DNF. I don’t think Jinn-Bot is a bad book at all, but it’s just not holding my attention. I found Lina a really hard character to connect with – she feels very remote, possibly because we’re never getting the story through her POV? – and while I loved the idea of Bador (and his eye-emojis!) I was frustrated by his very juvenile obsession with becoming a robot gladiator to the exclusion of all else. I sympathised with his difficulties with his family – who, whatever they say, do treat him differently because he’s a robot – and his passion for robot rights, but for crying out loud, who cares about the robot tournament?! Especially with everything else going on!

I made it to 56% – because it is very readable; Basu’s prose is nice and easy, and Shantiport, the setting, feels wildly alive. But there was so much telling-not-showing, and when the ‘Jinn’ does come into play, I was disappointed – not by the Jinn itself, precisely, so much as how Lina and Basu’s mother used it so carelessly while purporting to be an expert on political revolutions. The (looong) conversation where she explains all the reasons they can’t wish for Very Good Things – like ending poverty, etc – basically comes down to ‘these kinds of changes have to happen slowly and organically’. But like – no??? They don’t??? Not when you literally have three wishes with virtually no limits??? At that point, you ARE allowed to wish for things like world peace. (Just make sure to put in a lot of caveats, so you don’t end up with a Je Souhaite situation.)

And then the mother’s wish goes horribly wrong, because of course it does, and it all felt so – if you’d stopped to think for three seconds you could see how the wish was going to go wrong, but no, she knows best, to the point that she won’t allow the others to make wishes to better the world. Maddening, and arrogant, and then there’s the pity-party afterwards, and there just wasn’t anything keeping me invested in the characters and their story.

I think this could be very fun for the right reader, but alas, I am not that reader.

This is the secret mecha baby of Aladdin and Murderbot if they were to have a revolutionary and wholly unexpected love affair.

Alina and her bot-monkey brother Bador are the children of failed revolutionists, condemned to a lifetime of secrecy. In a city on the brink of collapse, only the ruthless and the cunning thrive and the siblings are determined to chase their dreams.

Taking elements from traditional folklore, Basu weaves his own story of wishes, magic, and alien tech into the beating heart of Shantiport. The story is at once funny, deeply philosophical, and self-aware but spectacularly so.

Be prepared for political upheaval, an analysis of sentient rights, both human and bot alike, and the search for sustainability surrounded by action-packed mecha battles.

More of a 3.5 actually but I’ll round up just for that ending.

I’ve been very excited to get to this book because I found the author’s The City Inside to be very interesting and prophetic, and wanted to see how this novel would turn out. I had expected this too would have an audiobook I could checkout but unfortunately there isn’t, so it took me a while to finally get to it.

And what spectacular world building this has. the city of Shantiport that the author has created is so complex and full of history, culture, problems, floods, very advanced bots of all kinds, kaiju fights, and full of surveillance all the time. There are also rulers, oligarchs and gang lords, but we never know who is working together and who is opposed to each other, only that it’s the people and even bots who suffer. The story here is peppered with some new thing to discover in every page and that’s the major thing that kept me going. But it’s the pacing that prevented me from really enjoying it as well the POV it’s told from. The first half is very slow and we have no clue where this story is gonna go and it’s hard to keep oneself invested to continue, but it does pick up a bit in the second half and gives some glimpses of why it might be called a loose retelling of Aladdin.

It’s told from the perspective of a story bot Moku, so the narration overall feels very detached. We never get to understand the inner voices of our main characters, Lina and Bador - especially Lina because she keeps her thoughts very close to her chest; whereas Bador talks a lot about what he wants and feels, but somehow is concealing his sorrows behind his bluster. They are still very interesting to read about, with their sibling bond coming through perfectly well in their easy banter or when they want to be angry with the other but can’t stop helping each other anyways. The side characters Antim, Tanai, Juiful and Zohra are also written well though it’s the same issue that we never get to really know anyone well enough.

