A Thousand and One Alibis - Elle Hartford
Volume 7 of 'The Alchemical Tales.'
This is the second ebook I have received as a free giveaway through LibraryThing, although I'm not sure how often I will apply for them, considering that ebooks really aren't my favourite medium to read in. However, having received A Thousand and One Alibis, I was 'required' to read and review it.
As I said last time, what a sacrifice!
It is interesting to jump into a series on Book 7, but I very quickly got the gist of this world: we are in a fairy-tale inspired fantasy world, with each book vaguely inspired by (though not beholding to) the plot of a specific fairy-tale. In this instance, we meet characters called Jasmin, Ja'far and Gene (that one took me a moment), we have the setting of a vaguely Middle-Eastern inspired desert island, and also encounter a mysterious castle that possibly has its source in magic. However, the story that unfolds is not 'Aladdin' at all!
Our main character - Red - has come home to visit her mothers, along with her boyfriend Luca - who has a magical curse involving a horn - and her 'familiar', a talking magical dog called William. On the bus ride to their house, the bus stops at a body in the road, before the body promptly disappears. Two new policemen to the area, Ja'far and Babs, are also on the bus, and rope Red, who is an alchemist, in to help solve the case. They encounter sailors (including one named Sinbad and a romantic couple called Jason and Fleece!), a mermaid, an ifrit (I had to look that one up) and even a banshee, on their path to solving the mystery.
The book is fairly well written, and has a decent mystery to unravel. The ways in which the stories interact with fairy tales do confuse me, though. Perhaps this is addressed in earlier entries, but despite Jasmin, Ja'far, Gene, Red, Sinbad, Jason, Fleece and (a later revelation) Scheherazade all being named after - and somewhat inspired by - their fairy-tale/mythological counterparts, those stories also exist in this world as fairy-tales! Jasmin even has a copy of the Arabian Nights in her library. With that in the back of my mind, I did find myself overly suspicious of some characters based on their counterparts, while wondering why the characters in the universe weren't, considering they would also have known the original stories??
The book is also very modern in its worldview, with a number of same-sex couples, including the aforementioned mothers of Red. Although unexplained same-sex parenting relationships are also a growing aspect of modern fiction, it does confuse things ever so slightly. Perhaps this is simply the side-effect of living in a magical world, or perhaps Red's mothers have adopted, or one of them carried her to term... a brief explanation would fill in a gap that otherwise just seems a little odd.
Overall though, A Thousand and One Alibis is a relatively interesting story set in an interesting world. Not sure whether I will revisit it myself, but I can see how people would like it.
Completed 25 September 2024.
(LibraryThing Prize Books)
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