Naseem Jamnia

In this intricate debut fantasy introducing a queernormative Persian-inspired world, a nonbinary refugee practitioner of blood magic discovers a strange disease that causes political rifts in their new homeland. Persian-American author Naseem Jamnia has crafted a gripping narrative with a moving, nuanced exploration of immigration, gender, healing, and family. Powerful and fascinating, The Bruising of Qilwa is the newest arrival in the era of fantasy classics such as the Broken Earth Trilogy, The Four Profound Weaves, and Who Fears Death.

Firuz-e Jafari is fortunate enough to have immigrated to the Free Democratic City-State of Qilwa, fleeing the slaughter of other traditional Sassanian blood magic practitioners in their homeland. Despite the status of refugees in their new home, Firuz has a good job at a free healing clinic in Qilwa, working with Kofi, a kindly new employer, and mentoring Afsoneh, a troubled orphan refugee with powerful magic.

But Firuz and Kofi have discovered a terrible new disease which leaves mysterious bruises on its victims. The illness is spreading quickly through Qilwa, and there are dangerous accusations of ineptly performed blood magic. In order to survive, Firuz must break a deadly cycle of prejudice, untangle sociopolitical constraints, and find a fresh start for their both their blood and found family.

The Bruising of Qilwa

"Firuz-jan, you cannot appreciate the dangers a tool possesses unless you are hurt by it. Only then can you learn how to use it properly to prevent such pain. How else can we promise the world we pose no threat?"

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia.

Naseem Jamnia is an editor at Sword & Kettle Press, which is a small press of feminist speculative fiction and poetry. They also have some chapbooks which I’m interested in (in case anyone wants to get me something for no reason or as an early birthday present). While they have published some short stories, The Bruising of Qilwa is their debut. 

The Bruising of Qilwa is being published by Tachyon Publications (they published the tangleroot palace which is just love) on the 9th of August. At just under 200 pages (191) it’s classified as a novella. 

Our main charter Firuz is a practitioner of blood magic who does their best to hide it as they arrived in Qilwa with their family. Living in the slums, Firuz (who has some medical training) starts work as a clinic with Kofi training them, as the city is threatened by a pandemic blamed on the refugees. As the illness changes it’s nature, Firuz has to do their best to find out how to stop an illness spread by someone adept in blood magic.

There are a lot of themes that stand our in this little book. For those interested in found family, this will be a nuanced fantasy that covers the love, the worry and the hurt of those relationships. For those interested in magic, the details on balance will stand out. For those interested in migration and encounters between communities at the frontier, the relationship between Sassanians and Dilmunis will be fascinating (especially after Kofi’s small lesson). 

It would also be amiss to not comment on how The Bruising of Qilwa is also an incredibly queer read. Our main character and their brother is trans, everyone is introduced with their pronouns at the start, and the author also makes use of neopronouns (hu and ey) in the book. I’m sorry to say that I’m not used to that in books, and was sure that hos was a type, until I got to hu and realised that this was another pronoun. Firuz also uses they/them pronouns and is asexual (I think).

Firuz is also a great character to read about. They’re doing their best to juggle the demands of work and end up neglecting their younger brother. They feel incredibly guilty for having managed to get a home outside of the slums, and they aren’t incredibly powerful themselves.

"But you don’t know what it was like to go through that training… You have no idea what it’s like to be a blood magic user by affinity. No clue what our culture does and doesn’t condone."

I will say that I found the ending too rushed. I would have wanted more with Kofi, more hints of everything that was to come. I think that could have been elaborated on instead of just happening like that. The history lesson with Sassanians and Dilmunis was great, but I didn’t feel like any of that was properly explored in the story and it felt like it was just thrown in.

To sum, this was a 4 out of 5 star read, and I hope to see more from Naseem Jamnia in the future!

Seher Mohsin

"Firuz-jan, you cannot appreciate the dangers a tool possesses unless you are hurt by it. Only then can you learn how to use it properly to prevent such pain. How else can we promise the world we pose no threat?"

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia.

Naseem Jamnia is an editor at Sword & Kettle Press, which is a small press of feminist speculative fiction and poetry. They also have some chapbooks which I’m interested in (in case anyone wants to get me something for no reason or as an early birthday present). While they have published some short stories, The Bruising of Qilwa is their debut. 

The Bruising of Qilwa is being published by Tachyon Publications (they published the tangleroot palace which is just love) on the 9th of August. At just under 200 pages (191) it’s classified as a novella. 

