G. Willow Wilson

A fantastical journey set at the height of the Spanish Inquisition from the award-winning author of Alif the Unseen and writer of the Ms. Marvel series, G. Willow Wilson's The Bird King is a jubilant story of love versus power, religion versus faith, and freedom versus safety. G. Willow Wilson's debut novel Alif the Unseen was an NPR and Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and it established her as a vital American Muslim literary voice. Now she delivers The Bird King, a stunning new novel that tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan has a secret--he can draw maps of places he's never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan's surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan's gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls? As Fatima and Hassan traverse Spain with the help of a clever jinn to find safety, The Bird King asks us to consider what love is and the price of freedom at a time when the West and the Muslim world were not yet separate.

The Bird King

When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan's surrender, Fatima, a concubine in the court, befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan's gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule

Boothby

** spoiler alert **
           ...and so, it turned out that the true bird king was the friends we made along the way

Janice Hopper

I am super-tender hearted in my old age. If I think a character I like is liable to come to harm, sometimes I just have to set a book down for a while.

I set this book down several times. (Mild spoiler: it was almost never as bad as I feared it might be.)

Fatima the courtesan and Hassan the cartographer have caught the eye of the Inquisition in the fading days of the occupation of Granada. Convinced the only way to save Hassan is to flee, Fatima collars him and hauls him off out of the palace, with a bit of unlikely (but welcome) assistance from a... dog? Well, not quite a dog, or not JUST a dog. They go on the run from Luz, the female face of the Inquisition here. I found Luz to be a terrifying character. She's relentless. She's sure she's right. She's ruthless and merciless.

But Hassan makes maps. And his maps can bend reality a bit. So he and Fatima decide to go the the island of the King of Birds, a possibly mythological place where they can be safe. 

I found this book to be poignant and bittersweet.At one point, Fatima says:
 "I asked for this," she said aloud to herself. "When the sultan asked me what I wanted, I told him I wanted this. And now here I am."

"When God really wants to test you, He gives you exactly what you desire," muttered Gwennec.

Sometimes when you find a place of safety, you find there are also monsters still to deal with. And there are monsters like Luz, and other kinds of monsters as well. And Fatima comes to realize this:

 If the creature below her was made from the same matter as Fatima, it was possilbe that God was not entirely on her side; if the thing below her was real, then God was also on the side of the monsters.

It's a sobering realization for her, that while we may have love and community, there may not be anywhere completely safe IN the world that is also OF the world.

3.5 stars, because it made me a little sad. It's good, though.

Laura

ARC provided by NetGalley for reviewing purposes.

If I were a man you’d call me a hero. Instead, you want to argue with me because I’ve reversed the order in which honor demands we must die.

The Bird King ★★★★☆

I found the premise for this book really interesting because I had never before encountered a historical fiction book set in La Alhambra, a place that I find fascinating. Not to mention that the book got right the fact that Isabel’s and Fernando’s campaign was not a Reconquista but a conquest was a fresh and new and actually accurate take on that part of history that people in Spain tend to forget.
Most of all, I loved Fatima, who is filled with such anger and drive and passion that is in herself an unstoppable force of nature. And I loved that her love for Hassan was not the usual romantic love in which the girl and the boy that are friends since childhood become lovers—instead it was something deeper and, in some ways I believe, stronger.
I did find the last hundred pages or so to be slow paced, and the story did drag a bit, but altogether I found it amazing.

Lauren Sullivan

Content warnings: (view spoiler)[slavery (including sex), torture, attempted rape, starvation (and other deprivations of war) (hide spoiler)]

This is a difficult bird (ha!) to categorize – it’s a lyrically written historical fantasy, set during the last days of Muslim Iberia and in a lot of ways it’s more about the ideas than the plot. I’m a firm believer that each reader’s relationship with a book is highly personal and may diverge strongly with what the author intended, and this is certainly one of those books. The author is Muslim and this book is steeped in Islamic folklore, so considering that I’m Christian, I’m pretty sure I’ve missed large amounts of meaning, but I still found it fascinatingly deep.

