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 established her as a vital American Muslim literary voice. The Bird King tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of … 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 realising 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 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.
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Teeming with secrets, violence, and magic, G. Willow Wilson’s characters come alive in a backdrop of 15th century Spain that is at once sinister and lush. By turns humorous and heartbreaking, the world held me captive and I’m haunted by it still.
The Bird King is marvelous in the deepest sense ― a treasure-house of a novel, thrilling, tender, funny, and achingly gorgeous. I loved it.
I read sample of this on Bookish first and I really enjoyed what I read. I read other books in that time era so I know there is some political things happening as well.
Knowing all that I dove into the story, that I started liking while reading the sample.
I really enjoyed the world, that Wilson created it was very colorful and pretty descriptive. I loved the characters just as much if not even more so. It was so easy to get into the world and relate to the charterers in some way. I also enjoyed the story a lot and yet I wished I had more of it.
That being said I felt like that there was way too much background of the political war brewing and happening on the book. Yes, there was but in the end I wanted a fantasy and not a history book. This is what it felt at times. While some of it would have been okay and I read in other books about, I think it could have been balanced more.
Overall I enjoyed the world, story and people but some parts just seem to long and tiring with too much historical politics dumped in.
I rate it 3
The Bird King takes a time period that’s passed into cliché and makes it new and strange again. In this novel, the real runs alongside the fantastic, one informing the other, G. Willow Wilson’s eye for detail and her titanic imagination pumping together like pistons. She’s incredible. The Bird King has big things to say about states and souls, and it’s going to take you on a rollicking ride while it says them. I was fascinated and riveted and, by the end, deeply moved.
G. Willow Wilson managed to skyrocket into a SFF household name with her breakout series Ms. Marvel, a comic series that focused on an authentic portrayal of a Muslim-American teen who gains superpowers. The series was a hit, both for its rich character depths and for what a Muslim identity means to younger generations. I was a huge fan of Ms. Marvel, with comics being my secret love, and when seeing that The Bird King was reported to have the same kind of authenticity as the series, I had to pick it up right away. And it was phenomenal.
The Bird King focuses on Fatima, a palace concubine in 1400s-era Granada during the final days of the Muslim empire. Fatima holds both the sultan and his mother’s favor, therefore holding a certain degree of freedom within the court, which she mainly uses to speak out of turn and visit her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan is a gay man who also holds his freedom by a tenuous thread: maps he creates can alter reality, making even this queer sorcerer valuable to the empire. But their power and freedom can only last for so long, as the Spanish Inquisition, led by the Queen Isabella’s mysterious friend Luz, has arrived to purge Islam from Granada and seize Hassan’s power for themselves.
It’s their friendship that spawns the title of the novel; the Bird King is a legendary figure from one of Fatima’s favorite poems, The Conference of the Birds (which is a real poem!). When the two run from the Inquisition, it’s to the Bird King they decide to go. Their journey together will span oceans and continents, but the novel is more concerned with the intimate details of their relationship. And I don’t mean a sudden romance, but their friendship is intimate nonetheless. Fatima and Hassan have the kind of platonic friendship that should be shown more in novels, encompassing and devoted without necessarily leaning into the romantic or sexual realms. They are each other’s most important person and the way they sacrifice for each other is far beyond touching and had me close to tears for almost half of the novel. Don’t we all have friends who mean a lot to us? The Bird King made me realize how underrepresented true friends are in novels; lesser authors may have had the duo fall in love, but they were perfect as they were.
Wilson is concerned with how privilege and power are limited in those who are oppressed by society: even as Fatima holds more power than even some of the sultan’s relatives and Hassan’s magical powers are beloved by court, they are both cogs in a machine that would easily see them discarded to retain their own power. Fatima is still a slave, a woman making her way in a historical man’s world far more severe than ours today, and Hassan still keeps his sexual proclivities away from the prying eyes of the court, knowing that he can never truly be happy or find love. Their home is found in each other. This concept of home as people is also prevalent as the duo pick up more friends on their journey to Qaf and finally learn to trust others and the outside world.
Lush and decadent, that outside world is reason alone to read this novel. Wilson’s settings are airtight, from the gold-draped palace of Granada, the last place standing against the Inquisition, to the outside world of the jungle, rife with beautiful plant life and deadly creatures. The imagination put into this world is astounding; the time and setting are real, Granada and the historical horrors of the Inquisition, but the way the world is steeped in magic realism adds a hypnotic layer to their environment. Hassan can navigate the human world with his maps, yet open up paths to unseen horrors and magics with them as well. Their island of Qaf is a fantasy, made up by two friends trapped in the confines of their own problems, and yet, Wilson argues that it could be real, that even though The Conference of the Birds is a fantasy poem and not nonfiction, it has evolved in Fatima and Hassan’s hands to become something more.
The novel cam move slowly from time to time, but this is not inherently a bad thing. The slowness does not mean that things aren’t happening, or that development has stalled, just that Wilson has given the reader time to take a breath. These slow sections, coupled with the almost utter lack of romance in the novel, makes The Bird King unlike much of the rest of the fantasy genre. To me, this makes it all the more special, a novel that stands out as being unique even among a genre of great and untapped imagination.
The Bird King was unparalleled in so many ways. I was enthralled from beginning to end with the complete mastery of Wilson’s writing. It’s easy to find a book that’s beautiful not not meaningful, or with great characters but clunky writing, but The Bird King is a master in both craft and in the understanding of love. I would recommend this book to anyone: for a beautiful friendship, for the historical accuracy, for the portrayal of Islamic culture or the queer representation, everything about this novel was positively stand-out.
review blog
Really a great book and adventure, with a wonderful female hero and jinn, monster and sea chases!
