**THIS IS A TRANSLATED VERSION OF THE ORIGINAL REVIEW WRITTEN IN SPANISH**

Score: 3.3 Stars.

Before starting this review I want to thank Tor for sending me an advanced copy of this novel.
I first saw the cover of this book on Daniel Greene's channel and it caught my attention since then. This is the reason why, when I saw that I could apply for the ARC in Netgalley, I didn't think twice on doing it.

Among the elements that most caught my attention are the characters. I have to admit that the idea of a robot monkey captivated me from the first pages. Furthermore, we find ourselves in a world where humans and robots coexist in their cities. A clear example of them are Lina and Bador, a pair of brothers made up of a human and a robot.

The narration of the novel is light, which allowed me to get through the book faster. I really enjoyed the combat scenes, especially watching Bador take on other creatures much bigger than him.

The plot is very simple, so this could be an ideal book for those who are at an intermediate level when it comes to Science Fiction. The story is about a city that is doomed for destruction and our main characters try everything they can to prevent it, even if it involves a genie-robot that can change reality.

This was an enjoyable and entertaining read. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, the second half was good, but I think that in the first part of the novel I had more surprises and shocking scenes.

*I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest feedback.*

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport is an exciting and imaginative novel, described as an Aladdin retelling with robots. It’s incredibly fast-paced and fun, introducing a memorable set of lovable characters whose relationships and interactions are at the heart of this story. I loved the brother/sister relationship this novel is hinged upon, with the sibling disagreements presenting something very relatable within a futuristic setting.

At times I did find this a bit confusing, as there was a lot going on, but overall I found it to be an enjoyable read packed with originality. There were exciting twists, brilliant world-building, lots of humorous dialogue, and commentary around race and class — all of which made this an incredibly insightful and engaging novel. I’ll definitely be looking to read more from Samit Basu in future!

There is a lot of dialogue and introspection which is interesting but would be nice if there was a little more action. It felt a little like an afterthought. All in all a very entertaining book with great characters. I would love to read more of Moku and Badur’s adventures.

I would like to thank Tor/Forge for providing a digital copy of this novel via NetGalley. This novel initially caught my attention with the tittle. It ended up being alot of fun. I enjoyed its exploration of artificial intelligence and its rights. I loved the relationship between Lina and her brother as well as the character of Moku, who serves as the principal narrator. Inspired by One Thousand and one nights, it's dystopic, postapocalyptic cyperpunk with robots and a jinn. About 2/3rds of the way, the story seemed to be over, but we find that there are additional components to the plot. These revelations enhanced the story and set up the ultimately satisfying ending. There are some tough choices to be made by main characters at the closing of the story. and I felt these choices had to me made. I highly recommend this for novel.

Unfortunately, I never quite clicked with this book. I do think it will find an audience with other readers, but it ended up not being for me.

DNF at 14%, I managed to slog through the first 5 chapters but failed to actually see a point to this story. It felt very disjointed and was not easy to follow

An interesting read. It was sometimes difficult to follow, but overall the book was a great read. I am still a bit confused on how Moku fits in as Jinnbot of the Ring. Was he actually a Jinnbot or just being treated as one by the actual Jinnbot? Also, the easily swayable allegiances of certain characters was borderline believable.

This book has more twists, turns, crosses, double crosses, and just generally fun chaos than a maze full of child spies who have eaten a bucket of candy! One of the least predictable books I’ve read in a long while! A sci-fi fairytale retelling mash up of Arabian Nights and Aladdin, but with a much more South East Asian flair! Told mainly from the POV of a “storybot” named Moku, who is designed to follow his user and record their life and actions. Moku ends up accepting as his user both Lina and Bador, who are a human and monkey bot pair of siblings, and the children of revolutions who were fighting social injustice and inequity.

Though the siblings love and care for each other they have of grown apart over issues of trust and secrecy in their family. Moku splits his time between them, as they each try to save the city of Shantiport and also work on their own goals. To save the city, the trio has to thwart a villainous oligarch to find a magical piece of alien tech in the form of a lamp with a jinn-bot who grants users wishes. The “be careful what you wish for” saying never has more truth than when dealing with a jinn in a lamp!

There is mass corruption of government, murderous bot fighters, crime lords, an alien adventure hero with self cleaning clothes, tragic loss of a parent, and a quest to save the the people and bots of the city from destruction and misery. The story does tend to be a lot of “tell” and less “show,” with a fairly omniscient narrator, and varies wildly between fast action packed scenes of our characters fighting for their lives and slower more philosophical discussions on bot rights, and how to improve the lives of the common people of Shantiport without causing more problems than they solve.

A super fun read for anyone that enjoys a good sci-fi retelling of old classics, with a lot of mayhem and just the right dash of humor!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the e-arc.