The story is also full of monologues and conversations about trying to revive the city of Shantiport, the problems created by greedy people in power and how it might be hard to dismantle the systems which are responsible for the poor plight of the people, but it’s still necessary if changes have to be made for the better. There are also discussions about the feelings of bots and higher level intelligences, their rights to autonomy and not being in the control of humans, and whether or not it is right to unleash an alien intelligence try to solve the systemic issues plaguing the world. All of these made for some thought provoking moments but also felt repetitive at times.

Overall, I’m still unsure and confused about this whole book. I absolutely loved this weird futuristic world the author has created but can’t tell you anything about it in detail. The plot also takes it time to develop and goes to places you’ll never see coming. The characters are quite interesting but I wish I could take a peek at their innermost thoughts. So, I don’t know if I should recommend this to anyone specifically, but maybe you’ll like it if you enjoy the weird and wondrous.

This is a super unique retelling of the Aladdin story I've come to know and love, with commentary on electronic life and what it means to call a place home.
I'm so fascinated by sci-fi retellings of classic stories, and this one did not fail to deliver. The pace is snappy, the characters are loveable but flawed, and the plot draws you in from the start. While this isn't necessarily a great introduction to sci-fi as a genre (it's definitely dense and might be hard to read for someone who isn't familiar with the conventions of the genre), it is an excellent book to pick up if you're down for a romp through a dying city with a cast of robots, people, and everything in between.

I am a huge fan of high-tech Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories. The more bots and tech the better! Once I read the plot blurb for this book, I knew I had to read it!

Shantiport was once a great gateway to the universe, but now it's pretty much just a shadow of its former self. Rumors are that Shantiport will soon be no more. Lina loves her city, is a tour guide, and would love to see with city shine again. Her brother, a bot that looks like a monkey, wants to get the H out of the city and see the rest of the universe. Their whole life changes when they find an old bot, a magic ring, and a lamp.....

This story is a futuristic re-telling of the Aladdin story. It was a great mix of humor, sci-fi, political corruption and greed, and adventure! The plot has many twists and turns, and it took me along for the ride from start to finish!

Very enjoyable read! I love it when a book surprises me, and this one definitely did! I didn't realize until I got about 1/3 through the book that it was an Aladdin re-telling. Then it just completely sucked me in and I couldn't stop reading!

Imaginative. Adventurous. Exciting. This story is wonderful!

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Tor Publishing. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

A really unique and engaging sci-fi read. Unlike anything I have ever read. The world building was fantastic and completely immersive. Bador is a character I will not soon forget.

Samit Basu is a delight to read, and The Jinnbot of Shantiport just might be my favorite of his novels. He brought Shantiport alive in my mind from the very first page with delightful worldbuilding, but what makes reading him a joy is that his writing is so smart. Filled with big and tiny moments that made me go ‘ah’, The Jinnbot of Shantiport always managed to surprise me in the best way possible, even when I thought I had it all figured out.

Both Lina and Bador are incredible characters in their own right, but it is Moku the bot who has my whole heart. If you enjoyed Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, then I insist you pick up The Jinnbot of Shantiport.

I adored the contrast between the siblings, from Lina’s seriousness to Bador’s playful banter. They are beautiful characters who have their own fears and desires, and the way this pushes their dynamic is fantastic.

From cinematic mecha fights to an aching romance set in the background of a city falling apart and all spiced with a healthy dose of humor, reading The Jinnbot of Shantiport was an incredibly fun experience, and I hope you read it too!

Just as strange and magical as I expected it to be. I highly recommend this to any fans of scifi and fantasy. This is just a gorgeous book.

It’s hard to divorce my evaluation of this book from how excited I was for it and how let down I was by the fact that I didn’t enjoy it. I’m sure there are readers out there who will really enjoy the distance that having the entire story narrated by a sentient robot that doesn’t know a) what’s happening or b) the context in which events should be placed, but I found it deeply frustrating because it completely obscured what drives a book for me, namely how characters feel about what’s happening and each other. The advertising materials comped Murderbot but the Murderbot series works because Murderbot itself feels SO MUCH, ALL THE TIME, even though it doesn’t want to and tries to pretend it doesn’t. I just couldn’t get the same immediacy from Moku. Frankly I would have been much more sold on the whole book if Bador/Moku had been a visible through line, but instead we just get Moku *telling the reader* that he cares about Bador and Lina without it really being clear why. Having the ship retconned in three pages from the end was kind of adding insult to injury for me. The worldbuilding was incredibly inventive and if you’re looking for interesting AI and/or “how do you solve a problem like extractive capitalism” sci-fi then I do wholeheartedly recommend the book! It just didn’t work for me without the emotional backbone.

