... pretty soon it was obvious that if you had enough people, your city or town or whatever would win the nanotech battle. Survival. All of a sudden, cities wanted refugees... [loc. 1039]
Somewhere in the Himalayas, a djinn awakes. He is Melek Ahmar, the Lord of Tuesday, and he has slept -- or, rather, been imprisoned -- for a very long time.
The world, it turns out, has changed a great deal. While he was out of the picture, empires rose and fell; clouds of nanotech permeated the atmosphere, maintaining micro-climates; and an artificial intelligence known as Karma rose to power in Kathmandu, allocating points for public services, and maintaining equilibrium.
Melek Ahmar, hearing all this from Gurung the Gurkha, is unimpressed. Life nowadays sounds somewhat thin and unsatisfactory. He sets out to amend this, aided by Gurung (who has exiled himself from the city, and from Karma, for reasons that will gradually become clear) and, later, a manic pixie djinn girl known as ReGi who deals drugs from her Garden. On Karma's side are Hamilcar Pande, who has the (usually very unexciting) task of acting as Karma's failsafe, and his occasional lover Colonel Shakia. Possibly not on anyone's side, and certainly not on Gurung's, is the oligarch Doje, who seems to be trafficking in refugees.
I wasn't wholly convinced by any of the female characters (including Karma, who is cast as feminine) and I didn't much like any of the male characters, except perhaps for Gurung who is ... well, I suppose he fits the Solitary Psychopathic Rebel trope (see also: Mycroft Canner, Shuos Jedao) who commits atrocities in order to overthrow the status quo.
I'm tempted to read Hossain's Djinn City, because I do like his depiction of djinni (Melek Ahmar is, perhaps, not the finest example of his species; ReGi might be more interesting when she stops channelling a teenage goth).
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