Friday, May 29, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson



Alif the Unseen was the debut novel from author G Willow Wilson, well known for her work on comics (in particular, for being the creator of Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan).  For a debut novel, it was highly acclaimed, even winning the World Fantasy Award in 2013.  I finally read Wilson's 2nd novel, 2019's "The Bird King", earlier this year and I loved it, so I decided naturally a next step would be to check out her first novel as well.

And well, I have some mixed feelings about Alif the Unseen.  It's very much a novel of its time, taking place during the Arab Spring in an unnamed Middle Eastern country (implied to be like the UAE) and a bit more optimistic about the effects of that movement than history has borne out.  That aside it does feature a story which is a fascinating mix of modern technology (computer hacking in particular) and Islamic mythology (Many types of Jinn, Vikram the Vampire, etc.).  On the other hand, the main character is kind of an ass, especially towards women at the start, and while he kind of learns to be better, it's not done enough to make me actually like him, whereas other characters kind of don't get the attention they deserve.

More expounding on this after the jump:

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Alif (not his real name, but the name he prefers) is a computer hacker in an unnamed Arab state in the time of the Arab Spring - although the protests have not reached his state.  Alif's coding proficiency is used to help anyone opposed to governments - for whatever reason - protect their thoughts, their ideas, and their secrets from the forces of state security, who look to suppress all dissent brutally if they find it.

Alif's online work led him to a noble woman with whom he's fallen in love, Intisar, and who he'd do anything for.  But when Intisar breaks it off as a result of her family arranging a marriage with another, it drives Alif to create a computer program with dangerous security implications....a program that State Security gets its hands on.  And to make things worse, Alif soon gets his hands on an ancient and mysterious book, which State Security is even more desperate to get for some reason.

With nowhere safe to turn, Alif and his friend Dina are forced to turn to the underbelly of the City for help - and it is there they find themselves confronted with beings long thought merely myth: the Jinn.  For the book contains the secret knowledge of the Jinn, a knowledge that if combined with modern technology could have serious consequences for human freedom. And if the wrong hands get their hands on it, more will be lost than Alif's own life.....
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Alif the Unseen is a story set during the Arab Spring in an unnamed Arab country - I think it's meant to be a pastiche of the UAE, but it's never directly identified.  For those unfamiliar with the Arab Spring, it was a moment of revolutionary fever sparked in Middle Eastern countries, helped along by a nascent social media (twitter, pretty new at the time, was a big part of this).  Most well known was the Egyptian movement which eventually displaced its leader, Hosni Mubarek, and led to elections that put the Muslim Brotherhood party in "charge."  I use quotation marks because the long term effects of the movements in each country were less successful than people would have hoped at the time - to again use Egypt as an example, the powerful military essentially countered popular sentiment and took power back, and things are largely as they once were, not the democratic outcome people imagined.

Alif the Unseen was released at the end of the movement itself (using wikipedia's dating of it as 2012) and as a result is a bit more positive about what it - and the people in these countries - can accomplish by banding together against the security state.  That's about all I want to point out about the politics of the situation here, but I think it's important context for the novel's tone, which might have been different if written a few yeas later.  Still, the novel isn't dependent upon the Arab Spring having been a success, so it still does work for the most part.

This is because Wilson does an excellent job creating a world that's a fusion of our modern world with Islamic mythology.  And I mean a modern version of an Arab State, which Wilson smartly and interestingly makes more diverse than the typical western perception would have: our main character is half-Indian and is far from the only non "pure" Arab resident; our main female character veils herself but is not some shut-in pampered religious woman as Westerners might believe, and computer and phone technology is everywhere, just like it is in the West.  This isn't some exotic place, it's a very real place that you can imagine as part of our world.  And Wilson ties that in with the secret presence of the Jinn - who amusingly use that technology themselves - who have their own spaces and cultures even in a world that has mostly stopped believing in them.  Wilson uses this world to weave a plot with multiple twists and turns, with fun dialogue and moments throughout despite a serious tale being at its heart, which kept my interest through the entire book, despite the flaws in the characters.

And yeah, the characters here have some serious flaws.  Alif, our main character is an absolute jackass to women, making everything about himself early between him and Intisar, even freaking sending back to her a bloody bedsheet when she's broke it all off (no seriously), which is beyond creepy.  And while he realizes he was kind of stupid to a certain extent, it's more in the "realizes he wasn't in love with the real Intisar" and "the woman he wanted was there all along" than in actually realizing his behavior was bad!  It's....not good.

And probably the 2nd biggest major character, Alif's friend Dina who all too obviously has feelings for him, spends most of the book revolving solely around Alif and only has a few individual moments of individuality (most notably her critiquing the idea of reading edgy/rebellious books as a replacement for actually doing something to make a difference).  The book is aware seemingly that Alif doesn't deserve her love, with her declaring at one point that she loves the man she thinks he could be, not who he is, but why on Earth would she believe that!  She's not the only problematic woman in this novel: Intisar basically comes across as the bad one in the Alif-Intisar interaction which uh - no? - and the other major major woman is an American who doesn't even GET a name, being called only "The Convert", which might be an attempt to comment on how American books wouldn't even give Middle Eastern characters real names but in this book just makes her passivity in the wake of a really creepy guy/jinn more apparent.

There are some serious character/gender issues here, is basically what I'm saying, and if I didn't trust Wilson, I probably would've DNFed this as a result of it.  The finished product has enough interesting in the setting and action and concept to be maybe worth your time, but the gender issues here are serious enough I hesitate to recommend it fully.


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