Original, immersive, and utterly entertaining. A recommended purchase for collections where SF is popular.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group, Tordotcom as this eARC was provided to me in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Overall: 3.75ish, rounded up to a 4.

First, before we get to the book review, let’s do a jacket copy review:

What's interesting to me is the jacket copy’s comps are Aladdin and Murderbot, but Edelweiss lists The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, which given Bador's plotline -- is arguably the more noteworthy comp here over Murderbot.

Because – WHERE are the Kaiju-BattleBots fights in the copy? There is, at least in the copy I read on NetGalley, and the copy I double checked on Amazon, a complete lack of ANY mention of Bador’s Kaiju-BattleBots storyline. These fights and the motivations around them take up so much of Bador's plotline, several chapters worth of storyline, that it really should have been mentioned somewhere??

Because while I didn’t mind the book overall, I’m not sure I would have requested it if the Kaiju parts were disclosed beforehand. If it was a library copy, I likely would have felt cheated enough by the description and returned it within the first few chapters. I think chapter four or five is the first fight, where Bador interrupts and messes with the streaming camera bots (I literally have “- wtf was w/ the two chapters of Kaiju fighting” in my notes app for that chapter section). If I made it past there, I likely I would have also given up after Bador fights the fake Godzilla being/robot controlled remotely by humans. As this is a review copy, I decided to plug along instead of DNF.

It also probably doesn’t help much, that because of the copy not matching my expectations, and also because of how Bador treats Moku in the first half of the book, that I found Bador really rather annoying.
But. Annoying is an emotion, so that still counts for something. Not everyone needs or wants a likeable protagonist.

Anyway!

Book review:

So, to start with, I am in a Western country, not of an SEA-background and thus might miss some of the storytelling traditions or regional styles that may inform the text choices, and am mostly familiar with the animated Disney-fied version of Aladdin from the ‘90s (which has its own issues).

(I suspect this might be how all the Kaiju fighting fits in as the Godzilla movie plots are a stand-in for climate-change impacted nuclear disaster. But again, a note on the jacket copy would have been nice so the transition to those scenes doesn’t seem as random and jarring.)

Shantiport, the world of the story, and the city, is phenomenal. The world building is probably the story’s strongest element. Right from the jump the reader is dumped into a world where we can clearly see and feel humans living with robots, AI surveillance, and a variety of socio-economic conditions. And the city itself exists in a way that shows a lot of history and cultural dynamics between 1. what is allowed to collapse, and 2. What is kept in livable conditional by the various ruling factions.

The outside universe (which the reader never really sees) also works because the reader never really sees or interacts with it. The wider galaxy is a dream and a myth, a hope of a different reality but also an understanding of “this is the one we’ve got, so we need to work with it.” It’s very much an old movie backdrop painting where it works as long as you don’t think or look at it too long.

Now we come to our three main characters – Bador, Moku, and Lina.

Moku and Lina were the most interesting to me, and I felt frustrated at points that we didn’t get as much information from Lina as we did from Bador due to the limits of Moku’s narration style and being unable to give the reader as much information about Lina as Bador.

The thing about Moku’s narration as well, is that the reader has to be ok with a certain amount of what comes across as info dumping, as Moku’s function is to record things (so Moku is a reader stand-in) and is new to this world and needs certain things explained in a way that someone who lived more in-world wouldn’t. This can make the narration at times come across as detached, though Moku does eventually grow a little bit of a moral backbone and some opinions verses staying objective. It’s a little like reading Lemony Snicket becoming self-aware, since for better or worse, the most predominate book in western writing I can think of with this detached observational narration / "external character who also acts the narrator" style is A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I generally liked Moku’s character growth overall, I just wish it wasn’t tied as much to Bador.

