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Alif the Unseen G Willow Wilson Books

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Alif the Unseen G Willow Wilson Books

I read Alif as the monthly selection for my book club. The main character, Alif, summarizes the book nicely when he says "A girl he loved had decided that she did not love hime - at least not enough. How was such a problem usually addressed? Surely not with the clandestine exchange of books and computer surveillance and recourse to the jinn." He later describes his situation as "I was a computer geek with girl issues. That sounds pretty ordinary to me." This story is anything but ordinary. I found it to be a fun, adventurous, and enjoyable read. It can be read for pure entertainment, but, it also has content for deeper investigations and conversations. The author combines classic computer geek culture, modern day socio-political themes, religion, and the supernatural into a fantasy thriller style novel. For me, she was successful, and this was a classic good versus evil story.

Wilson includes quite a bit of tension between the unseen/hidden/belief and the seen/known/reality, as well as between the supernatural and "real" world. The unseen is manifested in many ways throughout the story including the computer aliases that protect and shield the gray-hat hacktivists, the traditional clothing of veils and robes worn by many characters, the unknown state censors, and most importantly to the story, the world of jinns. As the book progresses, that which is hidden and unseen becomes seen and known. This is especially true for many of the characters in the novel. At first, I found Alif to be a rather pathetic main character who lacked courage and whose whining/pining was irritating. However, as Dina so eloquently says to him "I was annoyed with the boy you were, I liked the man I knew you would become." This was also true for me. At the end, I felt I understood and like Alif as he grew and changed. Dina also becomes better known to both Alif and the reader. I truly liked her character. She is a character of piety, devotion, gentleness, and contentedness who chooses to wear veils. Yet none of that keeps her from being a "bad-ass" who can quickly cut to the chase with both her words and actions. Her perceptions, understanding, and believe in and about the supernatural and reality are insightfully keen. Dina truly knows and sees herself, it is up to the reader and Alif to move her from unseen to known. Other characters change and reveal their true selves throughout the story including Intisar, The Hand, NewQuarter, Azalel, and many other of the Jinn.

The story also explores the ideas of the role and importance of religion in society and compares and contrasts it to more ancient supernatural fantasies. I particularly liked when the conversation between Alif and the Sheikh as they were discussing the morality of actions conducted in virtual space. The conversation ends with the quotation, "If a video game does more to fulfill a young person than the words of prophecy, it means people like me (the Sheikh) have failed in a rather spectacular fashion." This was followed by Alif saying "You're not a failure ... It's only that we don't feel safe. A game has a reset button. You have infinite chances for success. Real life is awfully permanent compared to that,". Definitely interesting food for thought. In many places, the novel seems to try and blend mysticism and spirituality. I enjoyed the parallel tracks of have a man of religion along with a jinn.

Other topics that are given a lot of attention are knowledge and freedom. The novel is about the flow of knowledge and stresses coded knowledge heavily. There is the issue of censorship and who can and should control knowledge. The grey-hats try to make all (even morally questionable) content free and available while The Hand works consistently to shut it down. The grey-hats are working for a revolution based on the free exchange of knowledge. There is also the idea of knowledge as power and danger. The central book in the novel, The Alf Yeom, is desperately sought after in order to gain power and knowledge of the ages. The Hand firmly believes he who is knowledgeable enough to read and understand the Alf Yeom and has the powerful means to exploit it will ultimately be the winner. There is also forgotten knowledge and here is where the world of jinns comes heavily into play. As the names of the jinn and their history is forgotten by man, they become less known, seen, and believed. Throughout this novel, the reader gets to explore Wilson's vision of the jinn world. It is very a very enjoyable tour. Additionally, knowledge as changeable is explored, especially with regards to the meaning of words and what knowledge is lost in translation between languages. One character states "There was the Quran, which shattered language and put it back together again in a way no one had been able to replicate, using words whose meanings evolved over time without the alteration of a single dot or brushstroke." Metaphors are described in the novel as “knowledge existing in several states simultaneously and without contradiction.” Lastly, there is the issue of how does one know? Is it by seeing or is faith enough? One character says "that man's innovation is entirely known to God; it means there is no such thing as fiction." and another character says "every innovation started out as fantasy."

This is a well written and intriguing book. Except for stopping to research the meaning of unfamiliar words (the author has included a glossary in the back), this is an easy and quick read. They pace really picks up once Vikram the Vampire is introduced. They ending is a bit contrived and too neatly packaged for my taste, but the substance and enjoyment in between is worth it.


