Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Djinn. Ghuls. Sorcerers. Never had to worry about this in my grandfather’s day.

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

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A Dead Djinn in Cairo CBR 17 Bingo: Border This refers to the border between the earthly plane and what lies beyond. *cracks knuckles* Here we go. I’ve been procrastinating on writing book reviews because it’s always more appealing to just start a new book than to sit down and summarize the book I either devoured or endured. With the ones I devoured, I doubt whether or not I can be objective since I was so into it when I was reading and still felt […]

Give This The Miniseries Treatment!

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

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I was pretty excited to finally pick up and find the time to read A Master of Djinn. I had previously been delighted by P. Djèlí Clark’s alternative, magical steampunk 1910s Cairo. The setting is just so damned fun. The novellas I had read before Master of Djinn—The Haunting of Tram Car 015 and A Dead Djinn in Cairo— were masterful in how they managed to be so descriptive for short form works, so was I curious as to how he would adapt an entire novel into this […]

The Rights of Women and Machines

The Haunting of Tramcar 015 by P. Djeli Clark

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Bingo 14: Machinery The Haunting of Tramcar 015 takes place in the same world as many of the author’s other works, a steampunk alternative history version of Cairo. The titular tramcar is a major part of the setting, the plot, and we even get some attention to the technical specs on how the tech is supposed to work; thus I would argue this novella/novelette qualifies for the technology focus square. The other reason for the label is that there’s a pretty detailed discussion of whether […]

Egyptian Nights

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Target: G. Willow Wilson’s Cairo.  Art by M.K. Perker Profile: Modern Fantasy, Urban, Middle Eastern, Graphic Novel Cairo is, in many ways, a prototype for G. Willow Wilson’s later novel, Alif the Unseen.  They are stories of clashing cultures. Both the complex internal clash between Islamic hardliners and the culturally diverse youth of the Middle East, and the more external, if no less complex conflict between encroaching western culture and the entrenched lifestyles of Muslims.  By necessity, Cairo is more spare, crashing through a much […]



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