I really enjoyed aspects of this book, but as a whole it didn't quite grab me and I found that I was really forcing myself to push forward instead of being lost in the story and characters. The parts dealing with mysticism and jinn were especially interesting, but Alif's central story and struggle ...
G. Willow Wilson knows how to write a sentence. The prose here is lovely (I was particularly caught by one simile describing a windowless prison as "both surreal and alarmingly ordinary, like an office building that had blinked"), and her descriptions of life in the modern Middle East are compelling...
I don't know a lot about the Quran, I'm sorry to say. I'm sure that knowledge of it would add to one's enjoyment of this particular book, but despite this, I enjoyed it a great deal.I was not initially sure I liked the main character. In fact, I'm sure I frequently disliked him in the first half o...
I read this going to sleep so many nights in a row that I'm not sure what was in the book and what I dreamed. Lots of interesting ideas and images here. Think I need to re-read to get a better handle on it. I felt my lack of knowledge about Islam pretty keenly; I think I missed much of the resonance...
My friend and I were discussing the problem of finding books featuring non-White protagonists written by non-North American descended authors. We noted that, more often than not in our limited scope, we’d find non-White protagonists written by White authors, or, White protagonists who find themselve...
I hated Alif the Unseen. It was the opposite of a page turner--reading this book as actually felt like a self-imposed chore that I didn't want to do but felt like I had to.It's about Alif, a revolutionary minded teenage computer hacker in an unnamed, generic Arabic city. He writes a mysterious com...
"Alif the Unseen" completely took me by surprise by how engaging and captivating the story was from beginning to end. I usually enjoy stories that involve sci-fi and suspense/thriller elements with a cultural twist, and I think this first read I've had of G. Willow Wilson's work provided that and e...
I really enjoyed the intersection of the ancient jinn and the current/future idea of quantum computing. This isn't a funny book, but I chuckled when the main character debugs an ifreet's laptop. Very tense, despite some real deus ex machina moments. For all the trouble they go through, the ending se...
Alif the Unseen is simultaneously one of the most complex books I’ve ever read and one of the simplest. Set in an unnamed middle-eastern security state, Alif is the story of a young hacker who has made it his mission in life to protect the internet freedom of anyone who asks for it, and who can pay ...
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