“I can get us to Qaf,” he said. “I can get us to the isle of the Bird King. That’s where we should go. That’s where we’ll be safe.”
Fatima closed her eyes and attempted to muster her self-restraint.
“It’s a game, Hassan,” she said as gently as she could. “We were bored children shut up in a crumbling palace, so we made it up. Bit by bit. We made up a story.”
“But that’s just it,” said Hassan, leaning toward her. “What if our stories are like my maps? What is a story but the map of an idea? There is a secret in the poem of Al Attar—we made it into a joke because joking felt better than despairing. But perhaps that is the secret. The Bird King is real, and we are his subjects.”

Fatima is a concubine of the last sultan in Iberia, and for her whole life the sultanate has been at war with Spain and losing. So it’s perhaps no great surprise when Spanish envoys arrive to negotiate their surrender – but it is an unpleasant surprise when the sultan agrees to give up her best friend, Hassan, the palace mapmaker, accused of being a sorcerer by the Inquisition. Hassan has the ability to draw maps of places he’s never seen, and bend space in interesting ways with the maps he draws, something that he’s put to use many times to give Fatima a view outside of the confines of the palace harem. Left with no other options, Fatima and Hassan escape the palace by night with the help of a jinn. But with everything around them now belonging to Spain, where can they hope to go? By either madness or genius, Hassan draws a map to the mythical island of Qaf, the supposed homeland of the king of the birds according to a partial poem that’s become a sort of touchstone to both Fatima and Hassan. Can such a place exist? Can they find it? And would a runaway concubine and a magical mapmaker even be welcome there?

“No one offers me peace or safety except to keep me for themselves,” she said aloud. “No one reaches out to me except to take what little I have.”

First off – yes, the pacing is slow, and if you were to sum up the plot it’s basically: Fatima and Hassan escape, they almost get captured, they escape, almost get captured again, rinse, repeat. However, it’s not so much what’s happening as how Fatima is reacting to it, how she grows and changes from the girl who’s never been outside the palace walls, a caged bird, to a woman in charge of her own destiny. The book starts off mostly reading as historical fiction and then, one magic map or jinn or eldritch creature at a time, starts becoming more fantastical until it’s pretty solidly a fantasy at the end. Ms. Wilson has an incredible skill with words, as well, and the lyrical quality lends to the fairy tale-feel as well. Fatima is an interesting character – a pampered slave who completely lacks the skill to dissemble, but still possesses a deep-seated sense of righteousness and courage.

“No one can choose who God loves, or change who God loves,” said Vikram. “Not even the Inquisition.”

Considering it stars two Muslim characters who are pursued by the Spanish Inquisition, it’s no surprise that religion and the conflict between Islam and Christianity is a major (and timely) topic. And while you’d expect the Muslims to come out of it much shinier than the Catholics, given that it’s from Fatima’s point of view, the strengths and weaknesses of each religion are deftly explored. It’s no surprise that so much of it, for our characters, boils down to “divisions used by those ‘above’ us to grind down those ‘below.'” While this is something that Fatima has lived all her life, it’s demoralizing to find it still true outside the palace walls as a free woman, and to realize that the same applies even to Hassan as a gay man with a strange talent. At one point, the jinn tells Fatima, paraphrased, “fear only God” and, to me, that was the main takeaway of the book – regimes and religions may change, but, in the end, it’s God who matters, and the best a person can do is live how they think God would intend them to.

“I do know how the poem ends,” he said. “But your poem, the one you and Hassan have been telling to one another, has diverged from it so profoundly that it doesn’t matter. There is no longer any real poem, or rather, one is now as real as the other.”
“There is so a real poem,” said Fatima, annoyed. “The real Conference of the Birds was written by someone, by a real person. He had certain intentions. I want to know what they were. He wrote the poem for a reason, and the reason matters.”
“Does it?” Vikram stretched his toes, revealing a row of claws as black as obsidian. “Once a story leaves the hands of its author, it belongs to the reader. And the reader may see any number of things, conflicting things, contradictory things. The author goes silent. If what he intended mattered so very much, there would be no need for inquisitions and schisms and wars. But he is silent, silent. The author of the poem is silent, the author of the world is silent. We are left with no intentions but our own.”