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Alif the Unseen G Willow Wilson Books Reviews

G. Willow Wilson is not Umberto Eco. But she might grow up to be something very like him, and I mean that in the best possible way. I picked up this book because it won an award at WFC, and I agree with the selection committee. It is novel, interesting, complicated, philosophical, funny, and sticky.

Remarkably, for such a complicated book, there is a very clear and discernible plot. At no point do you worry that the characters will just continue to live lives of hopelessness or ennui. Instead, all these people are going places -- some of them not very good places, but they have motives and goals.

Alif is a hacker who gets his heart broken and so creates a program that identifies his beloved and erases him from her sight. He refers to it as pulling a hijab between them. But it turns out that in doing so, he has created something that he can use, but not understand why it works. And then she sends him the book of A Thousand And One Days, which is the Jinn version of A Thousand and One Nights. And state surveillance! The dark anti-hacker. Arab spring! Cyberpunk and sand dunes and quantum computing.

Have you ever tried describing what's going on in Foucault's Pendulum? And been reduced to uttering disjointed fragments like, "Pinball. Homunculus. Rosicrucians!"? That's how I feel trying to describe this book. Only, and this is an interesting contrast to, say, God's War, in that faith in this book is not an instrument of oppression (self and others), but a vast source of strength for believers.

I really appreciated the ... diversity in this book. There's a prince, there's an upper-class woman, there are lower class women. Our hacker is half-Arab, half-Indian. Wherever the City is, it felt real, the way the best worldbuilding makes you feel, like there are palaces AND slum, and migrant workers and class, oh holy mackerel, the class isssues. But none of that slows down the story or makes you feel Educated.

It will be interesting to see how the story ages. There is a lot that is relevant to recent, events, that may not age well.
<blockquote>Like all things, like civilization itself, the arrests began in Egypt. In the weeks leading up to the Revolution, the digital stratosphere became a war zone.</blockquote>

Anyone who has been reading my reviews for a while understands that I am a huge fan of in-character story-relevant philosophy. This book is full of amazing, brain-twisting observations.
<blockquote>“The convert will understand. How do they translate ºyw in your English interpretation?”
“Atom,” said the convert.
“You don’t find that strange, considering atoms were unknown in the sixth century?”
The convert chewed her lip. “I never thought of that,” she said. “You’re right. There’s no way atom is the original meaning of that word.”
“Ah.” Vikram held up two fingers in a sign of benediction. He looked, Alif thought, like some demonic caricature of a saint. “But it is. In the twentieth century, atom became the original meaning of ºyw, because an atom was the tiniest object known to man. Then man split the atom. Today, the original meaning might be hadron. But why stop there? Tomorrow, it might be quark. In a hundred years, some vanishingly small object so foreign to the human mind that only Adam remembers its name. Each of those will be the original meaning of ºyw.”
Alif snorted. “That’s impossible. ºyw must refer to some fundamental thing. It’s attached to an object.”
“Yes it is. The smallest indivisible particle. That is the meaning packaged in the word. No part of it lifts out—it does not mean smallest, nor indivisible, nor particle, but all those things at once. Thus, in man’s infancy, ºyw was a grain of sand. Then a mote of dust. Then a cell. Then a molecule. Then an atom. And so on. Man’s knowledge of the universe may grow, but ºyw does not change.”
“That’s . . .” The convert trailed off, looking lost.
“Miraculous. Indeed.”</blockquote>

Read if You love The Virtuous Hacker, or technology/magic mashups, or reading about the possibilities of the meanings of words. And if you'd like to see veiled women being strong without losing their self-identification.

Skip if You are looking for a book with certainty, or clear answers.

Also read
Foucault's Pendulum, for thematic similarities

Trouble and Her Friends, for hacking and the price of it.
The story was clever, and a few of the conceits - like an entire sideways djinn world needing technical support - were brilliant. However, the story bogged down every time the Wilson diverted into religious apologetics - not necessarily because of the theology (that's central to the story, after all) but because the writing style changed whenever it happened. While Islamic mysticism is integral to the story, every now and again it felt like I was getting lectured to, not like I was reading a story. It's a bit heavy-handed. Wilson could've just as easily gotten her point across without basically stopping all the action for several pages.

A few of the characters felt a bit one-dimensional, too. The Hand was a moustache-twirl short of being a sterotype. A few of the other characters seem to exist simply to be either embodiments of certain themes (The Convert doesn't even get a name for quite some time) or convenient motivators of plot points.

