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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“The Angel of Khan el-Khalili” is a stand-alone short story and the second entry in the Dead Djinn Universe by P. Djèlí Clark. You can find it in various formats, such as a short story published for free on Tor.com or as an episode of LeVar Burton Reads. Goodreads lists it as a 32-page ebook, but I haven’t been able to find a stand-alone version of it available from Amazon or other book sellers. It is also included in the short-story collection Clockwork Cairo: Steampunk Tales of Egypt, edited by Matthew Bright and published by Twopenny Press. The audio version from LeVar Burton Reads clocks in at just under one hour.
In this story, we follow a fifteen year-old girl from Cairo named Aliaa who seeks the counsel of an angel named Seeker. But it’s not really Seeker’s counsel Aliaa is requesting…. she is in need of a miracle. But everything comes at a price.
This short story is VERY atmospheric. The descriptions of the various characters and the market at night were so descriptive and evocative. It is written in second-person point-of-view, a format in which I don’t see very often. I really enjoyed it, though I didn’t like it quite as much as “A Dead Djinn in Cairo,” thus why I’m giving it 4 stars.
CW: fire, hospitalization
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