I listened to this book on my work commute, to and fro daily for weeks, Aicha would go about her day in Portuguese occupied Morocco and I would go about mine, and as the hours built, I realized this book has no plot, there is no building up for something, it really is just the two of us going about our days, granted, hers is far more interesting, but rather plotless just the same. There is world building of life under occupation and the rebel forces her family is a part of, there is even foreshadowing about who she is, but I do not, and did not, have prior knowledge of the myth the story stems from. And the more I listened and the closer we got to the approaching “siege,” the more I felt like I was mislead with the promises of what the book would be. Before I continue, there will be spoilers, and I admit while I was listening to it, I wasn’t bored, the pacing is off but the prose is lush and descriptive, albeit overly telling at the expense of showing, but none-the-less listening to it in 15 minute intervals twice a day at 1.5x speed was not a a burden, and was often enjoyable. Had I been reading it though, I think I would have dnfed mid way through after skipping pages at a time.
The front of the book says “Temptress, Monster, Warrior.” She is in love with Rachid, they are in a relationship, chapter 19 is a pretty intense, very adult, and mature, open door testament to that relationship, the occupiers threaten sexual assault, but she is not out flirting or tempting anyone, she is often dressed to look like a boy and disappear into shadows. Is she a monster? She has a jinn tied to her, so I’m going to say no, she is not, the jinn is blood thirsty and perhaps a monster, but the book title is her name. The daily musings, 352 pages, over 10 hours, are her life, the jinn doesn’t get top billing until the end. As for the warrior description, sure, she is a rebel, who trains at the hands of her blacksmith father, but the book is also teased as a female rage story, so when coupled with the term, warrior, why does she have to have Rachid step in to fight for her at the end? She couldn’t beat Duarte? She didn’t get to exact her revenge? Only once Aicha was dead was the jinn freed and the jinn given the pleasure of killing him-which cheapened the expectation and made the whole book feel misleading.
I also didn’t like on the back it saying, “Aicha is the story of Morocco’s warrior goddess,” the term
“goddess,” distracts for me how much Islam really is in the book. I loved how much actually. The book from the very first Author’s Note Flag Warning positions that the characters are Muslim, but they are not examples of Islam, and I might buy the book just to screen shot how fabulous the warning/statement is. The characters are Muslim through and through and that made me have a soft spot to keep listening. I’ll even admit the hasty nikkah to make it halal was emotionally charged, and nice to see.
Craft wise, aside from the lacking plot and slow pacing, I’m not sure why one chapter switched perspectives to Rachid, it felt sloppy. I don’t get why the siege wasn’t more robustly fleshed out, why the open door sex scene was so long, (I could just be a prude, and I’ve never done an audio with spice, so yeah, I might be unreliable on this point), and why did they all have to die, if it was so devastating in real life, we need backmatter to feel the weight of these characters. I will probably read anything future the author writes, so I own that, and I truly did enjoy the commentary on colonization and occupation and the last line of the backmatter being, “Free Palestine!”
I listened to the audio of this book and did not have access to the text of the book, so forgive misspellings of characters’ names.
Islamic School Librarian 