Story: 6.5 / 10
Characters: 7
Setting: 8.5
Prose: 6.5

I learned a substantial amount about Islamic culture from this book. Compare this to a piece of literary fiction, which will predominantly focus on cultural exploration without a plot and you'll understand why Alif the Unseen is so unique.

Nevertheless, I had generally mixed feelings about the book. Very slow start, picking up only when the urban fantasy elements were introduced. Note also that this is a different type of fantasy novel, opposed to traditional Tolkien worlds, making it more interesting than most other books in this same genre. Not recommending it, but not warning others away from it either. ( )

This book had its problems, especially with the women characters. Some of those are highlighted well here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/758951337

As an Arabic speaker, I enjoyed reading the English translations of Arabic phrases. Whenever someone said, "My eyes," when asked a favor always got me. And "alhamdulillah," every time someone was asked how they were doing... I enjoyed that part a lot.

It took me a long time to put together the cover art with the story. Not the circuitry among the calligraphy (Molly pointed that out to me), but on the back, there's a hand that wards off the evil eye. Just made me think of The Hand that fought Alif. Interesting.

Minor spoiler: I wish she hadn't used Alif's given name, Mohammad. It was a funny quirk throughout the book to avoid saying his name, like the convert's.

I lived in Egypt a while back, and it was nostalgic to see the similarities between The City's culture and Egyptian culture. I also wondered if The City was Medina... Maybe so, maybe not.

The story was enough to keep me coming back and wanting to finish. Supernatural Arab story... I haven't read too many of those outside of Alf Layla wa Layla.

A fun story marred by a few problems. ( )

Alif the Unseen is something truly unique -- an urban fantasy spin on djinns and the Arabian Nights from a Muslim author, set in the the modern Middle East/Arab world. It sits on the edge between the genres of urban fantasy and cyberpunk in a delightful way, with computer code invoking imagery of the worlds of djinn and fantastical creatures. Like good speculative fiction, Wilson uses the speculative elements to cast a light on aspects of "real life" in the modern world, namely surveillance and suppression of the populace as the true scourge of the Arab world, oppressive to both the religious and the secular.

In the praise column here is also Wilson's beautiful, nuanced, discussion of religion, belief and faith. She contrasts the beliefs of several characters who do and don't believe in religion and/or djinn to various degrees of literalism. This exploration is fascinating. Many of the ideas, such as how to believe in the fantastic are generalizable across religions. It also was fascinating as a discourse on Islam.

Usually, any truly unique book on my shelf gets four stars, and this is truly unique and well-done. However, there is a major drawback that I would feel remise if I didn't address, which is the female characters. I know that Wilson is much believed for her work on the Miss Marvel series, which I had not read. However, there is not a shred of evidence of feminism in this book. The female characters have no agency at all and exist largely to be sexualized/romanticized by the male characters who do have agency. No book needs to be perfect in every respect, but the extent to which female characters exist only for male gaze here is beyond just failing the Bechdel test and borders on disturbing. ( )

Revolution, Love, Religion, Hackers, & Jinn. All the right ingredients for a contemporary look at life in an unnamed middle eastern city.
This novel is fantastically written and accessible for all readers, not just those well informed in current events.
G. Willow Wilson takes you on a whirlwind adventure of a young hacker embroiled in more than just his secluded computer life.
Alif's world is wonderfully described, from the dictatorial society to the invisible city of the Jinn. We see the beauty and also "the desperate, fearful, and claustrophobic conditions in which the citizens of the city live." -RR
The first time I read it I was taken in by the thrill of the chase, the second time I was able to appreciate the details more. ( )

I love this book. With the excitement of intrigue, the imagination of sci-fi, Wilson has woven a fabulous story. This is a page turner. ( )

This book ate my brain. So good! It’s like Harry Potter and the Arabian Nights had a love child raised by Jason Bourne.

I read this for a book club and the discussion was fascinating. I seemed to be on the extreme on one side, loving the book while others liked it with reservations, with a few having serious problems with it. Though the issues others had with the book, I was able to explain away because I saw the story and the characters as a series of allegories. Alif et al represented different parts of a modern Arab society, and I appreciated how Wilson wove the different threads together to show that the culture was at once both a melting pot of the old and new, as well as a renunciation of the old.

There was a bit of handwavium going on with the coding (Willow is obviously not a programmer) which I was able to suspend disbelief for, for the most part. And it was interesting that of all the characters, the convert was never named.

