G. Willow Wilson's Alif the Unseen
It's always so weird to be back at number 1 again. Anyway, this book was a strong start to 2013's reading--Wilson, author of the now-defunct Vertigo comic book series Air (which I occasionally loved and was occasionally infuriated by) has written a fantasy novel set in the Middle East involving a computer hacker, romance, crazy government plotting, and jinns. I liked this a lot--really strong writing, and Wilson isn't using the usual urban fantasy tropes (mainly because she's using tropes from Arabic literature, which was GREAT--really interesting discussions of language(s) here). There are even some lady characters (including one who, like the author, is an American convert to Islam, and one who is genuinely awesome). I did feel like it left a couple of threads dangling, but very satisfying story nonetheless. A/A-.
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