/lit/ - Literature

>>23228624
Cyber Mage, Djinn #3* - Saad Z. Hossain (2021)
*publication order

Cyber Mage is an interquel that takes place between Djinn City and The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday. As such it contains spoilers for the former and explains how the conditions of the latter came to be. Although the four books are allegedly standalone, I wouldn't advise starting with this one. None of the characters from Djinn City play a prominent role in terms of page count, though it does tell you what happened to most of them. All of this happens in and around Dhaka, Bangladesh, at the end of the 21st century. The exact dating of the series is unclear due to in-text contradictions in and between books.

As the About The Author says, "Saad Z. Hossain writes in a niche genre of fantasy, science fiction, and black comedy with an action-adventure twist". That's accurate, though for this book in particular, unlike the others, there's a lot of cringe comedy. There's too much for my preference, though his usual humor is present as well.

Marzuk Dotrozi Khan Rhaman is an infamous 15 year hacker savant known online as the Cyber Mage. He's notorious for some of the most daring and skillful hacks ever perpetuated and is a founding member of the most secretive and elite hacker collective. Less known are his ties to organized crime. His gaming identity in the VRMMORPG Final Fantasy 9000 is equally well known for griefing and innovation.

Marzuk has three severe weaknesses, his physical condition, his social skills, and attractive girls. Although he dropped out of school long ago due to having far surpassed any need for formal education, he decides to join high school to spend more time with his crush. Truly there is no other institution that is more treacherous or dangerous. If that weren't enough, a mysterious entity is contacting him in his dreams. Yes, Marzuk is as cringe as he seems, if not more so.

Akramon Djibrel is a golem forged from a corpse through dragonfire and djinn magic. At the behest of his djinn patron, he beheads any and all in pursuit of his quarry. He keeps the heads to interrogate and torture them, as he's able to keep them alive for a couple weeks. He's become something of a viral sensation to watch on livestreams, with Marzuk being especially interested.

As for the plot, a certain djinn has plans for humanity again. This time he's sure it'll work and all the humans will do what he wants and all the other djinn will respect him again. All that stands in his way are the djinn that have grievances against him and feel that they may as well oppose him with their allies.

If this were a bit worse I'd round it down. Marzuk is too much of a extremely online/hacker/gamer/edgelord caricature to read without grimacing. The VRMMORPG parts were overly much, especially when there was play-by-play commentating. It was certainly something different than the usual. Overall there's more that I enjoyed a lot than what I disliked.

Rating: 3.5/5 (4)