The Haunting of Tram Car 015

3.5* rounded down to 3*. This was a fun little story that packs supernatural entities, a mystery, and some exorcism action. The only reason why I would rate this a little lower than the other short stories in the series is because it seemed to be a standalone side adventure rather than as a piece of the overarching puzzle. It didn't seem to have a sense of awe that pervades the other stories, but that might be due to the lack of Angels in this one. Nevertheless, it was still pretty fun in itself.Agent Hamed, from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, is sent in with new recruit Agent Onsi to investigate a report of a haunting taking place in one of Cairo's tram cars. They run around Cairo trying to figure out the identity of this phantom, with the aid of enigmatic waitress Abla.If you aren't already familiar with the Dead Djinn Universe, this series takes place in an AU fantasy steampunk version of Egypt in the 1930s or so. It's spectacular and refreshing. All the characters are Egyptian, a good number of them are Muslim, and even the fantasy aspects of this series takes a lot of cues from Middle Eastern mythology and Islamic lore. This series already gets bonus points for being so refreshingly different from ye olde conventional Euro-centric fantasy stories.I particularly enjoyed the dynamics between Agent Hamed and Agent Onsi. It starts off first as that of an unwilling mentor tutoring an overenthusiastic but inexperienced junior, but later develops into a mutually respectful partnership. I'm slated to read the latest book of the series very soon and hope very much that we see more of them.There was a whole plot thread here about a suffragette movement happening in Cairo, and the book seemed to want to do something with it but it wasn't really clear (to me) what that was. This thread was also pretty deliberately interwoven through the main sequence of events, with our two agents in the forefront trying to solve the problem of the haunting, and concludes just as the investigation does, so I'm pretty sure Clark is trying to draw some kind of parallel here - I just can't figure out what!This is a fun addition to the Dead Djinn Universe, but I wouldn't recommend this as a starting point. Rather, [b:A Dead Djinn in Cairo 29635542 A Dead Djinn in Cairo P. Djèlí Clark https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459173382l/29635542.SX50.jpg 49993780] did a better and more impressive job overall in introducing the world, the setting, and the range of supernatural entities that is at the series's forefront (I'm particularly thinking of Angels, which interest me the most in the whole series, even more than djinns despite the series title).