Review: The Bird King

The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

3.5 Stars

The Bird King is an unusual story in which Fatima, a Circassian concubine in the court of the last Sultan of the Emirate of Granada (on the Iberian peninsula, around 1491) and Hassan, a gay palace mapmaker, try to escape the religious persecution of the Inquisition of Los Reyes Católicos, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Fatima loves her friend Hassan and plots their escape through Hassan's secret magical gift, his ability to draw maps that rearranges reality. That gift, combined with who he is attracted to, poses a great risk to his safety. Over the course of 400+ pages Hassan draws a map of an Island, Con, where he and Fatima and other outcasts can be safe, but because the map has been drawn, others can find their haven or breach it.

While there were things I found to like in the imaginative story, including its lush evocation of the last days of the Sultan Boabdil's magnificent Alhambra, the story moved at a very, very slow pace. The idea on which the story is built- the creation of a safe haven by literally drawing one- is a lovely one, but the execution at times left me struggling. The relationship between Fatima and Hassan is a beautiful friendship that is tempered by a fulfillment of that love that Fatima can never have. But she's a loyal friend who sticks by Hassan, though he cannot love her as she might wish he could. I also felt that some of the secondary characters felt too flat in comparison to the central two. Their escape from the Inquisitor Luz, and her ultimate reformation, also felt rushed and somewhat unrealistic.

This book has piqued my interest in reading Wilson's Alif the Unseen.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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