Effendi: The Second Arabesk [Paperback]

The setting is North Africa - predominantly the vibrant independent city of El Iskandryia - but it's North Africa located in an alternative-history world where the Ottoman empire made it into the 21st century. As in the trilogy's first novel, _Pashazade_, El Iskandryia is a triumph, all crumbling colonial relics, moral policing and seedy tourist nightclubs, French cafes and calls to prayer. It lives and breathes through the narrative with a personality all its own, an utterly convincing extrapolation of that region's cities today, an uneasy and volatile mixture of Western and Islamic influences and attitudes and needs.

Having set up the characters and their mysteries in the engaging near-future crime story of _Pashazade_, in _Effendi_ Grimwood takes his material to a whole new level. The dual timelines - of present-day Isk, and the brutal civil war a generation ago - are deployed with a near-perfect grasp of pace, tension-building and emotional resonance.

On the way to a climax that pulls no punches, we are also taken deeper into several of the main characters, particularly Zara and Raf - and while a few of the underlying mysteries are dealt with, what remains is more than intriguing enough to take this reader into the third (and final?) novel, _Felaheen_. Highly recommended.

I surely don't know... But the best c'punk books are a good mix of technology, plot and person, all melded together to make a twisty turny voyage of a story.

This certainly is true of Grimwood's work to date.

With the previous series Grimwood set Clare Fabio up against the world... (even though she seems a minor character within each separate story, she is the main character - the driver)

In this latest series he has taken a character and put him at the head of the plot, with each of the two stories backed up by a series of minor plots. Like an episode of your favourite soap, you are immersed in the lives of each of the characters, from the cook in the 'aunts' house to the General and beyond. Each story lying bound to one another by the main story of one man trying to get on, to survive.
In this second book, after what appears to be an abortive engagement to Zara, we see Ashraf Bey still trying to do the 'right thing' with regards to his niece and failing abysmally at it. (you can disagree with that point if you like).

In comparison to other authors: In the same way that Chandler's character Marlowe mosied around his cases, allowing each case to solve itself, Grimwood's character in this series seems to be a catalyst for other characters to provide the story.

This latest book is an amazing novel, well worth the read, and certainly we should be thankful to the publishers for bringing this one out in hardcover. <applause/> Genious is infrequently recognised in it's own time.

As an aside - I am seriously looking forward to the next novel: (which I hear is due out in '03) and am trying to not succumb to the urge to pick up Pashazade again.