Review of ‘Rise of the Jinn’

Posted on September 30, 2015 Updated on September 6, 2015

Fleeing from the Taliban, a young Afghani girl finds a strange lantern. Rubbing it, she frees a Jinn who grants her three wishes. Her third wish, that everyone on earth, at the age of 17, be granted three wishes, unleashes the Jinn upon the world with disastrous consequences.

Clover Grimwood, a chubby girl with red hair and freckles, and a beautiful but selfish step-sister, learns on her step-sister’s seventeenth birthday just how much of a disaster the presence of the Jinn can be. When Razul, the top dog in the Jinn hierarchy shows up to grant the birthday wishes, he turns Clover’s world inside out.

I received a free copy of William Turnage’s Rise of the Jinn in exchange for my review. Though aimed at a YA audience, this is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone who likes fantasy, adventure, and humor, because, despite the deadly seriousness of the subject, and the events depicted in the book, it is also quite hilarious in places. The author does a fantastic job of showing teen angst and immaturity cheek by jowl with the perfidy of a race of beings determined to bring humanity down a few pegs.

Be warned, the next time you find a tarnished old lamp, think twice before you rub it. I give it four stars.