Alif the Unseen (G. Willow Wilson)

Alif the Unseen
G. Willow Wilson
Grove Press
Fiction, Fantasy
** (Bad)

DESCRIPTION: In a small desert country off the Persian Gulf, the State rules with an iron hand, backed by the riches of the oil fields and the cybersecurity agent known as the Hand of God. The young man who calls himself Alif is among the few who resist, helping shield dissidents of all stripes around the world from their own governments. Though he may be rebellious online, his real life is anything but bold, spent mostly in a room in his room or among a very small handful of other computer geeks on the edges of the City's law. He never thought he'd have to come out from behind his screen name... until the woman he loved and pledged himself to, wealthy Intisar, announces she's to be married to a man of better prospects and she doesn't want to see him again, online or off. His rash actions in the wake of rejection - inventing a new breed of computer tracking software - bring the eye of the Hand to his doorstep. Now he's on the run, along with the neighbor girl Dina who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (and have the wrong childhood friend in Alif.) In his flight, he discovers the terrible truth behind the Hand's power, tied to the legendary jinni and to an ancient book whose pages could remake the future.

REVIEW: For a book that grabbed me early on, with a near-future (or merely contemporary - the timeline is never precisely nailed down) dystopian Middle East and a refreshingly non-Western perspective, Alif the Unseen took an almost unprecedented nosedive by the end. What went wrong? It stopped being a technological fantasy and started being an overlong parable extolling the virtues of the Quran, thus answering the question of whether a preachy Muslim book could be just as annoying as a preachy Christian book (yes, it truly can be.) Even the jinni are all about religious lessons. It also reduces all females to objects who seem to embrace their object/trophy status and lack of power over their own destinies (one of whom is only ever known by "the convert" and not a name, and another of whom may have voluntarily undergone female circumcision - way to empower, not), while Alif gets to bed whomever he choses with impunity - one of whom isn't even a human woman. I might not have minded had Alif not started and remained such an irritating and obtuse main character, largely so other characters can preach to him and lead him back into the arms of God. The Hand is a decently nefarious bad guy, at least, firmly convinced that all means justify the ends of the ordered world he strives for, where the "delusion of freedom" is stamped out and the strong control every aspect of life for the weak... a vision not that far removed from fundamental religion. By the end, I couldn't bring myself to care about the climax or outcome because it was all so clearly just an allegory for more religious dogma. (And when that dogma resorts to distortions to praise its own wonders, you really lose me... but, then, I'm beyond salvation in any vision of religion.) At least with Narnia I got some nice mind's eye candy in another world; here, it's a dark and dystopian trek to teach one selfish and block-headed man the value of prayer.
While this World Fantasy Award-winning title started with plenty of potential and a different sort of fantasy setting, by the end it was nothing but a pile of half-baked religious messages flung at the protagonist until some of them finally stick.

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