"Cyberpunk set in alternate-history North Africa?" says I. "Sounds interesting."And that was my first mistake.I was expecting William Gibson crossed with, oh, The Years of Rice and Salt. What I got was more in the spirit of Dan Brown--an action-adventure with pasted-on Exotic Setting.I should have known I was reading the wrong book in the first few pages, when it became clear that the protagonists of this supposedly North African-focused novel were both white Americans. (Okay, one is half Berber nobility. He's been raised as a white American and shows exactly zero interest in his Berber heritage.) The native North African characters come in two varieties: pro-Western good guys (the liberated Zara, for example) and traditionalist baddies.As to cyberpunk: no. Sure, the main character has implants that let him see in the dark, one of the secondary characters is a computer hacker, and one of the tertiary characters has an improbably high-tech sound system that he uses in a drug-ridden techno club. But there's none of the nihilism I'd expect from cyberpunk, no real exploration of the cost of technology, the breakdown of society. It's just there to be glitzy. And our protagonists are rich and high-ranking; what little we get of society's underside is in flashback and side scene, safely out of the way.Besides, this is alternate history. The power of cyberpunk is its immediacy: "That could be tomorrow. This is already happening today." It's hard to get that in a story of a future that will never be, even if the author does seem to frequently forget their own alternate history premise. (Why does the United Nations exist in a world where Germany won World War I and the U.S. remains intensely isolationist into the 21st century? I have no idea. Why are all the brand names the familiar French and American ones? Who knows. And, whether Germany won World War I or not, how did the Ottoman Empire teeter into the 21st century? No fucking clue.)That last is the most bothersome: the whole point of the alternate history, as far as I can tell, is so that the author can write in a 21st-century Ottoman Empire. But I remain utterly unconvinced that the history as outlined would result in such a political improbability.But even if none of this had bothered me--even if I had gone into this expecting, from the start, Dan Brown--I still would have tripped over the language. It's not so much that the author doesn't know what a complete sentence is as that he appears to know--and be on constant vigilance against one appearing in his work. Things are. Broken up more or less at random, producing a. Choppy effect that I think. Is intended to be literary. (It's not a success.)To add to the pain, the author jumps back and forth in his timeline, piling flashback on flashback in an attempt to make a paper-thin plot appear convoluted.This is also not a success. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to think of any part of this book that's a success. (Well, there's the sex scenes. They're successful at providing hilarity. But I think this is unintentional.) Highly unrecommended. I will be giving the sequels a wide berth.
I found “Pashazade” in the science fiction section of my local library but it might also be called speculative fiction or even just a detective story. The setting is what is unique here and gives it the sci-fi label: Imagine an Earth where Germany won the First World War, and in the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire never fell. Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s novel takes place in this world, in the city of Iskandrya in Egypt. The story revolves around Ashraf el-Mansur, who has escaped a Seattle prison by the machinations of his (until now unknown to him) Aunt Nafisa, the sister of his father whom he has never met, and brought to North Africa. As the legitimate son of the Emir of Tunis, Nafisa produces a marriage certificate as proof, he inherits the rank of Bey under Ottoman law. A marriage has also been arranged for him to Zara, the daughter of an incredibly wealthy family. But soon after his arrival, his aunt, Lady Nafisa, is murdered; he becomes responsible for his nine-year-old niece, Hani, and is the prime suspect in Nafisa’s murder. He searches to find the truth in a culture that he knows very little about, in a country thousands of years old but new to him.More than just a murder mystery, the alternative history allows the story to take place in a modern Ottoman Empire, with very strong old world values and traditions and without strong American influence. This makes for a very rich, detailed and fascinating setting. There are some light cyberpunk elements to the story but really only thrown in as window dressing it seems: Cybernetic implants in Ashraf’s eyes, and some sort of cognitive “enhancement” that manifests itself as a fox in his head which advises him. I was thrown off, too, by the many French and American brand names bandied about that apparently still dominate industry in spite of the alternative history timeline. But putting aside these inconsistencies, the story is still interesting because for Raf, it’s not just about finding out who killed Nafisa, but about who he himself is. There are many flashbacks through which we learn about his past, his childhood, and the events that shaped him. So this novel also follows his inner journey, examining a heritage that he had no idea was his, shaking off his sketchy past, and creating a present in which he starts to include people in his life other than himself. Pashazade is the first book of the Arabesk trilogy, the next two being: “Effendi” and “Felaheen”.
What do You think about Pashazade (2005)?
3 starsThis is a part cyberpunk, part mystery, and parlt alternative universe story. It is unfortunate that it does not push to be great at any one form. There is some very good world building and the alternative history is well thought out and adds great flair tom this book. The cyberpunk and sci-fi elements are very superficial and at times very thin. The structure of the book never allowed the mystery to work for me as the constant change of timeframe killed all forms os suspense.The protagonist Raf was alright, I just never found myself really routing for him. The resolution to the story seemed very forced to me and I did not believe that the characters really knew what was going on.An ok jaunt in an alternative world that may hold enough interest for me to read the next book in the series.
—Jason
There are far too many ellipses in this book, and they take the immediacy out of far too many scenes. There's also some strange stuttering through time in the beginning that make the first ~50 pages somewhat confusing. Still, once past all that - and after deciding not to worry too much about trying to figure out the fox - I really enjoyed it. I don't know if Raf is supposed to be clearly understood by the end (he certainly wasn't to me), but it didn't matter too much. I will be reading the others as soon as the library manages to get them to me.
—Lauren
This book tries to be many things, but does not really succeed at any. The concept is interesting, cyberpunk set in an alternate history Alexandria, Egypt within a modern Ottoman Empire. This was what drew me to the book in the first place. It is the first of a trilogy, but this is the only book of it I read.The alternate history doesn't really seem all that well developed. While I'm not interested in the intricacies of how the Ottoman Empire could have survived into the 21st century, it doesn't feel like the author really thought it out either, and it really doesn't feel like an alternate history, because many of those elements are not touched on.The Cyberpunk elements really don't work. Raf's various implants serve the plot, while the internal program/spirit animal fox seems out of place. I still do not now what the point of it was.Ultimately the story is a murder mystery, which was interesting enough to keep me reading, but I still can't help but feel this book could have been much more.
—Gilgamesh1977