What makes this novel is the setting and the characters! It is brilliant and I love that books are delving back into Cyberpunk again and doing it right. I would highly recommend this!

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available to me.

An interesting far-future retelling of the tale of Aladdin. Yes, it includes thieves, treasure, djinn, robots, drones, spaceships, lots of AI, an even caliph (equivalent) or two, and even magicians (of sorts). The book doesn't really take off until about halfway through, but after that it's just non-stop adventure and action.

Loved this! A fast paced action tale in an Asian-flavored slum setting. The POV is from an AI mandated to only record events, not interfere. It is gradually subverted by the braggadocious monkey construct Bador and his idealistic sister, Lina. The dialog was witty, the AI's observations funny, the action non-stop and the plot twists and turns kept me guessing. This would be a fabulous movie The cover blurb describing this as a mash-up of Murderbot and Aladdin is spot on. I highly recommend. I will be buying the hard cover and the audio book so that I can enjoy the story again in every format. Yes, I'm obsessed, what of it?

I struggled with what to rate this, but I’m going to land at a 3.5 rounded down. For me it was too long and would’ve definitely gotten a better rating if the story were trimmed or sped up a bit.

This is a story narrated by a bot, Moku, that is increasingly finding itself involved in the lives of Bador and Lina, a bot and human respectively. Bador and Lina are siblings that have different goals but love each other. Bador and Moku in particular have a lot of growth over the course of the story.

The characters and the relationships worked really well for me. I found them compelling, and they dealt with hurt and pain in ways that felt authentic.

It takes a turn at the halfway point that didn’t work as well for me. Things get more wild and crazy and chaotic. I had less of a handle on what was happening. It went on for too long. A lot of the character moments I was enjoying from the first half were not the focus of the second half. It kind of felt like two very different books smooshed into one. I got bored at multiple points in the second half but plowed through. Having said that, I think as a film experience it would’ve been a lot of fun. A lot of it felt written as an adventure film that just didn’t work well in book form.

Bador and Moku’s journey is definitely the best part. Moku’s voice as narrator is also endearing - I was charmed in a way that Murderbot never charmed me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Overall, this was a fun read that I'd recommend to most people who want a big scifi romp in an Indian inspired setting.

The narrator, a little bot named Moku, was well done and likeable with his own voice and opinions that changed as the story developed in ways that were meaningful to me. The method of using their perspective as a "story-bot" to maintain distinct chunks of story with each sibling it follows was also interesting. The story itself kept me engaged for the most part and while it dealt with a lot of big themes, the one of humanity was always front and center to me and the ideas of whose power structures are shaping new technologies and systems was fun to explore in the midst of a collapsing pseudo-earth society.

While I enjoyed most of the characters, Moku and Bador were clear favorites for me. They were explored the most, so that makes sense, but Lina was harder to get because she was intentionally written that way, and it's used within the plot, but I wish there could've been some show of vulnerability and openness. And while the main characters' arcs were all clear and reasonable, their mother's opinions and decisions by the end for me were just not. Beyond that, the first 25% of the book was rough to get into. I'm not sure if it was pacing, exposition, or what, but something about it was so slow for me that when I put it down it took weeks for me to pick it back up.

All that said, when I did pick up this one again I read the rest of it within a day and enjoyed it. I think the comp to Murderbot is reasonable in that this story also involves bots and humanity and some (but much less) humor, but just don't come in expecting the pacing of a novella series in this story and you'll probably have a great time with it like I did.

I loved this book, and I'd also love to read more in the world of Shantiport and Moku if I could.

There is a touch of the absurd in this book, or perhaps a lot of absurd. It's silly, and funny, and tense, and mysterious. I enjoyed the journey and the main characters, flaws and all. When books bill themselves as murderbot-ish I usually find that they fall flat (Murderbot from Martha Well's fantastic series is a gem), but there was genuinely something murderbot-esque about this, in a very good, and unique way - beyond the idea of bam here is a sarcastic death robot, or here is a human robot clone doing things - it had meaningful connections with people and other individuals, it was funny, it had villains, mysterious people, and sometimes robots that just don't know what's going on.

But it also had a richly described external world, a Jinn(bot) which was its own fun romp - especially if you have any familiarity with Jinn in Arabian mythology. And full of family drama, love, betrayal and more.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the e-galley and letting me read this one early.

"The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport" is this outlandishly delightful interstellar adventure, yet it also bears the weight of significant themes: oligarchy, colonialism, environmental collapse, and the quest for freedom. Basu's storytelling is cool and gutsy. He's not afraid to dive headfirst into complex story-weaving and take a playful jab at well-worn SF and folklore clichés. The Aladin retelling aspect stealthily crept up on me, which was a pleasant surprise.

