P. Djeli Clark has jumped on my list of authors that I must read regularly. He has become a part of that exclusive club, which includes Jonathan Carroll, Charles de Lint, Percival Everett, Guy Gavriel Kay, & Haruki Murakami. I have read multiple works by the aforementioned authors and Clark has found his place amongst this special company.

I have really enjoyed the Dead Djinn Universe series of stories that include the novel, A Master of Djinn and the novella, The Haunting of Tram Car 015. A Dead Djinn in Cairo is the original short story that begins the series and introduces us to Fatma el-Sha’arawi, the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities in an alternate Cairo, Egypt.

Investigating a djinn’s murder, Fatma is drawn into a world of necromancy, otherworldly realms, and journeys across the space-time continuum. This post-colonial Cairo was a vibrant, chaotic mix of humanity and the unseen, where djinns, angels, and ghouls walked among humans, creating an unsettling harmony. The author solves the murder effectively, establishing the foundation for the rest of the series.

Clark has written a fantastic and original fantasy series that deserves to reach more readers and injects new life into my favorite genre. I hope he continues to write stories in this fictional world and it will go down as one of my favorite fantasy series. Bravo, P. Djeli Clark!