City of Brass

City of Brass is the first book in SA Chakraborty's Daevabad medieval Muslim fantasy trilogy. The premise is that an Egyptian thief with mysterious healing powers accidentally summons a warrior djinn; it turns out she is the last of a race of Nahid djinn and is whisked away to a hidden city of Daevabad where she is immediately embroiled in politics.

What I enjoyed the most out of this book was the multilayered and dynamic political and personal tensions. The current Geziri rulers destroyed the previous Nahid/Daeva rulers, now living as ~second class citizens in Daevabad. The historical (and present) conflict between them revolves around Shafit half-djinn who are both required to live in Daevabad and also forced to live in squalor. For me, this is fantasy politics at its best where everybody's grievances and actions are understandable and often there's no good answers.

The two alternating perspectives of this book are from Nahri (the aforementioned Egyptian thief) with her warrior djinn Dara (who is loathed by Geziri and celebrated by Daeva), and the second Geziri prince Ali (stuck up, rule bound, named after Dara's mortal enemy, supports Shafit to the consternation of his father the king and his older brother heir). All of this leads to complicated and messy interactions between the whole cast, where the backdrop of history tinges every relationship.

The start of the book was a bit rocky for me, and had a lot of what felt like info-dumping by Dara on their way to Daevabad. On top of that, it took me a little bit to digest all the different djinn races and fit that into the slow historical reveals. That said, once everything got going, the relationships and politics were great fun to read and the ending really landed a good climax with intriguing developments for the next book.

(I read this because it was off of the #SFFBookClub's backlog, and also because of screamsbeneath's review of the whole series.)

S.A. Chakraborty has crafted an impressively deep and complex would filled with characters that are engaging and feel quite real. I can’t come up with enough positive adjectives to fully describe the setting. It’s that good. The characters, however, while feeling real, simply didn’t connect with me and I found myself actively disliking most of them. In the end, this hampered my enjoyment of the story.

The City of Brass has one of the most unique and deep settings of any fantasy novel. From takes on djinn and ifrit and marids to an amazingly intricate system of family, tribes, and governance, Chakraborty has spared no detail in fleshing out her world—or, perhaps technically her alternative history, though after the first few chapters this has more the feel of secondary world fantasy. To top it off, not only is the world intricate, it is also entirely non-western, and I want more worlds like this. Chakraborty’s prose is exceptional. Sometimes its fun just seeing an author ply their trade through their prose, and this is one of those times. Perhaps the greatest height Chakraborty achieves in this novel is her ability to convincingly write all sides of a conflict—or multiple conflicts—in a way that does not immediately make one side the good guys and one side the bad guys. In fact, the main conflicts in her world are so multifaceted that there are moments when you find yourself agreeing with all sides, or wanting to bang multiple characters’ heads together and make them listen. Just stop and listen. It’s excellently done and a rare accomplishment in the vast majority of fantasy literature. Chakraborty deserves accolades for this alone.

While the setting is unique and intricate, it is sometimes difficult to follow. There were several times when I felt a bit more explanation of the world, just a quick paragraph here or there, would have gone a long way towards helping me understand things. Instead, I often found myself confused for chapters on end until someone finally mentioned something that clarified the history of two tribes or some such. In addition to this, while the characters are—almost universally—well drawn and believable, I didn’t particularly connect with any of them. Each of the characters have good reasons for being the way they are, but I just sort of wanted to yell at all of them. I had negative emotional reactions to almost all of them at various points. The exception to this being Nahri, who I found to be quite flat. She’s supposedly an excellent con artist, but she manages to seem simultaneously naïve and self-serving. She also spends much of her time pining after Dara, which I didn’t find particularly convincing as a romance. To be clear, it isn’t that any of these characters are poorly written. It’s simply that they did not connect with me. Factor in, as an additional issue, that I felt like the main characters spend almost all of their time reacting, and its easy to see why the novel didn’t quite work for me. Perhaps most frustrating is that Nahri ends up completely at the behest of men, with little agency of her own…that may be true to life, but I want to read about female MCs who show men their place, or at the very least have agency of their own. To top it all off, there are the beginnings of a love triangle and I hate love triangles.

This is obviously a novel that works for a lot of people. I think most folks will either not have my same hang ups in terms of fantasy novels or will simply be so enamored with the prose, settings, and complexity of perspective that they will be able to forgive anything else. That’s great! For me, though, it just wasn’t an overly enjoyable read—though I hope to see more world building of this type in the fantasy genre in the future!

3/5 stars

5 – I loved this, couldn’t put it down, move it to the top of your TBR pile
4 – I really enjoyed this, add it to the TBR pile
3 – It was ok, depending on your preferences it may be worth your time
2 – I didn’t like this book, it has significant flaws and I can’t recommend it
1 – I loathe this book with a most loathsome loathing