I borrowed this book from Ben’s mom, again, based on the premise: twelve-year-old twins who find out that they’re actually djinn. In case anyone cares, P. B. Kerr is male, and this is the first book of four so far. His website is moderately quirky, but I was loath to poke around too much, since I’m about three books behind. It’s Flash-based, which, frankly, normally annoys me, but I’ll put up with it because of the nice graphics and the fact that I liked his book.

Anyway, the book centers around John and Philippa Gaunt, twelve-year-old New Yorkers of the upper-middle to upper class, who are djinn. They don’t find this out until they have their wisdom teeth removed, and accidentally start granting wishes. Their uncle Nimrod appears to them while they’re anesthetized for the tooth extraction, and tells them to come visit him in England. They do, and start learning about their lives as a djinn. Naturally there is more than one tribe or kind of djinn, and John and Philippa and Uncle Nimrod already have enemies, in both London and Cairo . . .

The premise of the book is probably the best part. While there has been a recent (small) proliferation of djinn books, they’re still a little bit rare, and books about ‘good’ djinn who happen to be children just coming into their powers are even rarer. Books about these children with several different settings, including Egypt, and a fair amount of humor are rarer still. This book obviously combines all those elements into an appealing whole. The worldbuilding was well-done; it was awfully consistent with itself, and interesting. I’ve never been to Cairo, and I think the last book I read set there was Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile; this book didn’t necessarily make Cairo sound appealing, but it made it feel magical, and I enjoyed that.

Kerr happens to be Scottish/English, and it shows a little in Philippa and John’s speech. They don’t quite sound American, but then again, it adds to the humor of the book. I know I, at least, find the quirky humor of British writers appealing, and if his patterns are a little off, I care less. I suppose a reader who is exceptionally picky about dialogue and dialect would be annoyed; I just enjoyed the humor. I didn’t absolutely know the writer was British until I looked it up on his website, but it’s fairly obvious once I think about it. A good deal of the book is set in London or Cairo (where they would be likely to have British accents and dialect patterns) and a lot of the characters who aren’t John and Phllippa are British or Egyptian, so it isn’t perhaps as jarring as it could be. John and Philippa’s mother is English, in any case, and they might have picked up speech patterns from her. Maybe. Right?

One problem I did have with the book was the pacing. There seemed to be about four different climaxes in the last half of the book, all of about equal strength. I felt as if perhaps things could be done a little differently so that one of the climaxes felt more impressive than the others, but I have no suggestions on how that should be done.

Overall, it was a solid book, with quirky characters, interesting world-building, a decent but not perfect plot, and an option for sequels but a nicely finished ending. I look forward to reading the future books in this series. 4/5 stars.