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The City of Brass
Mar. 22nd, 2021 07:57 pmThe City of Brass is the first in a trilogy by SA Chakraborty, which presents a world of djinn and their half-human offspring, living in a sprawling desert city, split into tribes and factions that oppress and feud with one another. The complexities of the politics in Daevabad are intense and sometimes difficult to follow, made all the worse by the references to multiple other types of magical creatures outside the city who also have a stake in the fate of one of the protagonists, half-human Nahri, who has the blood of a family thought long dead by the ruling faction in the city.
The world-building is rich, and the plight of the other protagonist, Ali, who is a prince of Daevabad and wants to fight for social justice, is interesting up to a point. But Nahri's journey to the city takes more than half the book, and the ins and outs of the various machinations of the many different sides of the various conflicts were a bit too much to really follow by that point.
It's great to see more diversity in modern fantasy, and there's a lot here to explore for readers who have more staying power than me. Reviews seem to be very divided between disappointment and adoration - and I'm somewhere in the middle. The writing is good and the story has some important things to say about social equality, but it wasn't engaging enough for me to want to read the other books in the series.
The world-building is rich, and the plight of the other protagonist, Ali, who is a prince of Daevabad and wants to fight for social justice, is interesting up to a point. But Nahri's journey to the city takes more than half the book, and the ins and outs of the various machinations of the many different sides of the various conflicts were a bit too much to really follow by that point.
It's great to see more diversity in modern fantasy, and there's a lot here to explore for readers who have more staying power than me. Reviews seem to be very divided between disappointment and adoration - and I'm somewhere in the middle. The writing is good and the story has some important things to say about social equality, but it wasn't engaging enough for me to want to read the other books in the series.
