones they found near the dead djinn but they seem to leave of their own accord when they are discovered and things are just becoming stranger and as they do, the more uncomfortable this makes Fatma. The dead angel was a necromancer and as it is now dead both the Cairo police and the Ministry considering the case closed but the manner of their death and the word “The Rising” appearing at both scenes with the glyphs are too many coincidences for Fatma to consider the case closed. That night Fatma is lured to the worshipper of Hathor as they need to inform her of a dark prophecy, in which three sacrifices have to be made in order to open a door to the dark world. Two of the three sacrifices have already been made in the form of the djinn and the Harvester but they have no idea who the final one is. When the mention the Clock of Worlds, Fatma instantly remembers the clock the Maker was working on when they spoke to him previously and she rushes to his home along with Siti.
It seems when they arrive that they are too late but the Maker does inform them that they are doing this to let the dark ones, who are seen as gods by the djinn and the angels through to remake the human world into a “perfect” world before killing himself becoming the final sacrifice and allowing the door to open. As a creature attempts to make its way into their world, Fatma and Siti try and stop it and Fatma realises that the clock is the key to everything and to close the door they need to stop the clock. She takes this task on herself, seemingly sacrificing her father’s pocket watch in order to close the door but Siti returns it with a few more scratches but relatively fine before the Cairo police turn up on the scene and Siti vanishes into the night promising to see Fatma again. Overall, I found A Dead Djinn in Cairo an interesting introduction to the world and magic systems as well as the variety of characters but it did try and cram a lot into less than 50 pages which is why my rating is low. If it had been around 100 pages long rather than 50 there would have been more time to explore the prophecy and to see the motivations of the three sacrifices in a bit more detail.
Buy it here:
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: Ring Shout
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