The Mary Sue Books and More Club discussion

Comment away on Chapters 0-5! No Spoilers! Sorry we kept you waiting! Training wheels!

At first, I didn't like this book. But then I realized it was the audio book's narrator. It took me a while to get used to. His non-narrative voice is very flat and monotone and it took a lot of the art from the prose.

Do we have anyone who has lived in the Gulf? I'm interested to know how accurately depicted the culture is.

I'm also now 1/2 through now, and it's really kinda awesome. So if anyone kinda slogs in the beginning, keep going, it's worth it.

Oooooooooh! I LOVE this book so far and hope everyone else is caught up reading it through like I am and not even able to stop and comment! Hah! I started last night and I'm half way through chapter 9. But no spoilers of course!
So how many others thought immediately, "oh my god he got it on with a werecat"???!
Also, I love the melding of tech and mythos. Such a good meeting.

Hana,

I didn't...but I do now...:-)

Lisa wrote: "Hana,

I didn't...but I do now...:-)"

Did I spoiler?!!!! It was just like, OH! for me, the whole- orange and black... warm fur smell... WARM FUR! I was actually kinda like, ick... do you really wanna have warm fur be a descriptor for a lover?...

Oh, no, you didn't spoiler. It was your awesome word choice! :-)

Lisa wrote: "Oh, no, you didn't spoiler. It was your awesome word choice! :-)"

ok ok ok. good good. don't wanna spoiler it for anyone!

So far definitely enjoying this. I like the immersion in Alif's world - it's very rich and real. Plus, the little teasers of fantastic elements (that are clearly going to expand big time) are fun!

My husband is reading this as well, and he noted how Alif is a rather unlikable whiner in the early part of the book. I like how the author is able to, in subtle ways, show you the difference between Alif's view of the world and the people around him, and the reality of it.

I see it the most in how he treats and talks about Dina versus how she speaks and acts.

I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately, and Alif is one of the few books this year that I really dove into and wanted to keep reading from the start. I'd read Wilson's new Ms. Marvel (agh, SO GOOD!!!!), but not anything else by her and I was really pleasantly surprised. Alif's kind of unlikable, as Lisa brought up, but not in a way that puts me off reading about him and the other characters in this world that is so very unlike mine but still recognizable. (What I wouldn't give for a brief desert vacation away from frozen NY right now!)

I love this book so far. I'm glad I didn't get the audio book, since the reviews of the narrator weren't great. It's making me fall in love with my Kindle again!

I agree with others that Alif is unlikable, but this kind of unlikable is familiar to me. I work in tech, and this type is everywhere. Off-kilter world-view, self-centered... but at the core, there's some home for a better human being.

Katie,

I think you're right. She does a great job of capturing the type.

The audiobook has grown on me. The guy reading is a bit boring, but his voicing of the characters isn't bad. Alif is definitely a bit whiny, but he is very loyal to those he cares about & that's not many people.

It was really hard for me to start reading this book. I'm not sure why. I kept putting it off, partly because I was waiting till the beginning of March, and partly because I just didn't want to. I actually started reading it twice before I made myself sit down and start.

Chapter zero, was bizarre. I really didn't understand what I was reading, except that it was supernatural in nature. Then the first couple of chapters were very boring. I'm a Graphic Artist in real life, but my brain takes a vacation with all the tech talk.

I didn't really like Alif's character. He's kind of whiney, and a little on the vindictive side, wanting to emotionally hurt Intistar.

It didn't even start to get interesting until we were introduced to Vikrim.

I agree with the points made about Alif. I see him as immature, despite all his tech know-how. I liked when Dina called him and Abdullah out as "boys trying to talk like men." I like Dina and how she has her personal act together so much more.

I suspected from the official description that I was going to like this book, but when I actually started reading it I realized I might even come to love it. When I was a kid, we had this multi-volume book set filled with songs and nursery rhymes and stories and story excerpts for kids, and one of those stories--I don't know if it was the whole thing or not--was Mischief in Fez, about a boy called Mousa who gets tangled up jinn shenanigans. It made a big impact on my still-developing imagination, so when in chapter zero we immediately hit on the old man having learned to fear twilight, the knowledge of what was coming rumbled up out of the depths of my very soul and I was hooked.

Aside from my massive psychological ladyboner for jinn stories, I've been enjoying the early signs of tying together technology and mysticism, which are both scholarly pursuits in their own rights and which I've always felt are perfectly suited to each other.

My feelings on Alif himself are pretty mixed: he's incredibly immature and an asshole, but in a way that it seems like Wilson is aware of and wants us to acknowledge. I hope he grows more tolerable as a person over the course of the book, especially if it involves the women in his life continuing to save his ass. Dina in particular seems like she's going to be interesting, what with her nuanced approach to her religion, strong will, and general wisdom.

This was one of the books I was going to vote for (there were so many that I had to meeny-miny-moe to choose just one). I wasn't sure how much I'd like it, but I'm really loving it! I find Alif midly annoying, although when he says things to Dina like "For a minute I forgot you were a girl" or think "She really was as smart as a man", I get a little annoyed. He fell in love with a beautiful and smart woman who is working on her PhD...why would Dina be any less smart or beautiful? And yes, I'm totally a fan of Dina!

Anyway, a few musings I've found interesting:
1. True names and the dangers of metaphors - this seems to only have been touched on so far, but I've read other books that touch on this, and it really interests me.
2. Chapter 0, when Reza talks about assigning each element of each story a number and create a code...it immediately made me think of computer code and how it would relate to Alif.
3. Language - There is so much about language in just the few chapters we've read already...real-world language, as well as the language of the jinn and computer language. I think what I liked best was this line: "So much of what he felt did not translate."

There are a few others, but I don't wan to take up too much space. And I agree, the warm fur as a lasting impression of a lover was a little...ick. Lol. Can't wait to read the rest!!

Yes, also the thing about names! That's one of my favorite magical elements/fantasy tropes and it's so rarely used, so having it show up here was great.

Now that I've gone a little ways into the book - I am glad to see I'm not the only one less than enthused about Alif, but excited by Dina. I thought it was great how her decision to wear the veil was painted as being subversive of class norms and a statement on her belief in her own value. It was a nice antidote to a particularly bad newsweek here in Canada, what with the announcement of the ban on the niqab during citizenship ceremonies.

I've finally cleared out my to-reads so that I can get going with Alif! I was kinda slogging through the first few chapters but I just finished chapter 5 and I'm definitely digging it now. Dina is super cool and I honestly don't dislike Alif like the trend seems to be. He just seems like a character who's really going to grow and have his worldview completely altered.

I kept forgetting that this is a fantasy book so it took me by total surprise when those elements came in.

I would agree Katie, it really does pick up after a while.

Lisa, did you get any information about how accurate the culture is? I know Wilson is American and converted to Muslim, so I'm curious to know how truthful her portrayal of her adopted culture is. It seems honest to me, but I'm just an agnostic white girl.

Katie,
Based on her "Writing Alif the Unseen" at the end of the book, seems like she has lived in the middle east. I asked a Syrian colleague to read it and see what she thought, but I've not heard back.