I loved the short stories in the Dead Djinn Universe so of course I was excited to read A Master of Djinn. It took me a bit longer that I wanted before finally picking up the book, but earlier this year I did. And now I finally will share my thoughts with you all. So let’s jump in!

The first story I read in this universe was A Dead Djinn in Cairo, and this one follows the same main character. Fatma el-Sha’arawi is one of the only female agents at the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. I liked reading about her in A Dead Djinn in Cairo and I loved it even more in A Master of Djinn. Fatma is a likeable character to read about and I enjoyed getting to see her character development in this full length novel.

The other 3 stories in this universe are either short stories or novellas but A Master of Djinn is a full length novel with almost 400 pages. And I could read another 400 page story in this universe to be honest! I love what P. Djèlí Clark build here so much and really like the characters. The setting is Cairo but in an alternative history where there’s magic and supernatural beings in the world. I love how well developed this universe is and it was a lot of fun learning more and more about it. With the chance of repeating myself, I would really love to read more about this universe, I just couldn’t get enough of it!

The plot of the story was interesting and I was invested for sure. But at the same time I don’t think that was the strongest part of the book. For me the world building and the characters were what I loved most and what made me come back to this universe again and again. The combination of 1912 Cairo with talk about angels and djinn and secret brotherhoods and murder is just simply amazing.

Like I said, I really liked Fatma as a character. And I enjoyed reading about how she made a place for herself at the Ministry as a woman. Seeing her work out how to work with another woman in the department was also great, Fatma really had to work on herself for a bit there and that was awesome to read. I will always root for her! And of course I will also always root for Siti. It was also really cool to see that Haida was a very different type of agent compared to Fatma, they are both great and it showed how there are different ways of being a woman in a field that is dominated by men.

I would highly recommend reading this book to basically everyone! It’s not necessary to read the other 3 stories in this series but I would recommend doing so. They’re short but really good and 2 of them are free to read on tordotcom. Have you read this series yet? Or anything else by this author? I would love to hear from you in the comments!