Look at that title! Look at that cover! The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan enticed me from the moment I saw it on a list of anticipated 2024 releases. I was really looking forward to reading it, and it was in fact the first new release I read this year (I’m writing this a bit after reading it and it’s actually still the only new release I’ve read this year, thanks to library hold times!). Unfortunately, not only did I not particularly enjoy it, but it didn’t even really fully live up to its title.
Yes, there’s a djinn. And yes it waits about a hundred years. But also it’s such a non-entity that the same story could have been told without the djinn or the other supernatural element (which would be a spoiler). This is a pretty standard dual timeline story where the present-day character tries to unravel a past storyline, with the very thinnest veneer of the supernatural.
This is also one of those dual timeline stories where the present-day character mostly just figures things out by reading journals until she accidentally stumbles on a person connected to the story and gets the blanks filled in.
And you know, that’s fine. That can be an enjoyable sort of story. But I was expecting a djinn. I was expecting some real romantic longing. Instead I got… this.
The present-day storyline (which actually takes place in the 2010s, but y’know, close enough) features some side characters who are so over-the-top they seem like caricatures. This makes the early chapters of the book feel like it’s meant to be a comedy, but then you get to the past storyline, and it’s not funny at all and in fact has some pretty dark subject matter. The end result is a really tonally uneven book. And really, to be honest, like the djinn, those side characters don’t do much to contribute to the plot, they just add some color. In the case of one of them, some really unpleasant color, as she makes some prejudiced comments that aren’t really addressed at all by the other characters in that timeline.
The only thing I really liked about this book was that it is set in the Muslim Indian community in South Africa, which is not really a subculture I’ve read a lot about before, and especially not in the 1910-30s time period of the historic storyline. The author is herself from South Africa, so the book definitely feels authentic, like it is written by somebody who knows both the present and past culture of the area, rather than someone just using it as window dressing.
Ultimately, I can’t really recommend this group. I am sure there are people out there who will be able to look past the uneven tone and the slow start and the prejudiced characters and find something to love, but that’s really going to be an individual thing… There’s no easy “If you like X you’ll probably like this” that comes to mind.
CWs and TWs: Rather than list all the -isms at play here, I’ll say that there are a few characters who show strong prejudice to basically anyone who isn’t a middle-to-upper-class Muslim Indian and this includes occasionally using slurs. There’s also misogyny, infant death, parent death, children in peril, a somewhat forced marriage, violence against animals, injury, illness, and probably a couple other things I’m forgetting. I don’t recall any sort of homophobia or transphobia, but there’s also not a single openly queer character on the page. That said, while this is not a YA novel, I’d say all of this content is at a YA-appropriate level.
Format and Source: I read this as an ebook borrow from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Brick & Mortar: Set in another country. Pretty self-explanatory. The South African setting really set this book apart from the vast number of books I read set in the US, England, or entirely fictitious settings.
Current Bingo Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 3 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 2 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.
Brick & Mortar: 7 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.