Our main charter Firuz is a practitioner of blood magic who does their best to hide it as they arrived in Qilwa with their family. Living in the slums, Firuz (who has some medical training) starts work as a clinic with Kofi training them, as the city is threatened by a pandemic blamed on the refugees. As the illness changes it’s nature, Firuz has to do their best to find out how to stop an illness spread by someone adept in blood magic.

There are a lot of themes that stand our in this little book. For those interested in found family, this will be a nuanced fantasy that covers the love, the worry and the hurt of those relationships. For those interested in magic, the details on balance will stand out. For those interested in migration and encounters between communities at the frontier, the relationship between Sassanians and Dilmunis will be fascinating (especially after Kofi’s small lesson). 

It would also be amiss to not comment on how The Bruising of Qilwa is also an incredibly queer read. Our main character and their brother is trans, everyone is introduced with their pronouns at the start, and the author also makes use of neopronouns (hu and ey) in the book. I’m sorry to say that I’m not used to that in books, and was sure that hos was a type, until I got to hu and realised that this was another pronoun. Firuz also uses they/them pronouns and is asexual (I think).

Firuz is also a great character to read about. They’re doing their best to juggle the demands of work and end up neglecting their younger brother. They feel incredibly guilty for having managed to get a home outside of the slums, and they aren’t incredibly powerful themselves.

"But you don’t know what it was like to go through that training… You have no idea what it’s like to be a blood magic user by affinity. No clue what our culture does and doesn’t condone."

I will say that I found the ending too rushed. I would have wanted more with Kofi, more hints of everything that was to come. I think that could have been elaborated on instead of just happening like that. The history lesson with Sassanians and Dilmunis was great, but I didn’t feel like any of that was properly explored in the story and it felt like it was just thrown in.

To sum, this was a 4 out of 5 star read, and I hope to see more from Naseem Jamnia in the future!

In The Bruising of Qilwa, Jamnia explores morality, responsibility, guilt, and power in a fascinating fantasy inspired by their Persian heritage. Firuz is a refugee who has fled their home in fear of the systematic attacks against the practitioners of Sassanian blood magic. In the Free Democratic City-State of Qilwa, they find a job in the last free clinic in the city, helping to provide healthcare to the thousands of other Sassanian refugees in the poorest part of the city. When Firuz first starts working at the clinic, the city is beset by plague, which hits the cramped Underdocks the hardest. Yet even when the plague has burnt out, Firuz starts seeing a new disease, which they call blood-bruising among their patients - a disease that seems to affect only the patients of their clinic. And even more worrying is that it seems to be caused by blood magic gone awry. Firuz must discover the cause of this blood-bruising not only to heal those afflicted but also to protect the Sassanian refugees who might be attacked should the incompetent and dangerous use of blood magic be made known.

This was a wonderfully immersive book about the dualities of power and control, freedom and oppression, healing and harm. Jamnia grapples with complex questions that have no easy answers: if a people was an oppressor in the past, does that mean they deserve their oppression in the present? If you can save 1000 people should you ignore the suffering of 50 that it causes? At what point of suffering does a risky cure become more imperative than a liveable problem? As in real life, we are not left with simple answers or clear cut heroes and villains; life is far too messy for that. Instead we have people just trying to make the best decisions they can with the knowledge and skills at their disposal. Their choices are deeply human and achingly real.

And threaded through this, the characters' cultures and identities deeply influence their actions and worldviews. Both the highs and lows of Sassanian culture affect how Firuz lives their life and responds to the pressures they experience as a refugee in a city-state that fears their people's presence. One of the most personally affecting for me was the way gender identity and expression were treated. When someone introduces themself, they preface their name with their pronoun. Firuz is nonbinary and had an alignment as a teenager that allowed their body to reflect their identity. Now their brother Parviz has grown old enough to need his own alignment, except they are now cut off from the elder mages who would have performed the alignment and Firuz must try to create an alignment spell that wouldn't damage or destroy Parviz's body. The whole way Sassanians seem to approach gender identity and expression was just so interesting and validating. I just love seeing creative uses of magic for accommodating gender identity.

My one big complaint is I wanted more from the story. More of Sassanian history. More of Qilwa's history. More of Parviz and of Firuz's student Afsoneh. More of Kofi and his work. More of Firuz's place in their new home and amngst the people they now serve at the clinic. This could have easily been 150 pages longer, fleshing out the world and the characters more. 

Still, based on this brilliant debut, I will definitely keeping an eye out for Jamnia's work in the future.

The Bruising of Qilwa

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