Reviews

I listened to this in audio book, narrated by Fajer Al-Kaisi. It didn't take me long to get used to the narration, which I quite liked. It was fun to go into this book without having seen it before among any of my book friends.

I loved the world building in this book. Most of the main characters were developed enough, although I might loved reading a bit more about a few characters (Djebril, Indebhel - excuse me if I misspel names, audio isn't that good for that). The mix of sci-fi, fantasy and mythology was really well done to me, but I did miss some more personal interactions between certain characters. The ending also felt somewhat rushed, something was missing and we really don't have any idea what happened to certain characters at the end. I'm kind of hoping to have a sequel of this someday.

I'm absolutely sure I missed stuff, having read this in audio. It will definitely go on the I-want-to-reread-a-physical-copy-someday list (which I now totally put among my shelves).

All in all, I enjoyed reading this, there were a lot of chuckle moments and references to pop cultures and I'm a total sucker for those. I'm going to check out more books by this author and probably in narration since I saw it's the same narrator for those too.

quicksilvermoon's review

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5.0

In a time when infrastructural showpieces bask in the spotlight denied an actual, ongoing natural disaster, a much-awaited release from hands down my favourite Bangladeshi author (no point in pretending otherwise) comes as a welcome escape.
This one is a continuation of the story that began with Djinn City, set in a post-apocalyptic future, where climate change and human conflicts have done everything we were warned about. Much of Bangladesh is under water, and whatever is left is mostly toxic and unlivable, except for a few ultra-privileged, fully corporatized enclaves. Our protagonist, Marzuk, a hacker prodigy famous online as The Cyber Mage, must face his greatest offline challenge : to navigate the jungle of school politics and win the favor of the girl he loves - and save his city from a hostile takeover by a supernatural AI. The world-building in this story is like Yuval Noah Harari on acid. I don’t know enough about nanotechnology or blockchain or even gaming to say if the science would hold up IRL, but the rules of this Djinn City are so thoroughly codified, it is an immersive experience reading it. The plot is simultaneously violent and cheesy, laugh-out-loud funny, and unbearably tragic at times. Saad Z Hossain holds a razor to the jugular of present-day socio-economic realities in a way that makes it hard to confront and even harder to look away. Definitely the best thing I’ve read all year.

ohanch's review

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Annoying protagonist

mehrangezmr's review

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4.0

I'd describe this book as... a lot. It's very funny, very complicated, very violent. Saad Hossain is an incredibly talented author, one with a highly individual voice, sort of like Neal Stephenson on steroids. Like Stephenson, Saad Hossain goes deep into the details of the world he creates, and he doesn't care if it's kind of dense and overwhelming, and he doesn't care if you don't get his references (as someone who grew up in Dhaka, I got and laughed at the Dhaka references; as a non-gamer, I probably missed a ton of references). As someone who enjoys authors like Stephenson, Tim Powers, Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, who also like to mix frenetic action with philosophy and wisecrackery, I really enjoyed this.

TL;DR: It's Ready Player One if Ready Player One were actually... you know... good.

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