Of Djinn and Duologies Part One: Sami Shah's 'Fire Boy' is a great starter to South Asian Fantasy

I think the most obvious complaint about this book is the ending. For a duology, it offers literally no closure in any of the plots, leaving everything not open-ended, but rather just… drifting. The ending doesn’t even have the decency of a cliff hanger, and sort of just hangs there. It’s as if Sami Shah wrote a whole novel, then flipped it open roughly in the middle and decided to turn it into a duology (which, it turns out, is actually what happened, since according to this interview it was initially written as a single novel, then split into a duology by the Australian publishers. It was later printed as a single novel by the Indian publisher). 

That noticeable problem aside, this is actually a fascinating attempt at South Asian fantasy, and that’s primarily because of the setting. As a Karachiite born and bred, I have an obvious fondness for stories set in this city, but that doesn’t mean just any story will do. Sometimes the writing can be atrocious, or the characters flat and pointless, and then even the setting isn’t enough of a saving grace. That disappointment thankfully doesn’t arise in Fire Boy, because Sami Shah – following in the likes of works by Kamila Shamsie – writes about Karachi like it’s a character. The city is alive, and filled with the most amazing sort of creatures bound to inhabit a place so dark and dangerous. 


And by amazing I meant creepy and familiar, two combinations I have had very limited experience with in the literature world. As far as urban fantasy goes, South Asia has very rarely been the location for such stories. This makes Sami Shah’s novel, which brings literally every desi horror story character into the plot, so very dear to me and my poor unrepresented heart. While the canon for most avid Pakistani readers has been a western setting of elves, orcs, dwarves and white men trudging around dragon-infested lands, Shah ignores all of that in favour of djinns and churails, supernatural entities that one hears of more commonly in Pakistan in casual conversations, or during late night sleepovers. 

Wahid was seven years old when he saw his first djinn.

Keeping the conversation of whether to spell it as djinn or jinn aside for now, this book introduces us to all these paranormal creatures through the eyes of one Wahid, a teenager whose time is filled with hanging out with his two best friends, worrying about his board exams, and thinking about Maheen, a girl he has a crush on. As a protagonist, Wahid is both whiny and funny, sometimes a pointless character and then back to being an active participant in his story, fluctuating wildly between a character I cared about or someone who was only a conduit for the story Shah wanted to tell. Following the tried and tested trope of The Hero’s Journey, Shah throws Wahid’s life into a tail spin when, on his way home from a party, Wahid along with Maheen and one of his best friends Amir, encounters a fatal accident at the hand of a couple of djinn. When these djinn steal Maheen’s soul, Wahid sets out on a journey to get it back, encountering characters such as the Physics professor trying to channel djinn energy or the young street child known as the King of Karachi, all leading him along a path from where he might trace a lost soul, all the while knowing no one will believe him. 

These things happen. They happen all the time, in fact. And they care not a whit whether we believe in them. 

I think an obvious flaw, and one that has been pointed out in numerous other places, is the fact that the women in this story are basically, well, pointless. They exist only in terms of moving the hero’s story forward, and have absolutely no agency. This is not to say that the book itself is misogynistic – Shah makes it a point to talk about violence against women repeatedly, adding to his narrative characters such as the pichal parree, a common Pakistani myth about a witch with backward-facing feet who in this particular story haunts Karachi’s seaside.

“I am what is left of the woman who dies at the hands of men,” she said. “I am her revenge.”

But the point still remains that Maheen, possibly the only female in this novel to serve a function (and even then for barely any significant part of the narrative), only exists solely so that Wahid can go and ‘save her’. Her soul stolen by the jinns (not even because of something she’s done, but as part of Wahid’s relationship to the supernatural) serves only as a starting point for our hero to begin his journey into the underbelly of Karachi, and eventually to the world of the jinn themselves, accompanied by the most interesting of companions. 

“Who are you?”
“I,” said the figure, bowing grandiloquently, “am Azah-zeel. Some people call me Shaitan. But I prefer Iblis.”


It is only by the saving grace of filling of story with a chockful of desi supernatural entities does Sami Shah retain interest. And the brilliant thing about being one of the first ones to write these stories is that you have a lot of leeway in how to manoeuvre your fictional creations. Amongst the common myths that I’ve grown up with in Karachi is the tale of the mithai left uncovered at night in sweet shops, which jinn then come and eat, leaving empty containers for the owners to pack again for the next night. Shah incorporates all these sleepover stories into his tale, making it a part of Wahid’s journey through Karachi in search of Maheen’s soul. 

The brothers protested, explaining that customers were unlikely to frequent a shop in which they would be slapped by invisible hands … The sufi gave this a great deal more thought, and finally told them to make a gift of the finest deserts they made every day to the djinn. The tree had been cut, the shop built and every day they selected the best sweets from their kitchen and made an offering of them.

My only other issue with the book might be that the violence feels gratuitous in some of the scenes. While I’m not averse to a little blood and gore, having read enough grimdark to get used to the feel, it’s always immediately obvious when it’s necessary, and in this story it’s mostly not. In most of Shah’s scenes, the violence goes overboard, with more intestines spilling out and more heads detaching from body than are really needed. I’m not sure why Shah does this, especially in a story that’s so clearly targeting a YA market, but the extended torture scenes could have been cut. 

Overall though, the story is fascinating, both for people who’ve lived in the city, since there are ten million points of reference to life in Karachi, and also for people who’ve never encountered these specific Islamic or South Asian myths. It might not be the best thing I’ve read overall, but it does manage to hit the right notes on a number of occasions. For that, it goes on the recommended list.