Bador is. Bador is meant to be comical, but Bador’s sense of comical is that of a twenty-something who still thinks a ten-year olds fart jokes are cool and frankly just was really, really annoying. It was just a style that did not work for me in any way. Like if we dug more into the family drama, and Lina hiding really important information all that time and ignoring Bador except when she needs him for something, that might have worked better for me, but? Yeah. It’s a no.

Then you have Lina. Lina is a genetically modified human who mostly communicates by not communicating at all. Lina's part of the plot relies on withholding information from the other main character for seemingly no reason. Which in a high surveillance world makes some amount of sense, but it also means that if you’re not vaguely familiar with the outline of Aladdin the plot doesn’t make much sense until about the halfway mark. And readers browsing in a bookstore will give up long before then and go buy something else. But Lina, at least felt like she had a good interior world going on until sorting out the wish situation. She generally likes Shantiport and wants to save the people who live there from the city collapsing into the sea and/or government corruption.

I will say, between the three of the MC’s, even if you know Aladdin for them, I think who you think they’re meant to be, isn’t who they end up being at the end of the story. Which is a interesting sense of twisting the style around.

However, one of the most compelling questions of the novel – who or what is Moku? Also never really gets answered in a way that felt satisfactory.

Overall, the story is chaotic, unpredictable and never really stops moving for long enough for the readers to catch their breath or the characters to have much of a contemplative think about why they’re doing what it is they’re motivated to do.

It’s a little bit like popcorn, it’s fun to eat, but not exactly filling.

In the end, with the trick of using Moku for the narration reminded me of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Bador’s character in general, and plus the whole Kaiju battle bit, I’d say this combination really gave the feeling that this is a book a fifteen-year-old boy would be over the moon about.

So! I’d recommend this to someone who wants a book that could fit the concept or general vibes of an older YA book for a male / masc teenager. They may even be more inclined to read it that way, as Jinn-bot is sold as adult, and not YA.

Overall, I had a fun time. It didn’t meet my expectations but there could be other factors there, I’m not mad I read it, but I probably wouldn’t read it again in the near future (even though I do think you might need a re-read to fully understand what’s going on).

I would rec this book to people who are looking for:
- Non-stop action-adventure scenes
- A sci-fi retelling of Aladdin, with a twist (with a warning about the Kaiju’s)
- Omnipresent narrators who, are not, technically, either of the main characters, but a main character themselves (Lemony Snicket fans)

TWs: Discussions of Personhood, Death of Parents

PS: Tanai the space hero is cool, but doesn’t seem to fit into the plot. But you know, points for cool.

Genius mashup of the ancient tale of Aladdin, a sci-fi futuristic romp, a family drama, and a mafia crime spree. Every chapter is a deep well and every plot movement is a tangled web. Basu’s storytelling acumen is on full display here and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my free copy. These opinions are my own.

Extremely subversive sci-fi experience with a bit of Transformers and Star Wars mixed together. There's a large cast of characters, and because of that I didn't feel as if I got to know either Lina or Bador too well. They still felt like strangers at the end. Very complex world-building and interconnected politics and relationships.

The premise and cover of The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport are initially what drew me to this story. I haven't read a science fiction by an author from my culture before and I was very excited to see how this would go! On that part, I was not disappointed. The world building of the city was very well done. I was able to reminisce about home in this futuristic set up.

But that is not enough to continue to be engaged and the slow plot was a huge hindrance to complete this book. I liked the main characters - Bador and Lina are interesting, with their own personalities, struggles and strengths. Their history was interwoven well between their perspectives. The story bot itself is an intriguing addition to the book. I would forget that it was narrating and then it would say something that would remind me of its existence. Though I liked that at the beginning, this kind of storytelling started to feel unnecessary. I think it would have been a great reveal at the end that there was a story bot.

The plot is very slow and it is sad that so much of the story is build up. I liked the world, the premise, the situations portrayed in this book but some things like the world's ending did not make sense to me and it was unclear where things were going.

