I finished reading Alif the Unseen Friday morning, most likely the last book I will read in 2012. I have exam coming so will most probably not start another book till into the new year.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and highly recommend it. Alif the Unseen is the first novel by G Willow Wilson. The book reads like a cross between Cory Doctorow (Little Brother) and Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere), which translates to awesome!
The setting is a fictional Arab emirate. Our hero, Alif, is a half-Arab half-Indian hacker who has just got dumped by his pure-blood aristocrat girlfriend. When she tells him that she doesn’t want to see him anymore, he writes a program that makes him invisible to her online. As sort of a parting gift, the ex-girlfriend passes him a mysterious old book. What follows is an adventure that takes Alif and his friends to the world on the unseen, the jinn, as they are pursued by State security agents.
Of note too is the Islamic setting. Islam plays a big role in the book, which makes it refreshing as well. We definitely don’t see too many of that.
