#p djèlí clark | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

After the announcement of the deal with Yahoo!, there were 170K signatures of unhappy Tumblr users petitioning to prevent the sale in 2013.

aliteratepenguin · 7 months

Text

“You think it’s that bad?” “When there’s a strange, unknown disturbance centered around the one place meant to investigate strange, unknown disturbances—yeah, I think it might be that bad.”

-A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

#books #reading #quotes #a master of djinn #p djèlí clark #v's book log

2 notes · View notes

instantkrazy · 1 year

Text

My first book festival experience at yallwest was very fun. If I keep going to festivals I will need another bookshelf.

#yallwst #yallwest 2023 #ARCs #sarah raasch #beth revis #judy bloom #gretchen schrieber #kathryn purdie #h e edgmon #olivia worley #p djèlí clark #kristen simmons #ali hazelwood #kayvion lewis #j elle #niki pau preto #david arnold #lynn painter #YA

1 note · View note

haveyoureadthisfantasybook · 5 months

Text

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#books #fantasy #A Master of Djinn #Dead Djinn universe #P. Djèlí Clark #poll #result: no #l: English

21 notes · View notes

kay-claire · 3 months

Text

I finished A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark today and absolutely loved it.

Synopsis:

Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 50 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage. Alongside her Ministry colleagues and her clever girlfriend Siti, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city -or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems…

My Review

I highly recommend reading A Dead Djinn in Cairo, the 0.1 novella in this series, before starting this book! I skipped all the other novellas (though I'll probably get around to them when I can because I do love this universe), and didn't feel like it made a difference, but A Dead Djinn in Cairo is where Fatma and Siti meet, and the case they work on in that book is referenced multiple times in this book and has a huge impact on the overall plot - I would have been SO annoyed and confused by all those references if I hadn't read that book first. That out of the way, I LOVE this book. The setting - alternate universe 1920s Egypt with some steampunk vibes to it - is SO cool, the main characters are fantastic, and the plot and mystery are really fun. I wouldn't try and sell this as a romance (the main couple are already together at the beginning of the book and the story doesn't revolve around them too much), but Fatma is a butch lesbian with hot femme fatal girlfriend Siti, and Fatma's friendship with Hadia, her new partner in the department, is a delight. I also think it had some fantastic things to say about colonialism, racism, colourism, slavery and xenophobia - often with a fantastic dry humour to it. If you're a fan of A Marvellous Light's trilogy by Freya Marske I would highly recommend this to you.

#a master of djinn #p. djèlí clark #book recs #book recommendation #bipoc authors #queer books #lgbt books #sapphic books #booklr #reading #book review

10 notes · View notes

freckles-and-books · 9 months

Text

Currently reading: a P. Djèlí Clark middle grade novel. It already made me cry 🥲

#books #Abeni’s Song #p. djèlí clark #middle grade fantasy #currently reading

24 notes · View notes

queer-book-character-tournament · 1 year

Text

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Gavin Livingstone- Green Creek Series by TJ Klune

Fatma el-Sha’arawi- A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

Benji- Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White

Kade Bronson- Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire

#Gavin Livingstone #Brothersong #The Timberwolf #Green Creek Series #Green Creek #TJ Klune #Fatma el-Sha’arawi #A Master of Djinn #P. Djèlí Clark #Benji #Hell Followed With Us #Andrew Joseph White #Kade Bronson #Wayward Children #Seanan McGuire #polls #lgbt books #queer book character tournament 2

51 notes · View notes

haveyoureadthispoll · 2 months

Text

Creeper, a scrappy young teen, is done living on the streets of New Orleans. Instead, she wants to soar, and her sights are set on securing passage aboard the smuggler airship Midnight Robber. Her ticket: earning Captain Ann-Marie’s trust using a secret about a kidnapped Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums. But Creeper keeps another secret close to heart--Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, who speaks inside her head and grants her divine powers. And Oya has her own priorities concerning Creeper and Ann-Marie…

#book: the black god's drums #author: p. djèlí clark #genre: fantasy #genre: steampunk #genre: novella #genre: sci fi #genre: historical fiction #year: 2010s

7 notes · View notes

haveyoureadthishorrorbookpoll · 3 months

Text

Have you read...

