SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I hope I did this right. This is for a buddy read of the short story.

I read it today and thought it was one of the best things I've read in a good while.

Gah- thanks Caillen! I kept meaning to come back and post it but forgot. I’ll read through it tonight and add my thoughts.

Just putting the link to the story here so I can find it again later!
https://www.tor.com/2016/05/18/a-dead...

I enjoyed it when I read it awhile back. Will revisit soon (hence the link) in order to discuss. :-)

Sounds interesting - i thought this is a novella

A Dead Djinn in Cairo was my first P. Djèlí Clark read (back in 2018). I’ve since read/enjoyed The Black God's Drums, A Tale of Woe, The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington, & The Haunting of Tram Car 015. Looking forward to the publication of Ring Shout later this year.

My thoughts while rereading ADDiC today:
(behind “spoiler” tag because overly detailed)
(view spoiler)[(I don’t usually copy/paste & type thoughts while reading, but I’m in a weird mood today. 😉 )
“sheath of aquamarine scales that shifted to turquoise” Ooo, pretty djinn! 😊 (I know: pretty DEAD.)
Zero to penis reference in 2 paragraphs, LOL.
“boilerplate eunuch. The machine-man” Okay, interesting.
“full, bold lips passed on by her mother” Awesome: thanks, mum.
“a radical cell of anarchist-necromancers” Excellent.
“It’s 1912 — a new century” Oh, modernity.
“reborn or traveled through time” & “He later disappeared, taking his incredible machines with him.” Intriguing possibilities here.
Re: Englishman “We kept them out, thanks to the djinn. Sent them running back to their cold, dreary little island.” Nice!
“Fatma stared. He was calling other men filthy-minded?” LOL.
“the mechanical wonders of the djinn” This sounds like a fun world!
“Did they what?” “Look exotic.” “No. Just ridiculous.” LOL. Fashion.
“jackals constructed of black and gold metal, only with wings that lay folded on their backs. The mechanical beasts” So many cool descriptions in this world!
“an angel — or at least the beings that claimed to be so.” Nice scepticism here.
“Unlike djinn, their bodies were almost ephemeral, like light become flesh, and required frames to house them.” & “A translucent alabaster mask hid his face” Ooo, intriguingly weird.
“Maker will aid you as he can.” & “Maker is saddened to hear of such senseless acts” Interesting use of third-person here instead of first.
“the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities” Great department title. 😊
“First unwritten rule of investigation—when in need of information, make sure you flatter your source.” Smart!
“She wondered if there were any documented cases of an angel laughing.” A nice touch of otherworldliness for these “otherworldly entities.”
Angel view of djinn: “Lesser beings, you must understand. Only slightly above mortals.” Oh, the hierarchy!
“wishing she had worn less expensive shoes.” Great moment. So relatable.
“a policeman who somehow kept getting lost in a brothel.” LOL.
“Despite the jokes, the faces she saw were marked with fear.” & “Harvester of what?” Looming doom!
“cutting through rotted muscle and bone.” Ewww.
“slashing a tear in the fabric across her torso. She gasped at that. Not her suit!” The horror!
“claws, throwing off fresh sparks each time they met the metal cane.” Cool imagery, especially in a dark alley.
“One of the oldest bazaars in Cairo, the coming of gas lighting now meant the place never had to close—and it rarely did.” Reminds me of the book The Last Days of Night (historical fiction about Tesla-v-Edison & electrification).
“marbled aquamarine skin and jade eyes” These djinns are so gorgeously colourful! 😊
“A black cat lounged in her lap; bits of gold piercing its nose and ears while a collar of lapis lazuli circled its neck.” WOW! Okay, anybody else expecting this cat to start TALKING? So cool. (WHY does it disappear from the story? LOST OPPORTUNITY, FELINE OF AWESOME DESCRIPTION.)
“We near the end of worlds” Ominousness, yay. Ooo, also worldS plural, intriguing. 😊
“Like the other women, she wore a diaphanous gown that hugged her plump curves well.” Good images.
“the two-seater glider that raced high above Cairo.” Ooo, fun! (Or NOT, with the following description of the ride!)
“This land has enough gods as it is.” Ha! Take that, old gods.
“A deep blue liquid had been poured in a circle around the machine. The djinn’s missing blood” Okay all this djinn blue-ness is so pretty.
“he gutted the creature, spilling out the glowing contents of its belly.” Why glowing??? Ohhh, undigested angel....
“You have come here to stop me? When I do this all for Him?” Why is Builder/Maker suddenly talking in first-person instead of third?
“This is not what He created. He is perfect, and could not have made such imperfection. This is your doing. Your corruption.” OUCH! Hello, judgment.
“You angels. You made this God up. Maybe only a few higher-ups did at first. Then the rest of you believed it. But I think He’s made up all the same.” Oh, Siti, you & your theology!
“long fleshy tentacles” YES! TENTACULAR!
“That’s. Disgusting.” LOLOL.
“black fetid blood” Okay, not as pretty as the blue blood!
“obsessed with perfection. A being that would make certain each piece of his masterful design performed in absolute precision—or not at all.” To this attempting-to-recover-[former]-perfectionist, this assessment hits too close to home!
“blood flowed from more than a few cuts—including a gash that left her hair slick with crimson” Red blood? How boring!
“Fatma took her watch and flipped it open, smiling at the familiar ticking.” It still works? My jaw drops.
"gray flesh in their path. One of the tendrils." I’m glad there’s still a [severed] tentacle in evidence.
““You’re an infidel. And maybe a little insane.” Siti grinned, not denying either charge.” Nice response!
Okay, I wanna go to that Nubian restaurant now: YUM!
“He was going to hate the paperwork on this one.” Ha! Nice ending sentence.

