I Read Books: Felaheen

Felaheen

Jon Courtney Grimwood’s Arabesk Trilogy comes to its conclusion. Raf, having spent two books in El Iskandryia, the alternate future Free City of Alexandria in nominally Ottoman North Africa, heads for Tunis, where an assassination attempt on the Emir, his father has set the country in turmoil.

The country is under embargo due to not signing up to the UN biotechnology treaties, Raf’s older brother is plotting, the French, Germans and Americans are all circling and the Emir, famously, is mad. Raf deliberately left his loved ones behind in El Isk where they ought to be safe (he’d maybe put the worst threats down while Chief Of Detectives) and they follow him.

All this is shadowed by the mystery of his mother’s marriage to the Emir, which was much further in the past than would be expected. Is his long life due to the internationally condemned biotech labs of the country, or is he a child of Lilith as his niece Hani suggests. And is there a meaningful difference?

More weird cyber-punk noir, with twisty plots snaking around one another.

Read This: For a view of a strange future, which is woven through with some very real scenes (especially when Raf is undercover in a restaurant kitchen)
Don’t Read This: This won’t give you a clear story, clear motives and clear heroes (though there are some clear villains)