The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Once upon a time, there was a golem. And a jinni, in New York City, around the turn of the century. That's the start of this book, where both mythological creatures find themselves immigrants to America, trying to live in New York without attracting attention until they can figure out more about why they're there and what they're doing. They don't come over together, but after they meet, they each find the other understands things the humans around them simply can't.

I know I talk a lot about the themes I love cooking up for my science fiction and fantasy book club. I'll never have a chance to get to a fraction of them, but with this book, I almost have a complete set to do a theme on golems. If the chance ever arises, which it may not. Still, I am ready.

Chava is the golem, created by a crooked almost-rabbi in Europe to accompany a man to America. He dies on the way, shortly after she is awakened, so she is a golem without a master. And golems are supposed to have masters, to be there to destroy them if they get out of control, which seems to be the fate of golems.

The jinni, in contrast (known as Ahmad here, but that's of course not his real name), is meant to be free as the wind, and is caged. He's a creature of fire, bound with iron manacles, unable to change shape, unable to live the life he chooses. He doesn't know how he got to the United States - he was brought over in a lamp that had never been rubbed since we has first bound long before.

It does not escape my notice that they both have to deal with gendered roles as well - Chava craves rules because she was made so, but as a woman, that makes her relatively unremarkable in the world of New York, where women are not supposed to be striking out on their own. (Of course, this does not mean they didn't do so.)  And the jinni, as a free spirit (almost literally) has full run of the city, fearlessly.

This points out gender roles in this imagined New York, but doesn't really do a lot with them. Chava doesn't buck the system, the jinni doesn't really change. Both fit those roles fairly perfectly, even if Chava could kill someone in an orgy of violence at any moment. I wonder what would have happened to this story if you'd reversed the genders?

But that is not the book we're reading.

For the most part, I enjoyed this. I wasn't set on fire by it, I wasn't ever champing at the bit to get back to it, but I did always enjoy sitting down and reading further, in what was really a very mellow way. Even when the bad guys appear, it's not really tension-filled, or at least, I didn't find it so. But it's nice to read something so thoroughly competent and pleasant once in a while.

The magic in this book is subtle, despite the two main characters being living incarnations of different kinds of power. The magic they have is mostly used to try to fit in (the golem), or to give them an outlet for otherwise unexpressed emotions (the jinni). Nothing here feels earthshaking, but it's solid.