I enjoyed it. ( )

A very cleaver novel that truly helps non-Muslims understand the faith better. It was interesting to learn that jinn are in fact mentioned in the Quran as a third race created by God among the Angels and the Humans. Reading religious fiction makes me, at least, realize we are all one faith interpenetrating it in different forms and believing the common belief that good conquers evil. ( )

While I would love to give this a better rating I can't because I absolutely hated the main character. I have rarely read any books where I loathed the main character as much as this one. Alif (the protagonist) is a whiny, moody, angsty, sexist little sh**. I got tired of his bruised man ego, temper tantrums and his crying and wailing real quick. It was ridiculous how he couldn't get one single thing right even when he had a ton of other characters helping him out. If the book had made Dina (side character) the protagonist this would have made for a much more interesting read as she was the most intelligent, realistic and courageous character in this story but that didn't happen. To be honest at times even she annoyed me by acting like a doormat for Alif. The only positives was the setting and the introduction of the djinn (and even the djinn could have been fleshed out a lot more). The attempt at technobabble was pathetic. I am rarely leave this scathing of a review but I am upset because this could have been a GREAT READ, the setup was there, but it crashed and burned and that is really disappointing. ( )

So good on so many levels! Perhaps because the plot kept surprising me, but also because this book allowed me to question stereotypes I didn't even know I had, and readjust what I thought I knew. Amazing how sf/f can do what reading 1000 articles written by Muslim feminists cannot. ( )

The early part of this book about computer hacking failed to engage me, but it soon moved into his flight and the fantastical characters and setting I found surprisingly engaging. The story comes to a satisfying conclusion with good winning over evil. ( )

My favorite thing about this book was trying to describe it to people.

"It's urban fantasy set in the Middle East around the Arab Spring."
"It's hacker sci-fi fantasy, but not exactly hacker."
"It's got djinn and computers and book nerds."
"It's got programmers doing the digital version of the Muslim version of Kabbalah. I think."

Yeah. You should totally read this. The great pacing, breathtaking genre-bending, and great world-building (one of the reasons I created this "shelf" in the first place) easily earn this book five stars despite the flaws I might pick at. I would far rather read five more books like this one than miss them because I knocked a star off! (That said, hey GoodReads, can you give us a more nuanced rating system? You know, "rate this book on: story, characters" etc., instead of just rating the whole book.)

So why did I reread this book when I'm supposedly trying not to do that anymore? Easy: I remembered liking this book a lot, but I didn't remember the whole thing because I liked it so much the first time that I read it to fast. *Sigh* Bookworm problems. Yeah, I only remembered the main plot points of the first half of the book, plus one or two scenes from the rest.

This book ticks off all my favorites boxes: Wilson draws us not one but two complex and believeable world settings (what's funny is I think I generally gravitate toward books told from the other side of the Empty Quarter), there are plenty of fun characters running around, more than just one of them is a woman, there are books and mythology and crises of different kinds of faith and actual discussion of them. Shots at toxic masculinity and American exceptionalism are fired and they land in the right places. There's discussed but not fetishized diversity of race, gender, age, species. No points for sexuality, but see the note on toxic masculinity. On that note, don't read this book if you're sensitive to -ist slurs of any kind, because I think most of them are covered. They all make sense for the world and characters, but it's definitely jarring. Men in toxically masculine societies, eh?

I also really like how this is a relatively quiet book. I mean, yeah, a book about programmers and books isn't going to be full of chases, and there were a few shoehorned in there, but it's rare to find a book that's found a balance between the intellectual plot progression and the physical, change-of-setting plot progression.

The book is chock-full of good quotes, so I'll leave my other comments to go alongside those. Do note that I read the ARC version, so there might be some slight differences between the quote and the final. If I could find the modern-day version of :Frankenstein in terms of my level of enjoyment, I'd read them side by side to compare. But before we get to the quotes...

...complaints!

1. Sex. I've gotten over grousing about this for most books, but I still don't understand why Azalel and Alif had sex. What purpose did it serve? Alif had already saved her life, and then when the plot got around to needing this event to have occurred, it gave us another, even better, reason for her to be protective of him (and Dina!).

2. I get that Alif had to really believe he was in love with Intisar to set the whole plot going, but if he loved her so much, or even just thought he loved her so much how and why did he throw her over for Dina so quickly? Even knowing intellectually that you'd rather be with one person doesn't make the other one just disappear.

3. And I rather resent that Intisar ends up being so two-dimensional when none of the other (gloriously many!) women in the book is. I liked her character quite a bit until the story needed a reason to shuffle her off stage left.

