The Haunting of Tram Car 015 P. Djèlí Clark (2019)
Noir in technicolor
Book cover blurb
Cairo, 1912. The case started simply enough for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities: handling a possessed tram car.
Soon, however, Agent Hamed Nasr and his new partner, Agent Onsi Youssef are exposed to a new side of Cairo stirring with suffragettes, secret societies, and sentient automatons. It’s a race against time to protect the city from an encroaching danger that crosses the line between the magical and the mundane.
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My Review
I'm loving this world, Mr Clark truly has something quite unique here.
This book is the second published offering in the alternate Cairo of 1912 series. This time out we join a new cast of characters from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, and although I was hoping to revisit with Agent Fatma, from the first book, I quickly came to enjoy this new duo.
The author was able to take a lot more time to linger in this story, lavish a little more detail and character into the goings-on and expand upon his world, but managed not to force-feed us too much. Again, in this book, as he did in its predecessor, the duo's sidekick steals a lot of the limelight by virtue of his character, he simply jumps off the page with depth, yes, even more intriguing than the main character. Which I personally very much enjoyed, it gives the starring characters a far better dynamic as a team I think, as the main character doesn't dominate your thoughts when contemplating what may be over the next page.
If I were to choose which book is best, Dead Djinn in Cairo or The Haunting of Tram Car 015, I would have to admit the former wins. But this isn't a competition, both books are fantastic reads. And I appreciate the fact that you could read each independently of the other. This all bodes well for the full-length novel, assuming you haven’t read it already.
My copy of this novel
Tor paperback edition.
Published in 2019
130 pages
ISBN 9781250294807