After thousands of years of imprisonment, Melek Ahmar, a powerful and ancient Djinn, is free in the world once again. Flush with excitement, the djinn barrels down from the Himalayas, ready to seek vengeance on those that stuck him in the magic-enforced trap aeons ago. He is frothingly eager to remind the kingdoms of Earth why he was once called “The Red King.”
Almost immediately Melek encounters a problem with his plan: the world is not as he knew it. Thousands upon thousands of years have passed, and the old Empires and Gods have crumbled away. In their place is a planet made near-uninhabitable by a wrecked ecology; the only humans that survive live in massive, enclosed cities, their every need tended to by the swirling, invisible armies of nanotech, all controlled by the near-omniscient AI, Karma. In this brave new world, most human deprivations have been banished to history, and Melek discovers that his quest for violent conquest is perceived as anachronistic and needless as his archaic title, “The Lord of Tuesday”.
Ah, but then the mighty djinn encounters Bhan Ghurung, an old Gurkha soldier who seems to love nothing more than chewing on nuts and making tea. Ghurung is more than he appears, though, and he has an ambition that will bring him, and Melek, into direct conflict with all the technological powers that govern this strange future…
So this is a rip-roaring, wild ride through a fairly sinister future. Its central conceit is quite nice…imagine if one of those eldritch gods from a Conan novel woke up in Blade Runner, and you get a neat idea of what sections of this book feel like. Melek Ahmar, though immensely powerful, is a fairly straight-forward sort of entity; give him a good fight and good drink and a chance to lead an army across plains knee-deep in the blood of his enemies and he’s happy. It is Bhan Ghurung that’s eventually revealed as the deeper character, what with his secrets and not-so-subtle manipulations. “Deeper” sadly, is a bit of a relative term…I found the characterizations fine, but only somewhat more involved than your above-average Saturday morning cartoon from back in the day. Things tick along at a reasonable pace, and as a short novel it does not outstay its welcome. This remains more a colorful romp than real meditation on any of the ideas it raises…which is a shame. Some of those ideas are quite good. Me like books.
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