Alif the Unseen

[psocoptera]

This has been on my to-read list more or less since it came out but the ebook went on sale in May for one of those one-day $1.99 things, catapulting it out of the ~80 things on the list with a similar priority ranking. Alif the Unseen, by G Willow Wilson, better known for Ms. Marvel (and I have also read her graphic novel Cairo). Djinn and cybersecurity in an imaginary Persian Gulf emirate. Definitely interesting, and there were some good scenes and sequences, but didn't quite land for me overall. Found the dude protagonist rather tiresome, in a way I think I was supposed to, but his eventual redemption/enlightenment arc also left me kind of meh. So much of it hinged around him Learning To Appreciate The Right Woman Rather Than The Wrong Woman, and, okay, if I'm willing to buy that the Right Woman is so awesome*, then why don't we ever get *her* POV, why doesn't she exist outside of her random devotion to the protag? (*I think part of Wilson's project here was to portray a devout niqab-wearing FGM'd woman as badass, which, okay, sure, that fights some ugly stereotyping, buuut it's kind of undercut if this character still can't move the plot herself and is mostly a prop/accessory?)

Also kind of a weird read five years later, this long after the Arab Spring - Wilson was writing beforehand but somewhat anticipated it and the book ends with a worried but also somewhat optimistic mood about the potential of revolution that feels a little queasy now after the devastation of Syria, Yemen, etc. Retroactively a much darker ending than I think was intended. :( But definitely interesting, and the sincerity of the Muslim perspective (not just the setting, but being a universe where the Quran really is the word of God) felt different and unusual for SFF. A semi-rec, I guess?