Finally, I'm just going to gush about the cover design a bit, 'cause it's wicked awesome. It's got the Islamic green and the architectural shapes, the computer green and motherboard circuit patterns (which, I must say, fit incredibly well with abstract Islamic designs (plus keeping a picture off the cover is also respectful to Muslims)), the main character's name which pretty cleverly looks about as close to Arabic as the Latin alphabet is going to get and, best of all...the designer got a freakin' alif in there! I could easily see it being overlooked by most designers, even if it might sort of technically have been there as long as only the "A" was capitalized. Probably the author or editor pointed out the paragraph that talks about the simplicity of Alif's user name and the designer ran with it. This, folks, is how you do cover art.

Quote Roundup

11) "Metaphors are dangerous. Calling something by a false name changes it, and metaphor is just a fancy way of calling something by a false name."
Gee, I wonder which character this might apply to. Hm... As a writer, I both agree and disagree with this. Metaphors are essential in any writer's toolkit, but I do agree that doing them incorrectly can be dangerous. Just look at X-Men, which is notoriously easy to interpret as a metaphor for racism made using mostly white people. As an example.

44) Perhaps somewhere deep in the mind was a sort of linguistic DNA, roped helixes of symbols that belonged to no one else. For days Alif wrote nothing--no code, no email--and instead wondered how much of the soul resided in the fingertips. he was faced with the posiblity that every word he typed spoke his name, no matter what other superficial information it might contain. Perhaps it was impossible to become someone else, no matter what avatar or handle one hid behind.
The kind of passage to give a lit nerd shivers. I understand why Alif's Tin Sari program is dangerous (though I do think it could be done some day), but I would be fascinated to see what my digital DNA looks like. (I initially wrote "fingerprint" to be different from the quote, but DNA really does fit better--the written soul is, I imagine, far more complex than a simple stamp.)

108) "So the stories aren't just stories, is what you're saying. They're really secret knowledge disguised as stories." "One could say that of all stories."
Yes, I am a sucker for quotable metaliterary commentary, shut up.

121) "No. No way. I don't want foreigners involved in my business. Jinn are one thing but I draw the line at Americans."
I really need to figure out how to put GIFs in these reviews, because I could use someone laughing uproariously for this one.

157) "The Convert", who never gets a name for some reason (probably SYMBOLISM) throws a hissy fit and makes some good points except for the fact that she's an over-privileged white American, which takes some of the force out of her arguments. Which, is that even fair? Because if Dina gave this speech about women, I would totally be on her side. I mean, it doesn't help that she starts her self-righteous rant with "you people." Jeez, didn't you learn anything since moving there?

192) "It is only given to women to see without being seen--men must act in the open, or not at all."
Ah, this takes me back to the mansplaining of Morocco. Okay, so I definitely only twitched at that line because of the culture I'm in. It's fascinating, though, that this adds women to those who are "the unseen." Very deliberate, I'm sure, and pointed in its own way.

193) "They say that each word of the Quran has seven thousand layers of meaning, each of which, though some might seem contrary or simply unfathomable to us, exist equally at all times without cosmological contradiction."
A sheikh after my heart! I absolutely love the idea of things existing in more than one state at the same time--it's something I think about more than really makes sense, considering how grounded in reality most of my life is. But I like thinking about how light is both a particle and a wave, for example. How awesome is that?

232) Just some lovely writing comparing a remarkable architectural feature to the program Alif is building.

264) "Our impulse to store and access data through coding languages predates computers by thousands of years, and that's really all magic is."
Okay, I hate to make the comparison to a two-star book, but The House of the Four Winds also had a cool quote linking magic to words--though in that case, it was using The Word (of God) to justify magic in the world. Plus you know I'm going to like any quote that says words are magic, because I'm still sad I didn't get my letter from Hogwarts.

268) "People don't want freedom anymore... They are so terrified by their own power that they will vote to have it taken out of their hands. Look at America."
This struck disturbingly close to home in light of Brexit and Trump as an actual presumptive presidential nominee.

303) "The world is crawling with religious fanatics. Surely belief is thriving."
"...Belief is dying out. ... Find me someone for whom the hidden folk are simply real, as described in the Books. ... You're prepared to accept the irrational, but not the transcendent."

354) A moment to pat NewQuarter on the back for being my voice when he's grousing about the saccharine couple. Then...
"No," said Dina. "We don't burn books."
"Who's we?"
"People with an ounce of brain."
"But you hate more books than almost anybody I know." ...
"When have I ever suggested you burn them? I'm allowed to have opinions, aren't I?"
Dina is the voice of reason and a friend to books everywhere. We need more people who think like this, and not just about books.
And then, a little later in the paragraph...
"I was afraid you'd turn into one of those literary types who say books can change the world when they're feeling good about themselves and it's only a book when anybody challenges them. It wasn't about the books themselves--it was about the hypocrisy."
Sadly, I'm sure I'm guilty of this, and I've certainly known fellow hypocrites. Something to watch out for in myself in the future.

