Reviews

The Muslim protagonists and characters from Islamic oral history were refreshing and much-needed representation in middle grades lit. I particularly liked the jinn characters. However, I prose was impossible to read for me. The character actions and dialogue are unnatural and more fitting for a chapter book. The narration style is first-person present-tense, which is already a stretch (though not impossible to pull off!) , and the narrator has a constant stream-of-consciousness narration. I think the asides and unrelated thoughts are meant to demonstrate that the protagonist has ADHD and has a hard time focusing on what she's doing, but as a reader it's incredibly distracting. With full respect to the author who has written about these important issues in fiction and interviews, reflections on Islamophobia, cultural appropriation, and other important issues are given the same frivolity as the frequent, distracting pop-culture references (I promise middle-grades readers can understand folklore without comparing everything to a movie). Ahmed's previous work addresses these issues unflinchingly and so it was disappointing to see issues that middle-grades readers are capable of understanding given such little weight.

adalana's review against another edition

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adventurous inspiring medium-paced

3.5

asphodelic's review

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1.0

The amount of pop culture references somehow exceeds those in [b:Aru Shah and the End of Time|36222611|Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava Quartet, #1)|Roshani Chokshi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1506615949l/36222611._SX50_.jpg|56242795], and it basically made this book close to unreadable. Hamza's entire character seemed to be nothing but a mouthpiece for pop culture references.

I liked the beginning of the book, and the gender fluid jinn, and that's about it.