The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P Djeli Clark
Publisher - Tor
Published - Out Now
Price - £2.64 Kindle eBook
Cairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities — handling a possessed tram car.
Soon, however, Agent Hamed Nasr and his new partner Agent Onsi Youssef are exposed to a new side of Cairo stirring with suffragettes, secret societies, and sentient automatons in a race against time to protect the city from an encroaching danger that crosses the line between the magical and the mundane.
This week the past has been on my mind a lot. My love for seeking new stories and authors could be said to be forgetting the past and the people who first set out on SF&F journeys. But my own love is stories that take the very lightest of steers from the past and create something very new, very good and also something that the past probably wouldn’t have written or even perhaps accepted. In P Djeli Clark’s The Haunting of Tram 015 we have alternate pasts, the merging of myths and hints of a glorious future we never saw some come to pass. It was an easy example of why I enjoy 21st century work so much and I think points the way forward for fantasy too in the process.
Welcome to Cairo 1912 - the British were pushed out, magical automatons known as boilerplate eunuchs now do the heavy lifting; Djinns walk the earth for good (and bad) and the suffragette movement campaigns for equality and voting rights. The one thing that Cairo does not have are ghosts - no evidence of any until Tram 015 starts getting reports of people being attacked. Agents Hamed and Onsi from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities are pressed by a wily bureaucrat to investigate.
There is a piece of writing advice only to deliver one impossible thing. This story shows why you can really ignore that. Clark weaves in this novella a brand new world of ancient myth, alternate history and yet rather than live in the past it feels one that’s evolving into something new. Perhaps historical urban fantasy but this feels deliciously fresh and very scene gives us something new to explore or understand.
The central mystery is unusual and yet allows us to understand this world. Is the Tram actually haunted? As we delve we find out more about the lands and inhabitants that surrounds this version of Cairo. It’s not just a celebration but touches upon some adult themes and in particular how women can be treated. Clark moves swiftly from adventure to comedy to pointed highlighting of society’s failings then skilfully moves back. The key here is that the journey is both surprising and yet the story stays coherent and aids your understanding of this wonderfully textured world.
This is some wonderful storytelling and for those who enjoy stories that cross boundaries and reinvent the ideas of the past you’ll love it. My only downside is you just want to hear about the other cases the Ministry has let’s hope I get to hear more of them too!