The world-building in the story, however, is excellent. One does really get the feel of a middle-eastern emirate, with the opposing political and social forces, the juxtaposition of new money and technology over old traditions and social conventions. And the concept alone of a hacker getting involved with millenia old djinn, working on both modern technological and fantastic planes, was enough to keep me reading.
I read Alif as the monthly selection for my book club. The main character, Alif, summarizes the book nicely when he says "A girl he loved had decided that she did not love hime - at least not enough. How was such a problem usually addressed? Surely not with the clandestine exchange of books and computer surveillance and recourse to the jinn." He later describes his situation as "I was a computer geek with girl issues. That sounds pretty ordinary to me." This story is anything but ordinary. I found it to be a fun, adventurous, and enjoyable read. It can be read for pure entertainment, but, it also has content for deeper investigations and conversations. The author combines classic computer geek culture, modern day socio-political themes, religion, and the supernatural into a fantasy thriller style novel. For me, she was successful, and this was a classic good versus evil story.

Wilson includes quite a bit of tension between the unseen/hidden/belief and the seen/known/reality, as well as between the supernatural and "real" world. The unseen is manifested in many ways throughout the story including the computer aliases that protect and shield the gray-hat hacktivists, the traditional clothing of veils and robes worn by many characters, the unknown state censors, and most importantly to the story, the world of jinns. As the book progresses, that which is hidden and unseen becomes seen and known. This is especially true for many of the characters in the novel. At first, I found Alif to be a rather pathetic main character who lacked courage and whose whining/pining was irritating. However, as Dina so eloquently says to him "I was annoyed with the boy you were, I liked the man I knew you would become." This was also true for me. At the end, I felt I understood and like Alif as he grew and changed. Dina also becomes better known to both Alif and the reader. I truly liked her character. She is a character of piety, devotion, gentleness, and contentedness who chooses to wear veils. Yet none of that keeps her from being a "bad-ass" who can quickly cut to the chase with both her words and actions. Her perceptions, understanding, and believe in and about the supernatural and reality are insightfully keen. Dina truly knows and sees herself, it is up to the reader and Alif to move her from unseen to known. Other characters change and reveal their true selves throughout the story including Intisar, The Hand, NewQuarter, Azalel, and many other of the Jinn.

The story also explores the ideas of the role and importance of religion in society and compares and contrasts it to more ancient supernatural fantasies. I particularly liked when the conversation between Alif and the Sheikh as they were discussing the morality of actions conducted in virtual space. The conversation ends with the quotation, "If a video game does more to fulfill a young person than the words of prophecy, it means people like me (the Sheikh) have failed in a rather spectacular fashion." This was followed by Alif saying "You're not a failure ... It's only that we don't feel safe. A game has a reset button. You have infinite chances for success. Real life is awfully permanent compared to that,". Definitely interesting food for thought. In many places, the novel seems to try and blend mysticism and spirituality. I enjoyed the parallel tracks of have a man of religion along with a jinn.

Other topics that are given a lot of attention are knowledge and freedom. The novel is about the flow of knowledge and stresses coded knowledge heavily. There is the issue of censorship and who can and should control knowledge. The grey-hats try to make all (even morally questionable) content free and available while The Hand works consistently to shut it down. The grey-hats are working for a revolution based on the free exchange of knowledge. There is also the idea of knowledge as power and danger. The central book in the novel, The Alf Yeom, is desperately sought after in order to gain power and knowledge of the ages. The Hand firmly believes he who is knowledgeable enough to read and understand the Alf Yeom and has the powerful means to exploit it will ultimately be the winner. There is also forgotten knowledge and here is where the world of jinns comes heavily into play. As the names of the jinn and their history is forgotten by man, they become less known, seen, and believed. Throughout this novel, the reader gets to explore Wilson's vision of the jinn world. It is very a very enjoyable tour. Additionally, knowledge as changeable is explored, especially with regards to the meaning of words and what knowledge is lost in translation between languages. One character states "There was the Quran, which shattered language and put it back together again in a way no one had been able to replicate, using words whose meanings evolved over time without the alteration of a single dot or brushstroke." Metaphors are described in the novel as “knowledge existing in several states simultaneously and without contradiction.” Lastly, there is the issue of how does one know? Is it by seeing or is faith enough? One character says "that man's innovation is entirely known to God; it means there is no such thing as fiction." and another character says "every innovation started out as fantasy."

This is a well written and intriguing book. Except for stopping to research the meaning of unfamiliar words (the author has included a glossary in the back), this is an easy and quick read. They pace really picks up once Vikram the Vampire is introduced. They ending is a bit contrived and too neatly packaged for my taste, but the substance and enjoyment in between is worth it.