Agents of the Ministry of Alchemy

[mtvessel]

May 2021 / Jan 2022
A Dead Djinn in Cairo / The Haunting of Tram Car 015 - P. Djeli Clark – Tor, 2016 / 2019
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After the generally splendid steampunk stylings of The Black God's Drums, I thought these two novellas were fun but a bit lightweight. They are set in an alternative early twentieth-century Cairo where djinns and their magic are a thing. As its name implies, A Dead Djinn in Cairo is a mystery in which one of these highly magical beings is found dead and exsanguinated in the middle of a magical working fashioned in its own writing. Did it commit suicide? Was it ghuls? And why is there an angel's feather amongst the djinn's effects? Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha'arawi of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, a woman who dresses in English tailored suits and carries a walking cane, investigates. It's a well-told story that rises to a nice climax, but the short format and the necessity to shoehorn in a mass of worldbuilding mean that Fatma's eccentric taste in clothing, and her struggle to be given the respect she deserves by her sexist colleagues, are her only distinguishing features.

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is similar but has a more original premise. Hamed Nasr, another agent of the Ministry of Alchemy etc., is called in to fix a problem with Cairo's djinn-built aerial transit system, which is that one of its autonomous tramcars has developed a ghost problem. Assisted by eager rookie Onsi Youssef, Hamed has to identify what manner of spirit it is, what it wants, and most importantly, how to get it out without breaking the departmental budget. The story has a pleasing feminist sub-stratum to balance out the two male main characters, and the writing is light and humorous, but again there is no real opportunity for the characters to develop.