The Bird King

By: G. Willow Wilson

Narrated by: Elmira Rahim

From award-winning author G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King is an epic journey set during the reign of the last sultan in the Iberian peninsula at the height of the Spanish Inquisition.

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.

©2019 G. Willow Wilson (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Epigraph translation © Richard Davis and Afkham Darbandi, from The Conference of the Birds by Attar

couldn't wait for it to be over.

this is an honest review. the only reason that I finished this book and didn't return it is because it was free and that was not a possibility. I'm not saying that I hated the book, but by the last few chapters I was honestly ready for it to end. I had read the reviews prior to listening to it so I was aware that the narrator, while her accent and her language fit the story very well, and her voice is overall genuinely Pleasant, I ended up having to speed the story up to 1.15 in order to try and make up for the choppiness of the words. It's almost like she did not read the book ahead of time or even if she did read the book she still had problems translating it so it's like she would read half a sentence and then stopped abruptly and it's not like a scammer but more like a whole five second pause to where you think that's the end of the sentence and then the rest of the sentence comes and you're struggling to put the whole paragraph together in your mind and make a whole idea out of it so it's almost like she's translating it sentence by sentence and not ahead of time. but I sped up the story like I said, and forced myself to get used to the reading Style. I was determined to finish this free book. so what you should know besides that, is that this book is a fantasy novel full of magic and ridiculous Notions and descriptions that seemed out of place and unrealistic not that magic is realistic in any sense, but the elements are so out of place with the story that there is no congruence with the story and the characters. also, I wonder if my opinion would have been different if I had physically read the book and not listen to it for I think the narrator take a lot of liberties with the attitude and inflection of the characters speeches, so that the main character while she is a selfish ignorant girl, when she speaks as the narrator has performed it, she seems like she is impetuous and ignorant as well. But then the way the narrator tries to do the different voices of the different characters makes them all seem slightly ignorant and just is not pleasant at all in the representation of these characters. her inferred tones and inflections of these characters voices and attitudes while I do not believe their holy incorrect, she exaggerated them in such a manner as most of the characters were thoroughly unpleasant to listen to and their speech was often conveyed as being combative when I do not believe that it should have been given the context of the situations in the story. I appreciate the detail of the locations in the story, however I think the story as a whole is very slapdash and thrown together as if a teenager had written it or as if someone had translated a subconscious dream and just included all of the details. overall, I'm not saying it's a terrible but, but I do not think it is a good one.

There's Alway a First

This is the first time that I knew early in that I wanted to read this book, but simply didn't like the voice or the cadence of the narrator. I listened as long as I could and then stopped at a bookstore and purchased a hard copy to finish. I read the last half of the book almost without putting it down.

Evocative and Beautifully Told

Although it is true that there are odd pauses in the narration, this did not bother me. I thought the narrator’s-voice and intonation fit the story.

Good Book - A Lot to Like

I enjoyed many facets of this book - the history, the characters, the vividness, and thoughts that came to mind about religious fanaticism and hypocrisy, The book is full of action and great settings, and I especially liked the jinn.

Other readers had problems with the narrator, but don't let that stop you from listening. She was brilliant for bringing to life the main characters, and fine for the minor characters. There were some awkward pauses now and then, and maybe the timing was off a little sometimes, but I found speeding up the narration to 1.25 fixed that. I alternated the speed throughout the book.

Need more practice

I loved the story and liked the voice of the reader. However, it seems she needed to practice more so that her inflections weren't overdone or underdone when uncalled for. They seemed off, often.

You Can Ignore This Review

This is a decent story. The narrator's accent makes it all work and she does a decent job with accents.

Definitely was skeptical how a White American woman would write about Arabic / Islamic characters. Everything is generally, ok, but one GLARING, IRRITATING, feature of this story: Fatima.

Two things about Fatima:

1. If you have lived around Arabic speaking people or Muslims, you know good and darn well that the abbreviation for Fatima or Fatiha is ONLY EVER: FATI (pronounced: FAH-TEE; the a in achoo, not the a in fat, and not pronounced, "Fatty" - as in fat person -, which is what I can only assume this author thought she'd be avoiding by abbreviating Fatima to FA. Ugh!!! Cultural rewrites like this, are annoying and it assumes that readers of a book like this are just not smart enough to get cultural context.)

2. The narrator makes Fatima sound like the most irritating, whiny, self-absorbed, acting strong, weak person that you've encountered in a book; and she is all of those things as a character and the narrator embodies it so well...I cringe every time the character has to speak on anything. She's always shrill while blaming other people or lauding herself. She's fortunate to have had Hassan as a friend...

Otherwise, the story is generally interesting and engaging when Fatima isn't complaining, whining, being shrill.

I found the story hard to follow

I admit I struggled to finish this one. The narrators tone was mostly monotone and the story was disjointed and harder to follow. in my experience as the reader I never became invested in the protagonist

A different tale

This is an enjoyable fable and coming of age story featuring the Inquisition, the Reconquista of Spain, magical maps and capricious Jinn. This charming tale somewhat marred by a less than great narration.

Audio advice

Speed up audio for a better listening experience. Original narration is a bit slow and pauses in some portions of the book are awkward.

Very interesting story, but voice work is rough

This is a good story, and draws very good imagery from medieval mythology from both Christian and Muslim culture. It’s worth a read.

It is not worth a listen. I wanted to quit this book a lot, as the narrator speaking very haltingly, and not following normal punctuation. Imagine a break mid-sentence and an already slow narrator. It’s maddening.

Read, don’t listen