370) "We have reached a state of constant reinvention. Revolutions have moved off the battlefield and on to home computers. Nothing shocks one anymore. We are living in a post-fictional era. Fictional governments are accepted without comment, and we can sit in a mosque and have a debate about the fictional pork that a fictional character consumes in a video game, with every gravity we would accord something quite real."

408) Alif knew the bitter, boundless energy that came of having no dignity left to lose--it was what had made the difference between the idle boy with a computer he had been at fifteen, and the threat he had become a few years later.
Chilling words describing the motivation of most terrorists these days. How many of the boys and men who've shot up schools and movie theaters in the US started on the computer? Not to vilify the computer, though--just that feeling of entitlement that's more easily spread online, which leads them to think that not getting their way is the same as having no dignity left because you've been denied real human rights. ( )

Yay! I liked this one. Place, culture, religion, djinn and expats. All rolled up in a rushing sandstorm of a narrative. I was never bored. ( )

4.5 stars. I really enjoyed this book; it had elements of magic/fantasy, technology, political drama, repressive society, religion, culture. Willow Wilson hes weaved a story of intrigue about a young Arab hacker, who seeks to allow Internet access to all who can afford his protection, and who falls in love with an upper class girl. When she breaks up with him, he writes a program that can identify a person based on their typing, syntax, etc. so he can hide from her, but the program falls into the hands of the repressive government, and is used to trap him. Entrusted with an ancient book, with mysterious powers, the hacker has to enlist the help of the dangerous Vikram and delve into the world of djinns and high technology. A bit predictable at times, there are wonderful characters, including the religious head of a mosque, with philosophy and moral issues galore. You won't read another book like this one. ( )

I loved the world and the writing, but I never fully got into caring about the main character. He is very lucky in his friends for no clear reason. Maybe we all are. ( )

Have you ever read a book you enjoyed so much you both wanted to devour it in one sitting and also hide it away because you never wanted it to end? This was totally that book for me. Action! Adventure! Hilarity! Bad, bad guys! Computer hackers! Jinn! Just the right amount of love story! It was just about everything I wanted out of a story. I loved how Wilson incorporated folklore and traditional Islam into a story about coding. Normally, I don't care for when an author creates a story within a story--as in taking up pages and pages with another pretend author's work. It generally just gets distracting and detracts from the overall plot. Maybe it's that I tend to like Middle East folktales and Wilson mirrored them really well, but I loved the few stories she made up for the Alf Yeom. I loved all the philosophical discussions of religion, mysticism, politics, and the digital age (and how they intersect), and that they kept up with the pace of the story. I loved, loved, loved all the jinn. I loved Alif's transformation in character over the course of the book. I loved how vivid Wilson's language was--there was no point where I felt like I was outside the book just reading the words.

How did this not get nominated for an Alex Award? This is absolutely Alex material.

I generally avoid buying books for my Kindle, but I happened to snag this as a Kindle Daily Deal as I had been meaning to read it for a while. I'm so glad I did, not just because I would have gone right out and bought it after reading it, but for the extra content at the end. The Kindle version includes a short section about the five types of jinn, a remarkable essay on how Wilson actually wrote this before the Arab Spring occurred, and an interesting interview about her aims to blend and communicate the East and West aspects of her life (plus a glossary, but between having a somewhat basic working knowledge of Muslim culture and the context the words appeared in the story, I never felt I needed to skip back to it and break the flow of reading). I noticed the hardbound copy my library owns does not have any of this, which, while perhaps not crucial to the book itself, is still somewhat of a loss.

