A Dead Djinn in Cairo

I originally bought this to sample the author's work, not having read him before.

The plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end, so it is a genuine story, but there are short stories out there that feel more complete than this novelette does. Probably the author was deliberately giving us a sample of his fictional world, rather than trying to write a standalone story.

It's a deliberately exotic creation, rubbing our noses in the strangeness of this alternative version of Cairo in 1912, in which supernatural beings of various kinds have come in from another universe and taken residence in the city alongside more-or-less normal humans.

I like the quality of the writing and world-building; I quite like the characterization; I'm not so keen on the plot, which is too bizarre for its own good.