In America, demons wear white hoods. In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

submit a horror book!

#Ring Shout #P. Djèlí Clark #p djeli clark #horror books #horrorbookpoll #horror #bookblr #books #thriller books #historical fiction #novella #black horror #black literature #lovecraftian #fantasy horror

6 notes · View notes

st-just · 1 year

Note

Opinions on the novel and novella categories excluding Elder Race?

Okay so, uh, 3 months late finally answering this (sorry - but I DID read Elder Race in the meantime!)

So, novels-

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine The central metaphor of how an empire can only understand something by consuming/assimilating it into itself was imo well-done, one of the better uses of a hive mind alien I've seen in a while. Mahit and (especially) Three Seagrass continue to be delightful. The whole palace drama plot in the City leaned a biiiiiit too close to 'the Empress is just and good! Sadly scheming ministers and self-interested officials have attempted to mislead her for their own ends' for my tastes, which absolutely made me start rooting for scheming vizer guy out of spite. Still kind of confused what happened to the Judiciary Minister who vanished 2/3 of the way into the first book without comment. Excellent read, would recommend

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers Absolutely my favorite thing Chambers has written, but that is a very low bar. There were a few pages of actual interpersonal conflict that wasn't just a silly misunderstanding! (Even if they had apologized and agreed to disagree by the end of the next chapter). In principle I approve of any sci fi with no human characters in major roles. Aeleon demography continues to give me a headache (how do you spend so much time on worldbuilding and just mess up the basic math?) - though honestly Pei's whole conflict over the societal expectation to have a kid would have had a bit more tension/drama to it in a setting where her species was legitimately endangered and at risk of extinction (the sheer angst potential!) Anyway, yeah, well-executed but Not For Me.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki I did, uh, not much like this book. In a 'spent a couple hours cathartically ranting about it on discord after finishing it' sort of way. The central romance didn't work, every character arc was perfectly predictable, the whole incessantly hammered home bit about the magic and wonder of home-cooked food just makes me want to gag, I can kind of see what Aoki was going for with the sci fi half of the worldbuilding but it just didn't work at all, and so on. Still not entirely sure what to make of the fact that if you did the 0.5 degree shift necessary to turn the finale into a Christian morality play the quirky alien family plays an identical structural role to where the angels would be. The cursed/demonic-violin repair lady was fun, though.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark This was fun! Nothing hugely ground-breaking and extremely trope-ey, but in a good way? Like the process was clearly 'buddy cop story in into steampunk urban fantasy Cairo' more than anything that evolved naturally out of the characters or setting. But like, eh? The finale involved a giant robot controlled by enslaved ifrit and a mad sorceress trying to restore the British empire attacking the city, nuance and subtlety clearly weren't the goals here. The central mystery was barely a mystery, though. You could pick out the villain by the end of the first act like three or four different ways. Still, yeah, great time. Very pulpy.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir If you don't know that this is by the The Martian guy going in, it will be extremely clear by the time you're 50 pages in. It's a writing style with a real personality bleeding through - if you don't like it, the book will I'm sure be torture. But anyway, I'm a sucker for first contact stories and properly weird but still sympathetic and agentic aliens, and that's the beating heart of the story so I mean, of course I enjoyed it. The science also all seemed plausible/not-obvious-bullshit to me, and Weir did a really good job of getting tension and drama without ever making anyone a villain, with all the threats being faced being natural/environmental. Fun read, assuming very high tolerance for technobabble and also magic amnesia that you don't apply anywhere near the standards of the rest of the books' science to.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan I mean the whole premise of 'mythic/low-fantasy retelling of the founding of the Ming dynasty but with lesbians' feels like what you'd get if you simmered down my reading consumption of the last year or two and poured out the reduction. So like, yeah, of course I liked it! Probably would have been my vote for winner, though not at all sad that Desolation got it instead. As a character type, I really, really love the whole 'arranges everything to work out perfectly through desperate, furious scheming, then absolutely never breaks character and insists it must be providence and they're but a simple monk/scholar/whatever" so Zhu's whole bit there was just catnip to me. The whole melodrama in the mongol court was great, too. And how can you not love a book that ends with the heroine murdering the messiah in cold blood?