I’m a fan of G. Willow Wilson’s poignant Ms. Marvel series, but this is the first novel of hers that I have read. Unlike many fantasy novels, where the story takes place in a fictional medieval version of England or Europe, this one is set during the fall of the Islamic empire and the rise of the Catholic Inquisition. It is a refreshing choice and one well worth the read.
The story is about Fatima, a favored concubine in the household of the Sultan, her best friend, the Mapmaker Hassan, and Vikram, a jinn, whose motives are never clear. Hassan, however, possesses the ability to create maps that can bend time and space; an ability that can be seen as a gift from God or the mark of the devil. When a delegation from Spain arrives to discuss terms of surrender, Fatima unwittingly reveals Hassan’s secret to their chief inquisitor, Luz, and she demands Hassan be handed over to her for interrogation. Not wanting her friend to die, Fatima and Vikram help him escape. What follows is a terrifying adventure into a world outside the Harem and palace walls.
(For those of you not familiar with what a jinn is, also called a genie, it is a magical being that can take a human or animal shape (or a mix of both) and often causes mischief and mayhem. It usually is only interested in furthering its own interests unlike the homogenized Disney version.)
The writing is rich and descriptive and the world building excellent. Issues like freedom and destiny are woven throughout the narrative. Each character had a distinctive voice and, quite frankly, I had a hard time putting it down I found it to be so engaging. However, I did have a few issues with it, the first being the ending which seemed harried and didn’t really give Fatima a proper character arc.
[Spoiler Alert]
The other two places in the narrative bounced me out of the story which shouldn’t have happened in a book this well written. The first was the potential rape scene. Not because it was in there, but because Fatima was able to get the upper hand. There is no way she would be able to pull a knife on an experienced soldier and him not be able to knock it away and beat the crap out of her. My gut tells me that the author wanted the book to be PG-13, and I get that. However, there may have been another way to deal with that scene.
The other place was when Fatima survived drowning and made it to shore then spent the next four or five pages exploring where she was without ever wondering if her companions were still alive. It was like they were no longer important which was odd.
[End Spoiler Alert]
The Bird King also qualifies as a fairy tale for the lessons it imparts. Love, sacrifice, and tolerance are just a few of them. It is an enchanting story told from a point of view that we don’t usually see.
I was given a free copy of this book as part of the Amazon Vine Program.
I loved so much about this book! It’s one that will stick with me for some time.
I was given an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of this book via digital means through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
“I don’t understand. You have pretty clothes, entertainments, food when others go hungry. You have the love of a sultan. What else could you possibly want?”
“To be Sultan,” she said.
To read my full review of this book, proceed to my post on NetGalley HERE (https://www.netgalley.com/book/146816/review/455949)
I love a book that combines history with mythology and fantasy. I’m realizing how much I enjoy that genre of book. I thought the relationships amount the characters was wonderful. I’m all about world-building and the author did a great job with this. Somewhat slow paced for me, but I would still recommend this book!
I spend through G. Willow Wilson’s The Bird King in a few days, enchanted by its exotic setting and well-drawn characters.
Fatima was one of the least powerful in the Sultan’s household, a slave whose beauty made her a favorite concubine. Fatima lived a life of luxury, dining on sweetmeats and dressing in the finest clothes, always indoors and barefoot, even while outside the palace walls the Moorish Empire was falling to the Catholic Spanish army. What she lacked was self-determination and the power to say no to authority.
Her childhood friend is the slave Hassam whose red hair spoke of his Breton ancestry. The royal mapmaker, Hassam has the ability to create maps that alter reality. And while devote, Hassam’s sexual preference is against religious law. They have shared secret trists, embroidering the story of the Bird King, whose story they learned from a partial manuscript.
The once great Moorish empire on the Iberian Penninsula is vanquished. The victor Spain is willing to be magnanimous, as long as the Sultan agrees to its terms: hand over the sorcerer Hassam to be made an example. Convert to Catholicism. And the Moors will be allowed to live, subjects of Spain.
The love Fatima holds for her only friend emboldens her; she will not lose the one person who loves her and not her beauty. She insists that Hassam flees for his life. With the help of a jinn, pursued by the army of the Holy Order, these naive and unprepared refugees discover that freedom has its costs.
Fatima’s love and faith, and her willingness to lose what had once been her one power–beauty–supports this unlikely heroine as she seeks to find the Bird King’s realm, where she hopes to find a refuge for her and Hassam.
Themes touched on are relevant: the nature and responsibility of power, the cost of freedom, true faith versus religious power, refugees seeking their place in the world.
I received an ARC from through Bookist First in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
he Bird King is a beautifully written historical fantasy set in 15th century Spain during the fall of Moorish sultanates and the rise of the Inquisition. For me, the best parts of the book were the gorgeous prose and a fascinating historical setting of medieval Spain. In The Bird King we follow Fatima, the sultan’s concubine, and her friend, Hassan, who are forced to flee the last sultan of Granada’s palace because the Spanish Inquisition is after Hassan, a mapmaker with the ability to draw maps of places he has never seen. The Spaniards consider Hassan’s talent a sorcery and a sin.
During their travels Fatima and Hassan meet and forge new relationships with a number of magical creatures and ordinary people, who either help them escape or betray them. I must say, I enjoyed the first half of the book a lot, but kind of lost interest in the second half. I felt like the story lost steam in the second half. The symbolism of the place Fatima and Hassan arrived at by the end of the book went over my head. I didn’t really understand what was happening and why it was happening. I didn’t get the moral of the story. I was expecting an exciting adventure and was disappointed when I didn’t get one. But I did enjoy the beautiful writing and I liked both Fatima and Hassan, so it wasn’t a total letdown.