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The Golem and the Jinni was a very good historical fantasy with a very character-driven focus.

It also had a very intricate plot with a lot of moving parts that don’t come into alignment until the end. That is still true in the sequel. We have our two main characters, the characters they touched before, a couple new ones… and a new golem and jinni. Just how they will fit in takes some time to be revealed, but it’s obvious that we’ve got some reflections of the main pair being set up.

And time is something this novel spends… pages with. It picks up about a year after the first book, with our happy-ending romance still stable, but they start growing apart as they struggle to hold their own identities, the identities they need in the human world, and their understanding of each other in balance. The last part of the novel is in 1915, but a lot of time is spent showing everyone changing through a decade and a half.

The climax of the novel is a bit like the first one: a cataclysm of magical shenanigans that draws attention, but keeps magic largely hidden from the modern world. The people at the center of it end up changed, but largely in less dramatic ways. The denouement is interesting, and seems like it could lead into a spin-off series. At the least, the door to more in this world is far more open than the end of the first book.

You could probably read this book first and pick up what’s going on. I don’t recommend it: The Golem and the Jinni is very good book and should not be missed. And this delivers the same degree of historical atmosphere, so don’t miss it either.