Desert Magic evokes thoughs of Djinn and fairy tales, and deserts with dangerous mysteries and skies full of stars, hot days and streets full of fragrent spices.
These six books will sweep you away with trixter spirits and their magic.
- One Thousand and One Nights (sometimes called Arabian Nights).
There can’t be a list of desert magic tales without including the original. Take one evil king who marries and a new wife each night and kills her before morning. One clever woman who volunteers to marry the king, and has a plan to not be his next victim. She tells him riveting stories, but leaves them unfinished at dawn to go to sleep. Eventually he falls in love with her and no longer plans on carrying out his plot of killing her. The tales she tells him are some of the best, most loved stories such as Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, and Ali Baba and the Forty Theives.
Nahri has never believed in magic. On the streets of 18th century Cairo, she survives as a brilliant con artist, using palm readings, zars, and healings—tricks she knows are nothing more than clever sleights of hand—to swindle wealthy Ottoman nobles.
But when one of her cons accidentally summons a mysterious djinn warrior, Nahri is forced to confront the truth: the magical world of her childhood stories is real. The warrior tells her of Daevabad, the legendary city of brass, hidden beyond deserts of fire creatures, rivers where the marid sleep, and ruins of vanished human civilizations—a city to which Nahri is inexplicably bound.
Behind Daevabad’s enchanted brass walls and the six gates of its six djinn tribes, old resentments simmer beneath the surface. As Nahri steps into this hidden world, she discovers that true power is fierce and unforgiving, that magic offers no protection from the deadly currents of court politics, and that even the most careful schemes can carry devastating consequences.
Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer.
So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 50 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.
Alongside her Ministry colleagues and her clever girlfriend Siti, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city -or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems.
Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land—at the cost of sacrificing all jinn.
With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan’s oldest son to find the artifact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen, and confront a malicious killer from Loulie’s past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything—her enemy, her magic, even her own past—is not what it seems, and she must decide who she will become in this new reality.
Not all books of djinn magic sweep you away to times in the distant past, some will have djinn twisted up with modern technology.
In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clientsdissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groupsfrom surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alifthe first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the Hand of God,” as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.
Indelbed is a lonely kid living in a crumbling mansion in the super dense, super chaotic third world capital Of Bangladesh. His father, Dr. Kaikobad, is the black sheep of their clan, the once illustrious Khan Rahman family. A drunken loutish widower, he refuses to allow Indelbed go to school, and the only thing Indelbed knows about his mother is the official cause of her early demise: “Death by Indelbed.”
But When Dr. Kaikobad falls into a supernatural coma, Indelbed and his older cousin, the wise-cracking slacker Rais, learn that Indelbed’s dad was in fact a magician―and a trusted emissary to the djinn world. And the Djinns, as it turns out, are displeased. A “hunt” has been announced, and ten year-old Indelbed is the prey. Still reeling from the fact that genies actually exist, Indelbed finds himself on the run. Soon, the boys are at the center of a great Djinn controversy, one tied to the continuing fallout from an ancient war, with ramifications for the future of life as we know it.