This review covers the three books in the Daevabad trilogy, The City of Brass, The Kingdom of Copper and The Empire of Gold. I won't go into specifics of each one, but will give an overview of the series and what I thought about the three books.

The Blurb of The City of Brass

Among the bustling markets of eighteenth century Cairo, the city's outcasts eke out a living swindling rich Ottoman nobles and foreign invaders alike. But alongside this new world the old stories linger. Tales of djinn and spirits. Of cities hidden among the swirling sands of the desert, full of enchantment, desire and riches. Where magic pours down every street, hanging in the air like dust.

Many wish their lives could be filled with such wonder, but not Nahri. She knows the trades she uses to get by are just tricks and sleights of hand: there's nothing magical about them. She only wishes to one day leave Cairo, but as the saying goes... Be careful what you wish for.

Intro

My sister recommeded this series to me and I started reading the first book back in the Spring. I was interrupted by the birth of our first child but have recently picked the series back up and completed all three books. I read them on my Kindle and as soon as I finished the first I immediately downloaded the second, even though I was in rural France with abysmal wifi at the time.

What I Loved

The Setting

The books are set in 18th century Egypt and the surrounding Arabic world (both real and imagined), the magic and the creatures that inhabit the world are middle-eastern in nature and this was a wonderful change from the medieval britain / norse flavour of fantasy I usually read.

I felt so immersed in the world when reading through the series and I think this was because the books were rich in Arabic mythology inspired characters and the places they visited were beautifully described. Chakraborty is clearly someone who loves history and the stories of the middle-east. Her prose really brought the setting to life and made me feel like I was walking through a bustling Egyptian marketplace

The Magic

The magic system was pretty ‘soft’ (by that I mean it didn’t seem to have a hard line set of rules to it), but this makes sense as it seems to be based on existing stories and designed to enhance the fantastical / whimiscal setting. However, don’t mistake my use of the word ‘soft’ to mean ‘nice’! There was some fucked up magic going on in these books - soul enslavement, blood magic, cults… all of which was great fun to read.

Factions and Intrigue

There are numerous factions in the magical world that main charater, Nahri, finds herself trying to navigate. There are different races of magical creatures who inhabit different climates and locations in the world and who, of course, have different goals and priorities. This all makes for a rich and complicated story of alliances, age old grievences and in-fighting. Though the books have flashes of action, alot of the plot is politics based and takes place in the palace of the fantastical city of Daevabad. I thought the characters were generally good enough to keep it interesting, despite the lack of action. However, see below though for the other side of this coin.

What fell flat

Slow Burn and Complicated

I’d say that 2/3 of the first book was setting the scene for the rest of the trilogy. I wasn’t kidding when I said that the story was complicated and it felt like a lot of lore was being dumped in order to get you to a place where you could enjoy the rest of the books. The various factions were cool, but even now I can’t coherently explain why the Djin don’t like the Daeva’s or vice versa or why the human / Daeva hybrids, the Shafit, are hated so much. That said, the third book seemed to suddenly get a lot less complicated, there was a big baddie to defeat and that was that.

There was a point in the first third of book three where I put the book down for a few weeks, the pacing had become very sluggish and I got a bit bored to be honest. When I did pick it up again I think the pay off in the end was worth it.

Conclusion

I enjoyed this series, it was really refreshing to read something different. The books weren’t perfect, but I would recommend them. I will look out for other books by Chakraborty, but I probably won’t re-read these ones any time soon.