Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

Previously published in the Herald Magazine. 

Alif the Unseen begins in Persia ‘long ago’, with a cleric attempting to transcribe stories narrated by a djinn he has trapped for the purpose. The cleric has plans for these stories: he will ‘assign each element of each story a number, […A]nd in doing so create a code that determines their quantitative relationship to one another. [He] will gain power over them’. Centuries later in a teeming modern day Arab state young ‘hacktivist’ Alif finds himself in possession of these stories in the form of the ‘Alf Yeom wa Yeom’ - The Thousand and One Days. Alif is being hunted by the Hand, the state’s premier cybercop, for offering protection for various online concerns attempting to avoid state censorship. Desperate for help, Alif reaches out to the Unseen - djinn who live in the Empty Quarter and believe the Alf Yeom to be a sort of Philosopher’s stone of knowledge, and so cyberpunk meets Eastern mysticism in this clunky first novel by Cairo-based American writer G. Willow Wilson. 

Much of Wilson’s treatment of the narrative shows poor restraint. Though easy to read, it is stuffed with far too many characters and unnecessary smaller story arcs. The characters in Alif are often very limited too, especially the female characters. Most are caricatures - Alif’s Indian immigrant mother, the second wife of a wealthy Arab never does anything more than cook or berate Alif about getting a steady job. The various jinn women serve very specific purposes within their limited depictions. The ‘convert’ is a Muslim American academic who provides some information about the Alf Yeom and proceeds to be entirely useless for most of the book thereafter. Alif’s initial love interest is Intisar, who is a gorgeous rich girl who essentially slums it with her online boyfriend for a few nights before her marriage is fixed with a wealthy member of royalty who (in a painfully obvious early reveal) turns out to be the man hunting Alif and the Alf Yeom. The plain but smart, resourceful girl next door Dina is a little better rounded than the other women, but ultimately her relationship with Alif is reduced to a cliche. Wilson spends an inordinate amount of time writing about Dina’s niqaab: how she handles it, its colours, textures, movements, it’s veil. Perhaps this is exotic to a Western audience, perhaps it isn’t. What it is, is a weak distraction from a clunky plot, lists of inefficient redundant characters and info-dumps enough to bore even the most seasoned YA/genre reader. 

Alif the Unseen is an odd book. Though it has an interesting premise, it tries to be much more than it is capable of. It is clearly supported by many strong influences and perhaps this is its major weakness - its ambitions are far too high for it to reach. There are strains here of the books of Diana Wynne Jones, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics - all great influences to have but far too easy to use as a crutch. Alif’s techno-thriller aspect is quite pedestrian and is not at ease with the mysticism Wilson seems fond of - the tying together of these two elements does not feel organic. Her treatment of Islamic arcana feels immature, relying mostly on existing novelties rather than presenting new ones.