I didn’t always enjoy this book while I was reading it, but the more I think back on it, the more I like a lot of what the author did in telling this story.
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu is a science fiction retelling of the story of Aladdin. But it’s also a story about revolution. And a story about personhood. And there’s also a robot fighting tournament.
Lina and Bador are siblings — except Bador is actually a monkey-shaped robot that Lina’s parents created to be her pet. Lina decided her bot companion was actually her brother, and now they have the sort of strained relationship that a lot of adult siblings have, a mix of love and frustration.
However, neither Lina nor Bador are our narrator. Instead, we see this story through the lens (literally?) of Moku, a story-bot. When Moku is found by Bador at the beginning of the story, while looking for something else at Lina’s behest, the siblings decide to share the bot, and thus he splits his time between the two of them, recording both of their stories.
It is this narrative conceit that really made this book for me. You see, I have a huge pet peeve when the author conceals important information from the reader by means of just not writing the scene where the info would be discovered/revealed. I mean, it can be done well, but so often, it’s done in a clunky way. But in this case, we are limited by what Moku knows. If Moku is not physically with Lina, he doesn’t know what Lina is learning, and the same for Bador. There’s an in-story reason for this limited point-of-view.
Moku also has a profanity filter, and isn’t particularly interested in closely observing human sex, so this allows the author to elide certain things in a way that is both natural and slightly entertaining.
Further, as we are following Lina and Bador’s story, we are also getting Moku’s outsider observations on conditions in the city of Shantiport, and seeing his relationship with the siblings and the world grow and change.
Two main things interfered with my enjoyment of this book.
The first is that Bador is obsessed with participating in this robot fight tournament run by a crime boss, and so we get lots of big robot battles. While these would probably be interesting to watch in a big screen or anime-style adaptation of the book, I found them a bit over-long and repetitive, and that they distracted from the rest of the plot. Eventually, the reason for these battles made sense in the larger context of the story, but until that point I didn’t understand the point of them.
The second is that I did not like Lina and Bador’s mother, I did not agree with her actions, and I wanted to see her held accountable for some of her choices. I suspect this has something to do with my own cultural and personal attitudes towards parent-child relationships and expectations, however, and other readers may feel differently.
As the book wrapped up, I was feeling a little “meh” about the resolution, until the last short chapter. I can’t say anything specific without major spoilers, but I will say I thought someone was going to make one decision, and instead, they decided differently, and it created a very satisfying and surprisingly heartwarming resolution.
I’m left torn on whether I will read another book by Samit Basu. I bounced right off of The City Inside, and I probably would have DNFed this one pretty quickly, if not for the fact that it was a good fit for a Book Bingo square, and my spouse really enjoyed it. If there’s a sequel following certain characters from this book, I’ll definitely read that, but otherwise I’m not sure.
CWs and TWs: Lots of robot violence; some violence against humans but mostly mentioned in the past-tense or happening off-page. Sex happens on-page but is not described in graphic detail; there’s also some sexually-charged language. There are one or two cusses that slip past Moku’s filters.
Format and Source: Read as an ebook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Brick & Mortar: ROBOTS and/or DRAGONS. Such a great prompt! But also a little tricky because I read so much sci-fi and fantasy that if a book sounds good to me and has robots and/or dragons in it, I’ve probably already read it. Luckily this was waiting for me in my TBR and has plenty of prominent robots and discussions of bot rights.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 9 out of 25 prompts complete. 1 bingo.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 4 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.
Brick & Mortar: 20 out of 25 prompts complete. 5 bingos.