Book Review: The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories

Right off the bat let me admit that I’m not a huge fan of short stories… Typically, I prefer my characters and plot lines more complex than shorts allow. That said, a number of my favorite authors seem to publish shorts in collections like this one frequently, so I occasionally pick the books up to get my interim fix between novels. That’s what happened with this one – I saw that there were stories by Neil Gaiman, Claire North AND Nnedi Okorafor in this one. That, coupled with the topic (which I haven’t seen as a focal point of a full collection before), caught both my eye and my interest.

I often read short stories in mish-mash order. I usually check out the authors I know/follow first. So step one: look up the Neil Gaiman, since he’s one of my all-time favorites. Well, the Gaiman story here is actually an excerpt from American Gods. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a fantastic book – but I’ve read it. So rereading this segment in here didn’t add anything for me…

After that I looked up the Claire North. I have a love/hate relationship with her – Claire North is actually Catherine Webb, who is also Kate Griffin. Weird as it sounds, I LOVE Kate Griffin, quite like Catherine Webb, and love the ideas of Claire North but generally hate their execution. So I was a little skittish about this one. I was surprised to find that it read like a Kate Griffin idea executed by Claire North – I’d have preferred it if it had been flip-flopped, since I prefer Kate Griffin’s writing style, but it was still an improvement over my usual readings of Claire North’s stories in that I actually finished it.

After this, I decided to save the Nnedi Okorafor for the end (where it was positioned in the table of contents) – I knew if it disappointed, I’d never reopen the book, so I started reading the rest more or less in order.

I was surprised that a number of the stories dealt with war and soldiers – I probably shouldn’t be, djinn/genies have their origins in Middle Eastern mythology, and the contemporary (and, frequently, historical) geopolitical reality is that war and soldiers are ongoing phenomena in the Middle East. Still, I have never really been a fan of war as a genre – coupled with my general ambivalence about short stories, that wasn’t exactly a recipe for success. So there were a handful of stories that lost me out of the gate – it’s not that there was anything critically wrong with them, per se, just that they had two strikes against them in my personal taste book.

So far, the tally isn’t looking great, is it? I poked through the rest of the stories and found a couple I quite liked (The Congregation,Queen of Sheba,The Jinn Hunter’s Apprentice) , but I struggled through a bunch of them, reading a few pages and then moving on. Finally, the only story left was the Okorafor.

It was great! I just LOVE her storytelling style. She has a marvelous mastery of language, her characters (even in shots) are always amazing, and her plots are original and complicated and inspiring. Her stories are full of damage and redemption and magic, and this short was no exception. I am new to her writing, so have only read two books (Akata Witch, The Book of Phoenix) to date – I get the impression that this one references a character in one of her other works, and am eager to find out!

So all in all, the collection was – as most are – a mixed bag for me. Still, there were a few very bright spots, so if the topic intrigues you at all you should check it out.

My review copy was provided by NetGalley. The Djinn Falls in Love will be released March 9, 2017.