Words googled:
Janissary, Sa’idi, janbiya, Azd, nasnas, Old Marid, Azbakiyya, pezevenk, Khedive, Mahdist, Mamluk, takwin, al-Jahiz, Basra, Mahdi, jellabiya, noria, Gregorian, anasheed, Ulama, Amharic, Kitāb al-Kīmyā, Khan el-Khalili, Senet, Hathor, jann, Sekhmet, Eye of Ra, fatta, mulukhiya.
(Yes, many are defined sufficiently in context, but supplemental wikipedia learning is fun.) (hide spoiler)]

Thanks for giving me an excuse to revisit this story! Great fun!

Novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is in the same Cairo setting. I recommend. 😊

So, I was going to respond to this when I had enough time to go into detail and then I got distracted and forgot. Sorry.

The world-building was incredible. So much detail in a short story with nothing approaching an info dump. It was all seamless. He painted this dark, harsh, incredibly beautiful world that I want so bad to know more about. I want more stories about these characters and this world. Especially about Fatma and Siti. I can see the potential for all kinds of mysteries and adventures with that team-up.

I also can't express enough love for a decolonized Cairo. It was fascinating to see how this amazing, magic-infused world had developed without European exploitation.

Fatma is the best. Everything about her. The fastidious wardrobe that defied cultural expectations. Her "look exotic" thing was the BEST. How she managed to navigate her world and profession while being surrounded by men who assumed they were superior to women, while actually being smarter than all of them.

I have read some about ancient Egypt and Egyptian mythology, so I knew some of those words. A lot of them were new to me as well. I think they added some immersive, cultural details to the world, but it also might feel like it made the story less accessible. But the person I'm thinking of in particular also tends to ask me for spoilers throughout watching a movie that I've already seen. 🙄

(view spoiler)[I total agree that there was a little too much about djinn penis. It really made me wonder about... let's say anatomical compatibility difficulties with his human lover. Could've done without that mental image.

I had mixed feeling about the boilerplate eunuch. Steampunk, android servant used for forensic tasks is a great concept. I know that eunuch were a part of history in that region. The term implies castration though. Intentional bodily modification to create a "harmless" servant. It seems like a stretch to me. Like almost trying too hard to include all the things even if it didn't really fit.

I want to know more about anarchist-necromancers! There's a whole potential story there. All the cults, really.

I got a little bit of a steampunk Blade Runner vibe in the seedier parts of the city. I can imagine the faint glow of lights from the overhead vehicles spilling into the gaslit slums below.

“a policeman who somehow kept getting lost in a brothel.” Great line. Loved that.

Maker was an enigma. Was the manner of speaking just a show of inter-species snobbery that he dropped when he got pissed off? He was a bit of heavy-handed foreshadowing but I like the descriptions and interactions well enough to forgive that.

I loved the Lovecraftian otherworldly tentacled monsters too horrible to comprehend coming to destroy everything. How can you make something more terrifying than a necromancer angel with an army of ghouls? Tentacled horrors from another dimension, of course! lol

The watchmaker's child being able to grasp the one idea that could stop the machine was a very nice touch. I did think that having the pocket watch survive was HUGE strain on my suspension of disbelief. The gears crushed anything else, but a delicate watch is undamaged? At least give us a mention that it had some minor spell of protection, or something to make it seem remotely plausible within their world. That was the one major gripe I had with the story.

Then Fatma and Siti have saved the world. Literally saved all of life on Earth, and they just kind of brush it off. Take in stride. Fatma smirks about the paperwork. These are some massively tough, badass individuals!

What's up with Siti calling Fatma a boy though? Did she think that Fatma was male because of the way she dressed? Was it a hint that she was trans despite the feminine pronouns? (hide spoiler)]

I'm absolutely going to look for that novella. Thanks for the recommendation!

Forgot to add that I had only read The Black God's Drums before. I liked a lot about it but I think this was much better. Both had good writing, I like his style and his characters. The world building was better in this one though. I don't know. Maybe it just had more of the elements that I tend to like in A Dead Djinn in Cairo. I think I have to go back and reread The Black God's Drums now.