novellas-

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire The only other thing I'd read by McGuire before this was Middlegame, which may have given me unrealistic expectations but, like, this was fine? Or, like, I get the sense that this is very much a YA/Middle-grade book, insofar as it really feels like the literary equivalent of a tv special you'd watch with your kid niece and nephew because hey, it's not painful for you or anything? Really funny that this exists entirely independently of the apparently-a-real-thing cartoon Centaurworld, though.

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky This was fun classic sci fi. Like, really classic - I kind of thought 'fantasy setting that's secretly a post-apocalyptic sci fi setting where all the 'magic' and 'monsters' are just poorly understood hypertech' went of fashion with the millennium. Anyway I adore things that play with POV and have different people see the same events and process/interpret them radically differently, so the whole book was catnip that way, and it managed to authentically feel like just a small slice of a vaster, weirder universe, and both deuteragonists really work for me. Don't have a solid pick for my preferred winner but this is one of the two I'm torn between.

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard First and so far only thing by de Bodard I've read, which I should probably fix given how big a name she is. Anyway, this was fun! Nothing too groundbreaking, but that is 100% down to my reading habits rather than, like, 'lesbian court drama in a fantasy analogue of an asian country under threat of colonization' is an over-filled niche, or anything (really the only surprising thing was that I hadn't read this already).

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente The other one I might have voted for. On the level of stories she's a bit hit and miss but on the sentence-to-sentence and paragraph-to-paragraph levels Valente is seriously one of my favorite writers working, and this was no exception. Just an absolute delight to read. Also, 'post-apocalyptic magical realism on the city-sized garbage heap floating in the ocean populated by a culture of survivors after the world drowned' is just a great premise. And my shriveled husk of a soul appreciates just committing to the character study and the ruin and the elegy without giving into the urge to make a grand redemptive quest of it all.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers I, uh, liked this significantly less than Galaxy and the Ground Within. Utopias are basically necessarily didactic but, like, you really don't have to lean all the way into literally having the heart of the story be conversations between the protagonist and a sacred and innocent alien whose always correct about everything. Also the whole 'we 100% could be immortal but we chose not to because, like, nature or something. Aren't we so amazing?' thing with the robots is bullshit. Which, combined with the entire aesthetic of the world just left be feeling peevish and asking questions which really weren't the point (Where are the mines? The foundries? You can't make solar panels or modern antibiotics in a basement workshop! And you sure as hell can't cobble together and repair fully mobile and sapient robots in a cave with a box of scraps.)

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow So it's not that this was bad, exactly. But, like, I feel like it should have come out sometime in the '90s? (Okay without the explicitly gay bits but that's a matter of a few sentences tbh). Like, the deadline for metafictional feminist retellings of classic fairtails being genuinely novel or subversive was sometime before Disney got in on the game, sorry. Also, like, I'm sure it's just down to me being a weird morbid kid, but the whole shocking revelation about how fucked up the original Sleeping Beauty myth is was, like, something I knew before I hit puberty? Only other thing of Harrow's I've read was the Ten Thousand Door's of January and I'm really, really disappointed comparing them, honestly. (Also, as a general rule I dislike anything where it's very clear whether you're supposed to like or trust a character from the scene they're introduced and this is never wrong)

In other categories L’Esprit de L’Escalier should obviously have one novelette, "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" short story, Terra Ignota series, and Monstress comic, based off the foolproof criteria of 'those are the ones I've read'