Khaled: A Tale of Arabia by F. Marion CrawfordMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
An Arabian-Nights-style tale of a djinn who, after taking it upon himself to kill a hypocrite who would have pretended to convert to Islam in order to marry a sultan's beautiful daughter, is both punished and rewarded by being made human. However, he has to win a soul for himself by getting the sultan's daughter to love him. Along the way, they encounter a femme fatale, a slave from Georgia who, desiring the newly human djinn for herself, ends up orchestrating a plot against him when he refuses to take her as a second wife.
Not all of the decisions people make necessarily seem to make a lot of sense, and the main character is often passive and fatalistic, partly because he's not very subtle and so can't work out what to do; he has to be rescued by wise and heroic beggars. His love interest doesn't have a lot of depth to her either, and (partly because of the status of women in the culture of the time) also doesn't have much agency. Yet somehow it managed to be a reasonably satisfying story, possibly because of the vigorous descriptions and the well-sustained Arabian Nights tone.
The edition from Standard Ebooks is cleanly edited and professionally presented, making this volunteer effort a lot better than most of the books I see from Open Road, which is converting old books for money. Of course, it's had a lot more work put into it by volunteers than Open Road could afford to pay for and still make a profit, but it's proof, if proof were needed, that the voluntary sector can do better than the commercial sector sometimes.
It wasn't quite enough of a favourite with me for me to add it to my Best of the Year recommendations list, but it almost made it; if you have a particular liking for the Arabian Nights, it's definitely worth a look.
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