'Alif the Unseen' - G. Willow Wilson - 6/21/19

Good Morning,

I've just finished reading 'Alif the Unseen', by G. Willow Wilson.  It is set in The City, in an unnamed Emirate in the Persian Gulf,  sometime shortly before the Arab Spring.  The novels protagonist is one Alif, who is a "hactivist" (hacker/activist) living in a poor quarter of The City, which is populated by Muslims, Christians, Princes, Tradionalists, Progressives and, we quickly learn, Djinn. 

The Djinn, which I've read about in other novels, such as those by S.A. Chakraborty, are mythical beings, able to take a number of different physical forms, much like spirits or elementals.  Alif encounters them while deep in cyberspace, initially.  The protagonist makes a living by protecting those who would be cracked down upon by The State on the internet.  His charges may be fundamentalists, dissidents, students, etc.; what ties them together is their opposition to the tyrannical State that seeks to silence their voice.  Eventually, Alif teams up with a gang of Djinn to realize his goal of freedom of expression. 

Essentially, the novel ends up reading as a cry for the spread of free information in the face of oppression.  The protagonist does indeed cross over into the realm of the Djinn, but the struggle around which the novel centers is not at all fantastical.  It is the very real battle between repression and expression. 

The involvement of magic in the book serves to bolster the historicity of the struggle for truth, which extends back into the mists of time and humanity's relationship to the mystical.   There is some cool history of the attempt by ancient Muslim mystics to reconcile the Djinn with their understanding of the world and religion, but it is more of a sidenote than a central theme, and I personally wish it had been more central to the narrative arc.  That kind of thing is so much fun. 

Overall, the novel was mildly original, but I prefer a little bit more magic in my magical realism.  This book didn't allow itself to fully become one thing or another, whether it be fantasy or philosophy, hacking or hero-building.  It was a bit heavy-handed in its call for social justice in the Middle East, which is great but I think edged out the plot a bit in its prominence.

I'd give it a 6 or 7 out of 10.  I was ready for it to be over, and I could have guessed how it was going to end long before I got there.

Meh.  On to the next.