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shuly's review
3.0
On the one hand, I really enjoyed Bahjatt's world-building. I like alternative history as a concept and so often in the West the genre is used to tell tired stories that fetishize Western imperialism or wars so it's exciting t0 see a work in the alt history genre that explores a more original concept. It's interesting to imagine what may have happened if a group of refugees from the fall of Granada were the ones to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, what might have happened if the events of the 16th century featured an explosion of scientific discovery in a multicultural North American syncretic Muslim-Indigenous American Caliphate rather than the environmental destruction, sickness, and genocide that European colonization brought.
On the other hand, while his world started out strong in the beginning, I felt that it started to cross the line of plausibility as the narrative progressed (some of the Arabic-speaking reviewers have compared the animal totem fight scenes to Assassin's Creed or a shounen anime and I think that's accurate). I also found the use of Native American cultural themes unnecessarily simplistic and sometimes tokenizing--from the perspective of a white North American who is clued into the intense conversations being had about non-native people's appropriation of indigenous cultures and especially the concept of spirit animals, his ""totem"" concept was sometimes hard to get through.
I really enjoyed the anachronistic timeline but I wish this was carried through to the structure of the narrative as well--Bahjatt falls into these long descriptive passages introducing characters that can be totally overwhelming and hard to keep track of. It didn't help that my English translation was riddled with strange typos and structural errors but I totally understand the work was translated by a team of amateurs (and, my god, translating scifi from Arabic to English is a FEAT) so all things considered it really isn't bad.
Overall I think this novel is totally worth it if you want a quick read with an action-packed, interesting premise and, while it certainly could have used a good editor, I do think it is expanding the alternative history genre and I'm really excited about the explosion of Arabic scifi coming out in the last few years!
On the other hand, while his world started out strong in the beginning, I felt that it started to cross the line of plausibility as the narrative progressed (some of the Arabic-speaking reviewers have compared the animal totem fight scenes to Assassin's Creed or a shounen anime and I think that's accurate). I also found the use of Native American cultural themes unnecessarily simplistic and sometimes tokenizing--from the perspective of a white North American who is clued into the intense conversations being had about non-native people's appropriation of indigenous cultures and especially the concept of spirit animals, his ""totem"" concept was sometimes hard to get through.
I really enjoyed the anachronistic timeline but I wish this was carried through to the structure of the narrative as well--Bahjatt falls into these long descriptive passages introducing characters that can be totally overwhelming and hard to keep track of. It didn't help that my English translation was riddled with strange typos and structural errors but I totally understand the work was translated by a team of amateurs (and, my god, translating scifi from Arabic to English is a FEAT) so all things considered it really isn't bad.
Overall I think this novel is totally worth it if you want a quick read with an action-packed, interesting premise and, while it certainly could have used a good editor, I do think it is expanding the alternative history genre and I'm really excited about the explosion of Arabic scifi coming out in the last few years!
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