I wish this book had been better, Many thanks to the publisher for a digital copy for an honest review.

I had a really hard time with this book. it took me over three weeks to read (which is very atypical for me) and every single time I picked it up it was a chore. when I finally finished I gave it 2 stars because I was a little bitter over how much effort it had been lol, but now that I've sat on it for a week I'm nudging it up to a 3 star rating. the ending was spectacular, and dragged me back into the book hand over fist, so for that alone it deserves a 3/5.

I'm not gonna touch on the plot very much because other reviewers have done a sublime job, but I do want to emphasize that even when this book was driving me up the wall it was genuinely funny. the dialogue is a riot, and I loved how effectively Bador and Lina came as off as siblings just through their conversations.

I've included some of my favorite quotes. enjoy!


"You didn't tell me he was huffy," [Lina] says to Bador.
"I'm horrified, I didn't know," he says. "So huffy."

"Now give me a kiss."
"I do not have any kissing equipment."
She steps forward, instead, and plants a small kiss on my front cam. I retain professional objectivity, but also deduce that given the necessity, I would die for her.

"So I'm going to steal a little bus, or van," Bador says. "And I'm going to drive it to Longuria, and then using either seduction or force I am going to absolutely stuff this bus or van with feral monkeys."
"Bador."

Bador curses and leaps in pursuit. He's a good curser: his expletives are as rich, fragrant and colorful as the assorted Shantiport effluvia still stuck to his body, and I remind myself to tell him, later, that my language filters are family friendly, which limits my ability to absorb a significant fraction of the things he says and thinks.

"Thanks, Lina. Antim said there might be traps, and you shouldn't touch anything."
"Good point," Lina says. "Touch everything, then. We're going to need weapons."
Bador eyemojis hearts at her, and steps toward the nearest vault.

"I've forgotten every word of all the power fables my mother told me to make me a great leader. I always liked the cool animals and the crimes more than anything else, and so when they built Bador, who was always a cool animal and an ongoing crime, I was the happiest little girl in the world."


rep - agender mc, queer/bi mcs, side achillean characters
thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the arc ✨

This was a delightful, crazy, action-filled roller coaster of a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Excellent world building, you can almost smell the city's dirty, soggy air; excellent original characters that are likeable but pleasantly flawed; many unexpected plot twists, and some pointed commentary on the nature of privilege and personal responsibility. What more can you ask for?
4.5 stars rounded up.

The worldbuilding and main characters are great, but the plot was a bit of a mess, The city of Shantiport and all its different sections and its incredible technology were really interesting. I enjoyed reading about Bador, Lina, and Moku. I didn't really know where the plot was headed most of the time, but overall this was a fun cyberpunk, scifi romp.

This is my second book by Samit Basu that I've attempted to get through unsuccessfully. I had a hard time immersing myself in the plot, as the reader is really thrown into the thick of it with little warning and context. As a sci-fi fan, I understand this is a huge part of SFF world-building (full immersion in a world, relying on context clues to gain a better understanding of the world/jargon/etc.), but it was a little too much for me at the time of reading this. I had similar issues while trying to read Basu's The City Inside.

The book gives off Murderbot-esque vibes and I loved the idea of an Aladdin retelling, but it didn't hit the spot for me. I hope to pick this up again in a few months to see if some time and space help my comprehension/understanding. My inability to complete this book shouldn't be a warning signal to other readers - it simply didn't work for me this time around.

DNF, but not because it is a bad book, I just couldn't get a close connection to it. I'm not entirely sure why, but maybe it is because the main characters are hiding things and I felt arms-length from them. Lots to like here, but it isn't quite for me. That is more about me than about the book.

While I think the world building is pretty great, seeing mentions of Murderbot in other discussions just makes it suffer by comparison…if our dude here is definitely less murdery. The setting also feels like a more fun version of a techier P. Djeli Clark Djinn tale…which also makes me compare. Lina and the capers-ness of the plot also bring Andy Weir’s Artemis to mind. This book is definitely one many would love, and I see the potential, it just isn’t quite for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.