The character of Bador, the ambitious monkey bot with a larger-than-life persona, became my instant favorite. His zeal for exploring the universe and the dichotomy of his love for family truly resonated with me. He's a bot, but he's also Lina's brother.

However, my reading experience was a bit hindered by the choice of narrator: Moku, the story bot. It was indeed a creative move, something that felt novel and fresh. His introduction was BRILLIANT. Yet, this very uniqueness put a distance between me and the characters. Moku's narrative voice created a sort of bubble that kept me at arm's length from the characters' inner thoughts and feelings. I yearned for a deeper connection, a dive into their psyches, their motivations, their fears, and their hopes.

All things considered, "The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport" is a book I'd readily recommend. It's an exhilarating read with thought-provoking themes, memorable characters, and a compelling storyline. Just be ready for an unconventional narrative voice that might need a bit of getting used to.

WOW the worldbuilding! This is a complex, intricate, real-feeling future world, with detailed characters who have compelling motivations, goals, and development. You can really envision this world, and imagine all the machinations described playing out. There's also the sense that the world is much bigger than just Shantiport - there's a whole universe out there, with power plays and dynamics that are largely beyond this story, but feel real from the brief glimpses we get of them.

I really liked the narrative perspective. Particularly in the first half of the book, having essentially two perspectives both told from an outside observer really made me question biased narration, and I'm sure was the intent. Bador and Lina are both so sure in their viewpoints, but the way they're written, I as the reader can see the holes and inaccuracies in their perception. This really helped to drive home the ideas of personhood and family that the book explores.

The narration also allows for a lot of uncertainty, which I found really interesting. The characters' motivations, and sometimes allegiances, are often unclear. But it a good way! The narrator, and therefore I, didn't always understand the motives, but it felt like they were still there and realistic. Like these are real people, but I just don't quite know them yet.

This book doesn't tie up all the loose ends. There are lot of them, spinning out from the story. It's one of those books where you feel like the world continues after you put it down. This specific story is (mostly) wrapped up, but there are many more stories in the world that keep going.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC!

I really struggled with this book. The beginning in present tense and third person POV made it difficult for me to get into, but the shift in POV that comes later did help. The world building sometimes felt info-dump-y and difficult to follow - there were a lot of plot points, and due to the shifted POV, I had a difficult time discerning what each character’s motivations and goals were. There were moments of the book that I felt fully invested in what was happening, but the pacing of events kept me from feeling that consistently. The end felt drawn out and rushed all at once, and left me with questions that I probably won’t read a sequel to get the answers to. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, and at the end of the day it just wasn’t for me.

Aladdin in space with her robot monkey brother. The book was as fun as that sentence. Despite the heavier topics (colonialism, civil rights…), Jinn-bot was entertaining and sometimes laugh out loud funny. There were areas bogged down by info-dumping but that ultimately didn’t take away too much from the story. My favorite parts were when everything would fly off the rails and reveals would lead to deeper reveals.

Cyberpunk Calcutta-ish setting with a world-building that uses the Bengali bilingual puns, and a chaotic Bengali family at the heart of it...I couldn't love this more! In the author's last work, I was also blown away by his world-building but the characters felt flat and lost in a general self-indulgent infodump, with very little plot movement. But this one is not only wall to wall action and romp, but there's so much texture to the characters and their humor and the world they inhabit. Perhaps, I find it relatable and easily evocative because of the clear inspiration of my hometown of Calcutta, its comforting sluggishness and resilience in the face of decay and abandonment. For readers at large without context, this may seem a bit of a hot mess of genre elements, but this is a flavor of a city where all seemingly disparate elements percolate for centuries and it holds your heartstrings forever.
E-arc from NetGalley, but I'll probably re-read as an audiobook when the title releases.

This book presents a fresh and unique perspective of the story of Aladin, and the first few chapters had me absolutely hooked. As I progressed through the story, my interest waned a bit, and by the end I felt like the vibes and the idea of the book were better than the book itself. The potential of what it could be outshined what it was, but that’s not to say it wasn’t enjoyable.

The main three characters we get to know are pretty interesting, and Moku is definitely the star as the narrator. There were so many funny moments of Moku’s reactions to Lina and Bador, and those lighter moments really made the story shine. I also really liked that we got to see both Lina and Bador’s character development through Moku’s view and how Moku also develops over the story and begins to fight against programming.

The challenges with this book come with the politics of the story. There were massive info dumps, and I never quite understood what anyone’s motives or goals were. The investment was never quite there, and I wanted things to go further, rather than lingering at the surface. The other major struggle I had with this book was that most of this information and key plot points are conveyed through massive paragraphs of dialogue. There would be pages straight of one character monologuing, and it began to feel a bit like a lecture instead of an immersive experience.

Overall, I was invested and did really enjoy the main characters, but the plot itself did not hold my interest. 3.5⭐️