Title: Alif the Unseen
Author: G. Willow Wilson
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Trigger Warnings: Sexual content, misogyny, sexism, racism, colorism
Note: Trigger warnings in DNF books only cover the part I read. There may be triggers further in the book that I did not encounter.
Read To: 29%
Back Cover:
In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients—dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups—from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the “Hand of God,” as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground.
When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.
Review:
As seems to be the theme for most of my DNF books lately, there are a lot of things in this book that, in theory, I should have liked.
- Middle Eastern settings, especially ones that are heavy on Islamic religious life.
- Independent hackers going against the government, with what might become some hacker vs. hacker action.
- Jinn in the modern world.
- Mixing the high-tech of hacking with the ancient magic of jinn.
Those are all promises I thought the back cover was making, and I was excited. But either I saw promises that weren’t actually there or the back cover writer deliberately played with my expectations, because that was not at all what I got.
My biggest complaint and the reason that I didn’t want to finish this book is that the book isn’t really about hackers or jinn or any of that stuff – it’s mostly about Alif’s dick. It’s made clear that Intisar, Alif’s aristocratic lover, is actually smart and interesting, but that doesn’t seem to be as important to Alif as his mental picture of her as beautiful and sexy, and then discovering she was in fact beautiful and sexy when he finally got her to take off her burqa for him, and then taking her virginity (but religiously it was okay because they signed a marriage license he printed off the internet) and then fantasizing about having her sexy body all to himself if he could marry her. There was hacker stuff and government agents after him and all that in the background, but Alif was more focused on Intisar deciding to marry someone else instead of him and receiving “looks that went straight to his groin” from other women than any of that running for his life nonsense. The magic jinn book actually showed up pretty early on but Alif was bound and determined to avoid that plot point at any costs.
The part where I really checked out of this book was a scene where Alif and his friend Dina are running from a government agent and he starts shooting at them. Alif tackles Dina down so she won’t get shot and ends up on top of her, and he takes the time to be aroused by feeling the shape of her body through her clothes, despite only being that close to her to shield her from bullets and they may both be about to die.
I expected – and wanted – hacker versus hacker option, jinn magic in the modern age, a high tech cat-and-mouse game in a Middle Eastern security state. Instead, I got an uncomfortably sex-fixated protagonist who focuses more on his dick than the stuff in the story I was actually interested in. I’m not sure exactly what this book is trying to be, but it definitely didn’t succeed in being interesting.
Bluejay Reads 