Review: Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn: A Steampunk Faerie Tale

Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn: A Steampunk Faerie Tale by Danielle Ackley-McPhail
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A steampunk version of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The authors have taken some trouble to incorporate key features of the original (like the thieves hiding in the oil jars), but give them twists which feel organic to the setup.

Features a curmudgeonly Charles Babbage in a mentor role, and I thought that worked well. The main character, Ali, is sent to England to be Babbage's apprentice because of his talent as a tinkerer. Then he has to return to his home to deal with family stuff, and both his envious, devious, covetous brother and the sinister leader of the thieves want things from him that he doesn't know he has, and an adventurous time is had by all.

I remember Ali Baba as being a bit of a schemer and a trickster, albeit very much guided and directed by the jinni, and this Ali is not. He's a pious, good-hearted man who really just wants a quiet life making clever devices, but can't stand by and see injustice perpetrated. I liked that, despite the fact that he's generally a good person who makes right choices, the chief of the thieves almost bests him by playing on a character weakness: his pride in his tinkering.

There's a thread of romance that, for me, seemed a little under-developed, but given the setup it couldn't exactly have a slow build or many of the usual steps of a romance.

The characters have at least a little depth to them; the brother's wife, in particular, is abused wife AND schemer AND competent businesswoman, not just one of the three. The leader of the thieves is a bit inclined to execute his men for failure, presumably to encourage the others, but he's a suitably dastardly (if somewhat over-the-top) villain for the purposes of the plot, and the brother is an adequate minor antagonist.

The steampunk devices are fun and imaginative, if implausible, which is all you can really ask for.

The usual steampunk curse of incorrect vocabulary usage is, happily, notable by its absence, perhaps because the narrative voice is quite simple; but in the pre-release version I read from Netgalley, the commas are a huge mess that will take a lot of work to sort out (and they may not get it).

Overall, an entertaining retelling of a classic story that respects the original but takes it to some new and interesting places.

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