There’s a lot else to unpack – Fatima’s relationship with the sultan’s mother, who’s been her strongest maternal figure in her life, though still her owner; the identity of the mythical island – is it Muslim Qaf or Catholic Antillia?; her relationship with Hassan. Oh, and Luz! Luz is a fantastic villain, and I was absolutely tickled pink that the female heroine was balanced by a female villain. While I’m certainly no Islamic scholar, I found the choice of names interesting. The historical Fatima (daughter of the prophet Muhammed) is frequently given the title “Zahra,” which means “shining,” and to have this Fatima face off against someone whose name means “light” was certainly an intentional choice on Ms. Wilson’s part. Fatima’s fascination with Luz – even when she knows that fascination is harmful – was simultaneously nerve-wracking and enthralling. She’s a complicated, complex creation and wanting to see her and Fatima interact again was what kept me reading through the first half of the book. Vikram, the jinn, was also a fascinating character. Utterly inhuman, tricksy, and motivated by his own difficult to understand desires, he still manages to distill many of the book’s lessons and themes down for Fatima and Hassan.

I think, in the end, the strength of the book was also its weakest point for me. I found the ending somewhat unsatisfactory, and closed the book still trying to figure out what exactly the author meant to say – as Vikram says above, the reader is “left with no intentions but our own.” It’s definitely a novel feeling, considering how most books are much more straightforward, written with the intent to make a reader feel a certain way, think a certain way, but it’s not particularly comfortable. Whatever else can be said, I will definitely be thinking about this book for a very long time.

Overall, this is a slow-paced historical fantasy, well-written and big on the ideas. I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for something unique and thought-provoking!

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Sheila Goicea

I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!



All included quotes have been taken from an ARC and may not match the finished publication. 

Content Warning: Death, Slavery, Harem, Torture, Violence, Attempted Rape, Alcoholism, Religious Persecution/War, Adult Content

This review may contain spoilers!

  ”Long ago, all the birds of the world began to forget their history and their language because they had been leaderless for so long. So a brave few sought out the king of the birds, a king in hiding--the wisest and greatest of all kings, living on the island of Qaf in the Dark Sea beneath the shadow of a great mountain. Waiting for those with the courage to seek him.”

I’m not really sure what I just read. I’ve read books that have simply floored me, and left me with a similar initial sentiment. They were books that called for me to mull them over for a period of time after turning the final page because there was so much to digest. The Bird King, however, doesn’t relate. I literally don’t know what I read. I've had time to ruminate on it, yet, little has become more clear. 

  She was the last reminder of a time of prosperity, when pretty girls could be had from Italian slave merchants for unearthly sums; there had been no money and no victories since.

Despite my previous statement, this book had a strong start. The first quarter of it drew me in like a sponge with the world building and coherency. Fatima, a young, beautiful girl, is the last Circassian concubine to the last sultan of Granada in the Iberian peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal). She is long friends with the royal and uncanny cartographer, Hassan. It’s no secret that his map-making skills are more than ordinary ink on parchment, which ultimately, is the reason for the start of their long quest. Set in 1491, during the Spanish Reconquista, the sultan informs Fatima that their country is on the brink of ruin. With armies from Castile and Aragon pressing in, supplies being cut off, and money running out, the small Muslim empire soon would become extinct. Shortly after this information is divulged, Christian visitors under a banner of peace arrive at the palace, for reasons not fully disclosed. 
Fatima soon becomes warm acquaintances with Luz, an emissary, so-to-speak from the newly-formed country of Spain. 

  ”She’s very clever, this Queen Isabella of Spain--or if she isn’t, there are very clever people advising her. I assumed the general was their hawk--that they went their military man to bully our military men. But they know us better than we know ourselves, it seems. They know my son does not love his viziers or his generals. The people he loves are here, in the harem. They sent their dove to the men. The hawk, they have sent to us.”

