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A review by emtees
The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories by Jared Shurin, Mahvesh Murad
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
Anthologies are hard to review because they are so many parts that don’t always add up to a whole. In the case of The Djinn Falls in Love, though, the stories collected worked very well together. They vary a lot - as the editors mention in their introduction, they gave a lot of leeway to the various authors in how they defined and portrayed the djinn. There are stories that call back to traditional djinn tales, contemporary stories about the descendants of magical beings living in the modern world, and even sci-fi stories that take the djinn into the future. In some stories the djinn barely appear, existing only as an idea, even a metaphor. Others go beyond MENA culture, with djinn in the American Midwest or China or Africa. The authors range from well-known names like Amal El-Mohtar, Nnedi Okorafor and Neil Gaiman (though that one’s a bit of a cheat, since it’s just the djinn chapter from American Gods) to new names. So it’s interesting that there still manages to be a similar feel to a lot of the stories. The djinn in these stories are mysterious, dangerous and mercurial and interacting with them always comes with a risk.
I enjoyed this collection. My only issue with it was that few of the stories really jumped out on their own separate from the collection. All of them were about the same length and many of them felt like they straining to keep to such a low word count; in particular, J.Y. Yang’s “Glass Lights” and Catherina Faris King’s “Queen of Sheba” felt more like the start of a larger story than something that worked on its own. Those I liked most were the ones that did something different and creative with the djinn concept: Kuzhali Manickavel’s “How We Remember You,” a dark tale where a trio of friends look back on their conflicting memories of a childhood friend; Maria Dahvana Headley’s “Black Powder,” a story told out of chronological order about a cursed object haunting a remote western town and multiple generations of its residents; James Smythe’s “The Sand in the Glass is Right,” a twisty story about trying to find the perfect wish before one rubs the genie’s bottle; and Sami Shah’s “Reap,” told from a distance as a group of American military drone operators monitoring a distant Afghan village witness a horror story playing out on their cameras. Jamal Mahjoub’s “Duende 2077,” a dark future mystery, and Okorafor’s “History,” a quietly funny story about a ditzy but powerful musician, also stood out.
I enjoyed this collection. My only issue with it was that few of the stories really jumped out on their own separate from the collection. All of them were about the same length and many of them felt like they straining to keep to such a low word count; in particular, J.Y. Yang’s “Glass Lights” and Catherina Faris King’s “Queen of Sheba” felt more like the start of a larger story than something that worked on its own. Those I liked most were the ones that did something different and creative with the djinn concept: Kuzhali Manickavel’s “How We Remember You,” a dark tale where a trio of friends look back on their conflicting memories of a childhood friend; Maria Dahvana Headley’s “Black Powder,” a story told out of chronological order about a cursed object haunting a remote western town and multiple generations of its residents; James Smythe’s “The Sand in the Glass is Right,” a twisty story about trying to find the perfect wish before one rubs the genie’s bottle; and Sami Shah’s “Reap,” told from a distance as a group of American military drone operators monitoring a distant Afghan village witness a horror story playing out on their cameras. Jamal Mahjoub’s “Duende 2077,” a dark future mystery, and Okorafor’s “History,” a quietly funny story about a ditzy but powerful musician, also stood out.