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A review by kjcharles
Earth Boy by Sami Shah
This is basically the second half of [b:Fire Boy|29234637|Fire Boy (Djinn-Son Duology, #1)|Sami Shah|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1456033400s/29234637.jpg|49475893] and I'm not really sure why it was published as two books. It's one in two halves. (Also: definitely not YA despite the title.)
Fantasy with a lot of horror elements set in modern Pakistan, mostly Karachi, with excursions to the world of the djinn. The mythology is used brilliantly and evocatively, and is often very scary, but there's a lot of humour as well. If you like Neil Gaiman before the ponderousness set in, you'd like this. The writing is mostly excellent (with a weird tick about repeated speech tags an editor should have fixed); it's a vivid fun fast-paced adventure that I enjoyed hugely, with a lot of things to say about religion and the state of the country.
I will say, this has the same issue as part one (obv, it's the same book) of an almost complete absence of women (literally two, with a handful of lines between them). This is hardly a problem unique in male fantasy writers (side eyes [b:The Stress of Her Regard|417656|The Stress of Her Regard|Tim Powers|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1290918017s/417656.jpg|937457]) and this author writes with a lot of emotional intelligence and heart. This half of the book is also very much about male anger and destructiveness, including in the way women are treated, and I suspect it wouldn't have felt like such an issue in the first book if I'd read it as one entire work. I'd put money the author will improve on that in the future. Shah's story in [b:The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories|30753517|The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories|Mahvesh Murad|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1473606714s/30753517.jpg|51301974] was one of the standouts of an excellent collection, and I will be right there for whatever he comes up with next.
Fantasy with a lot of horror elements set in modern Pakistan, mostly Karachi, with excursions to the world of the djinn. The mythology is used brilliantly and evocatively, and is often very scary, but there's a lot of humour as well. If you like Neil Gaiman before the ponderousness set in, you'd like this. The writing is mostly excellent (with a weird tick about repeated speech tags an editor should have fixed); it's a vivid fun fast-paced adventure that I enjoyed hugely, with a lot of things to say about religion and the state of the country.
I will say, this has the same issue as part one (obv, it's the same book) of an almost complete absence of women (literally two, with a handful of lines between them). This is hardly a problem unique in male fantasy writers (side eyes [b:The Stress of Her Regard|417656|The Stress of Her Regard|Tim Powers|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1290918017s/417656.jpg|937457]) and this author writes with a lot of emotional intelligence and heart. This half of the book is also very much about male anger and destructiveness, including in the way women are treated, and I suspect it wouldn't have felt like such an issue in the first book if I'd read it as one entire work. I'd put money the author will improve on that in the future. Shah's story in [b:The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories|30753517|The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories|Mahvesh Murad|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1473606714s/30753517.jpg|51301974] was one of the standouts of an excellent collection, and I will be right there for whatever he comes up with next.