Shortly after, Fatima discovers that Luz is actually from the Inquisition, which marks the fall of security for her and her special map-making friend. Deemed a sorcerer for his abilities, Fatima helps Hassan flee beneath the palace to escape the Inquisition. 

A lot happens after this point. The book itself feels like it’s split into three parts--the beginning, a long voyage, and the mystical war in the end. It also starts off feeling like a historical fiction, then completely transforms into fantasy story as it nears the end. Personally, I thought it felt disjointed. The more the plot progressed, the less it also made sense. 

I really enjoy reading about folklore and fairy tales from different cultures. With doing this, however, I’m more susceptible to be ignorant to intimate details when it comes to unfamiliar lore--which is what happened in this instance. After completing this book, I ended up looking up some of the different aspects represented.

  "As I've told you, no one living has ever set foot on that island. It's a story they tell in church to seagoing people who need to believe there's something left once they've lost sight of land."

According to legend, Roc is a giant eagle, referred to here as the bird king that only lands on Mount Qaf, which is where Fatima and Hassan travel to. Roc is often seen in sailor folklore, in particular, Sinbad the Sailor’s tale. Mount Qaf is the highest mountain in Arabic tradition and referred to as the farthest point of the Earth, assumed to be the North Pole. Jinn, and other odd...things...appear, and aren’t ever really explained. 

  If you run from this thing, you’ll set it loose. It will lodge in your bloodstream like a splinter and you’ll carry it all your days. It’s too big for that, thought Fatima, half to herself. It’s small said the dog-man. It’s very small. It began as a mote in the eye of the Deceiver. Keep your back straight and don’t look away.

I understand that not everything about folklore will be thoroughly dissected in a book, and I don’t necessarily want it to be. But, these things do require some sort of explanation as to how they fit into the story. This mote? This...thing...that flees from underground and preys upon one of the characters is a missed opportunity, I believe. I never fully understood what it was.

Another area that I had difficulty with were some inconsistencies that presented themselves. Both of them resided with the character of the Monk, Gwennec. First was the vernacular. About halfway through the story, Fatima and Hassan are thrown together with a Christian monk. This monk, however amiable a person at first, sort of ruined the sense of setting for me. His vernacular, and ridiculous use of vulgarity, were not only totally unnecessary, but entirely contradictory. I don’t know whether this was to prove a point, but I found the way he spoke--general vulgarity and using the Lord’s name in vain many a times--to completely derail the setting and his sense of station. Which leads me to my second point--what his character was trying to prove. I don’t fully understand what Gwennec’s point or representation was. Certainly, the Inquisition during this time was supposed to be for good, but wasn’t exactly good. Violence to win over territory and people to Christianity wasn’t a good technique. To say it plainly, Gwennec’s character, and much of this book, heavily focused on pushing boundaries. 

  ”You’re always so angry,” he said. “I don’t understand. You have pretty clothes, entertainments, food when others go hungry. You have the love of a sultan. What else could you possibly want?” Fatima licked the dry, taut line of her lips.
“To be sultan,” she said.

The relentless push of feminism in general just gets old. Don’t mistake me, I get that Fatima would want to be out of a harem--I have no issues with that. It’s the want and desire to completely replace men in any position as “women must conquer all” that strikes me as simply unfeminine. It’s a message that is being broadcasted loud and clear, and one that I don’t agree with. This message becomes most ridiculous when towards the end of the book, Fatmina is designated as “the Bird King,” which--why? Not only that, but how? It’s never explained clearly. Why can’t she just be queen of the birds? I don’t know. 

In the end, some “redemption” is exemplified, but even then, the purpose and message behind it felt hostile. This probably just wasn’t a book for me. I really do enjoy reading about different cultures, religions, and lore, but I still need a meaning, and a wholesome one at that. Also, the segmented way in which the story reads and feels makes it more difficult to read as coherence becomes less apparent and purpose less defined throughout. 