I can't wait for Wilson's next book. In the meantime, I'm going to scour her back catalog. ( )

Interesting subject but it didn't have the authentic feel of computer expertise you get with someone like Neal Stephenson. (probably an unfair comparison)

Also the audiobook narrator's pacing seemed way too sedate - I listened to most of it on 1.5 speed. ( )

This was an interesting premise but too much plot. I think more character and a bit less complex story would have helped me engage a bit more. ( )

SO GOOD. super ambitious and crazy and ridiculous, but I loved the entire thing. ALIF! top five of the year, easily. ( )

The blurb and cover make this book seem like it is more contemporary than fantasy, but I would call it more fantasy than anything else. This book took me into a myth cycle that I didn't know much about and made it familiar, though not as familiar as it would be if I was from the culture of the book's people. I was very struck by how much like the good neighbors jinn were, and how much I liked them. I'll admit, several plot points I saw coming from a ways away, but that kind of thing does not bother me if the book is otherwise keeping my attention. Alif kept my attention. I didn't always understand him or his culture, but I liked him well enough, even in the beginning when most reviewers said he was an ass. Initially I did not like the neighbor, Dina, but she grows into one of the best characters, if still annoying to my sensibilities. I liked all the jinn, especially the fact that one is a vampire/dog and another walks around as a cat. All in all, this is an excellent book. I recommend it to those who have gotten tired of fantasy worlds that are just like every other. There is a lot of mention of religion in the story, which is consistent with the cultural setting. I would advise those who are bugged by that kind of thing to leave off this one, though it is a shame to do so. ( )

This was great, really enjoyed it. Present-day-ish cyberpunk in a key similar to Doctorow's Little Brother, set in a fictional Middle Eastern country, with a supernatural layer of djinn thrown into the mix. Very well paced and plotted, a fun read. ( )

Good book! Ah, I've been really happy about my recent book choices. I accidentally finished this book within a day. It took me about 60 pages to get into it, but once action starting packing up, it had me wanting to read on and on (which I did).
An interesting look-in at Arab life, I think, and the Arab Spring fictionalized. A good amount of characters didn't get the depth they deserved -there were plenty of cliches hanging around Alif, or Dina, but even moreso around Intisar and 'the convert', but that might be due to the action-packed nature of the book.
It's fantasy-hacker in an Arab city, and it's awesome ^^ ( )

I wanted to rate this book higher, because I finished it in 2 days and kept on reading. I just...didn't get the story? I loved the paralel djinn world and would have loved to read more about it. I have no idea what to make of the story I just finished. There is this book, the opposite of '1000 and 1 nights' that's supposedly a book that can be used for internet coding? What?! I feel like it never got explained very well what this book was really about, why it was so special, why Alif had to run and hide all the time. It just happened, but never did I feel like I really knew why. I kept hoping some answers would be given in the end but it never happened. So many things could have been explored so much more, but nothing was really done with it. The idea behind the story might have been good, but the execution of it wasn't. Not for me. The writing was nice and kept me reading, but the rest just felt rushed. ( )

A clever mashup of equal parts efreet fantasy and golden hackers in a Big Brother Muslim state seems like a winner at first glance to me. I love everything about the first two and the addition of throwing it into a Muslim culture MAY or may not have been a winning move. Sometimes it can come off strange or cheesy or uncomfortable.

Fortunately, Wilson's strong writing and respectful nature carried a number of complex and interesting characters into a great tale with romantic elements, stronger hackereze, and a massive David and Goliath take-down that rove right into the Unseen world of the spirits of air and fire.

How does this work?

Well, as a matter of fact.

Combining the mystical permutations of Allah with quantum computing is as natural as breathing. Has anyone seen Pi? ;)

So, this book mashed all my buttons. I didn't even care it was YA. I'm a fan. ( )

The character of the convert was such a painfully obvious self-insert of the author that I could not read any further after she showed up. I flinched every time she spoke. This was a perfectly good story without you, G. Willow Wilson. Let your characters live and breathe without putting yourself in the mix. ( )

Programmer Vs. State. Programmer Vs. The Hand. Programmer Vs. Jinn. Programmer Vs. World. This book is packed with everything that a story worth telling(and worth reading) is packed with: Compelling characters; colorful writing; fantasy; cultural value. Want to dive into the "Twitter Era", and ponder how the way we communicate today on the internet affects the political landscape? READ THIS! As a programmer myself I found Alif to be well-crafted; his anxiety was on point; his quirks are unique enough to make him feel authentic; the way his thought process works is akin to that of a programmer--break problems piece by piece and solve each piece at a time. However, the "programmer character" gimmick does NOT get in the way enough that you don't enjoy the other richness of the story; the way Wilson uses myth, religion and fantasy makes this story one hell of a sucker-punch when it comes to craft. It's a fun story--read it! And also read Ms. Marvel(also by Wilson); the writing in Alif the Unseen also has the vivid quality of a comic book-- coloring subjects that seem black and white--religion, politics, the digital era--while at the same time inspecting them seriously enough to provoke your brain. Can't say it enough: Read this book, you will get the chance to jump into this colorful world and also get some perspective into the political landscape in the "Twitter Era". ( )