I think many people who enjoyed The City of Brass would like this one.

Vulgarity: Moderate.
Sexual content: The main character is a concubine, so yes. Also, attempted rape, and additional adult scenes.
Violence: Moderate.

My Rating: ★★1/2

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Judy McClure

I loved this book!!! Beautifully written. Strong female character fighting to find her place in the world and defend it and her freedom at all costs. Friendship, family, strength in diversity.

Nickie Mohler

2.5 stars 
This story is set in 1491 Grenada at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. 
Fatima is the last concubine. Her friend Hassan is a mapmaker. Not a normal mapmaker, as his maps lead to Other places. 
When Fatima learns that an Inquisitor has figured out Hassan's abilities, she knows they must flee or he will die.
This book was very slow. I liked Fatima and Hassan as characters, otherwise the rating would have been lower. This just wasn't for me.

I received a copy from Net Galley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Alexia Cambaling

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press!

The Bird King is a historical magical realism fantasy set during the last days of the Reconquista. In the beginning of the book, there is an element of despair and melancholy as the combined forces of Castile and Aragon start to close in on Granada.

The book stars Fatima, a slave in the sultan’s harem and her dearest friend, Hassan, a mapmaker who can create maps of places he’s never seen and open secret passages. Fatima dreams of freedom, having been born and lived her entire life as a slave. She acknowledges that relatively speaking, she’s privileged compared to most freeborn women. She’s given the best food, fine clothing, and even an education. And yet, she is at best a bird trapped in a gilded cage.

In Granada, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela send emissaries to negotiate a surrender treaty with the sultan. This is the last stronghold of Al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, now on its last legs. An air of melancholy permeates the atmosphere in these chapters. There is the sense of waiting for the city to fall and the upheaval sure to come after. The Inquisition is talked about in hushed, fearful whispers, seemingly far away but close by.

The arrival of the emissaries throws everything into chaos. Suddenly, Hassan is a wanted man, branded by the Inquisition as a sorcerer, even as she befriends Luz, a former baronesa turned lay-sister.

The Bird King contains fantastical elements although it mostly stays grounded in reality for the first two-thirds of the novel. It is in the last third that it really becomes solidly fantastical. I really enjoyed it this way as the author had a way of vividly painting a picture of what Granada may have looked like just as it was about to fall. I have enjoyed reading historical accounts about the Reconquista so this part, the historical fiction part intrigued me a lot and I personally enjoyed it more than the fantasy parts. However, I will stress that the fantastical parts are still enjoyable.

The characters were also wonderfully characterized. They each have their own quirks and personalities. Fatima is more than a bit stubborn and hard-headed – a fact which can tend to get her in trouble. Still, she is loyal and steadfast in her friendship with Hassan. Honestly, it’s such a wonderful friendship, founded on platonic, friendly love as Hassan is homosexual, and according to Fatima, the only one who doesn’t look at her lustfully. So their friendship was truly a partnership founded on the respect two people have for each other, their love and willingness to save each other.

The plot does move quickly although the lush, gorgeous prose can trick you into reading slower. This is truly a beautifully written book with a distinct literary feel. Combined with the themes of sacrifice, freedom, and love, it makes for a truly spellbinding read.

Overall, I highly recommend The Bird King for fans of historical fiction, magical realism, and literary fiction with fantasy elements. It’s a lovely book about a slave’s flight to freedom and a friendship she would give everything up for.

This review is also on  The Bookworm Daydreamer

Anyaconda

I'm having mixed feelings about this. I loved the prose and the novel read like a middle eastern fairytale with djinns. Fatima and Hassan's bickering annoyed me sometimes and personally I didn't feel like they developed much through the story. I liked the beginning a lot until it was a whole lot of running away, getting almost caught and more running away. I wished that Luz the Inquisitor was a bit more fleshed out and the ending was open and happened quite suddenly. I feel like I'd read more by this author, but only would recommend this to readers who like a bit of a strange fairytale-adventure. Thank you Netgalley for providing me with an eARC. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.

The Bird King

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