Reviews with content warning for Body horror - The City of Brass

CW: violence and war and emotional anguish and things.

I tackled this book as part of a book club (Lighthouse Library thicc bois :) ). It wasn't something I had heard of before that. It starts off set in Cairo with a young woman of unknown origin who is a theif, swindler and survivor, and who has a mysterious healing talent and the ability to understand languages, which she hides to avoid people thinking her a dangerous witch.

Her world is upended when she utters some words of power while doing a faith healing scam, and unexpectedly summons something to her. This leads to her and a big scary soldier guy on the run from murderous ghouls and ifrits. She learns of the world of Daeva and Djinns and journeys to find sanctuary in a magical hidden city, all the while being hunted and tracked by mysterious forces and magical creatures.

Having read a children's translation of the Persian epic Shahnameh, some of the creatures and names were familiar to me. I did keep wondering if Nahri's uncle had an epic warhorse called Rakhsh. I find that I clearly have a lot more grounding in the myths of the Pacific Islands, the Mediterranean, Europe and the British Isles, and need to read more mythic stories from other parts of the world. This story weaves together myth from many places in Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, South and East Asia. Thematically it pits Tradtions, family, individualism, duty, and survival together in a story that sets up a world that I feel is yet to be explored and played in. That's quite a big book for an intro!

The main character is antiheroic. She is a thief, a liar, and a con-artist. She is used to not having a lot and needing to swindle what she can, and so she is out of her depth when she is cast into a palace with opulence at all turns. She is under no illusions that everyone has their own agenda, and that appearances are often skin-deep. It can make for slippery footing as you try to come to grips with a story where there are centuries of history, of alliances and rivalry.

As far as the elemental magic goes, it's generally coherent. The story has some curiosities but non of the "surprises" are overly so. I'm interested to wade into the world and see a little more.

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halfbloodprincess_hogwarts's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Let me just say this audio is absolutely PERFECT to listen to as you drive.

City of Brass completely captivated my attention and I did not want it to end. Tbh, I have mixed feelings toward Dara and have no idea what to do with my emotions.

Nahri is in the worst situation possible and basically left to defenseless. Yes, she is a healer and has the attention that should have backfired in her face.

This series is a first for me where I basically got a "cheat code" after reading River of Silver. So I know who each character is and it actually helped me better get into the story. I tried listening to this audio first but got confused with many name mentions, but the novella helped me sort out who was who and I could envision them in my head better. (Yes, I did take thorough notes as where each novella story took place within the trilogy universe.)

So I am excited to delve into The Kingdom of Copper audio which LITERALLY became available today 2.20.23 form my libraries digital catalogue and I am so excited to start it!!! AAAAHHH!!!

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geometricsun's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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madamenovelist's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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poppywarphan's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Nahri accidentally calls a djinn or Daeva as he prefers to call himself. He finds out she is a shafit (has Daeva blood) and is the last descendant of a powerful family of Daeva healers. There are dangerous creatures after her, so he takes her on a journey to Daevabad, (a magical city hidden from the human world) her family's ancestral home. This journey takes up quite a large portion of the book. I wouldn't call it boring, but it definitely dragged on compared to the rest of the book. When they finally arrive to Daevabad is when the good stuff starts. I'm talking really good shit 😌. The worldbuilding is stunning and characters complex. There's also a short glossary at the end, which helped me keep up with the terms. Definitely need to buy the next book.

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isleoflinds's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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eeeeva's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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adventurous tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I'm struggling with what to say about this book. It was good. It wasn't as gripping and engrossing as I'd hoped, but it was still perfectly readable. I just had a few issues, which I want to get out of the way first. (Also, fair warning: This is a really long book and this review may get long too.)

One: Dara (the djinn that Nahri accidentally summons) refuses to tell Nahri anything for no discernable reason. At one point Nahri actually has to threaten to let herself get eaten by monsters to convince him to tell her anything. I have no idea what his purpose is in keeping her in the dark about the family she's supposedly part of and the society he wants her to join, and knowing a lot of these non-secrets would have actually been helpful. The book tries to make a romance between the two of them but it was mostly based on "he's hot" and it felt forced to me. He seemed irritatingly tropey at the beginning and I only tolerated him because Nahri liked him a lot, but I outright hated him at the end.

Two: There's a lot of politicking in this book, but the essential conflict is Nahri, a con woman used to deciding her own fate and scheming for her coin, being stripped of any agency over her own life by people who have decided that her family heritage and what they think that means for her take precedence over anything she might want, say, think, or feel. It wasn't bad from a story point of view, but it was a case where I got so frustrated with Nahri being unable to wrest any agency away from these people that I almost put it down from sheer rage.

Despite how annoyed I got with politicking in Dune, I didn't mind it that much in this book. Well, I did a bit in the beginning, but as I grew to like the characters more I minded it less. Which is a good thing, because despite some magic, some fights, and one assassin, the majority of the book is politics. The plot consists of a blend of Daevabad politics and Nahri fighting for some agency, so if you can't tolerate the politics at least a little you won't like this book. But on the bright side, they're magic politics about djinn, so slightly less boring than regular politics.

Ali, a djinn prince in Daevabad, is a point-of-view character, and at first he bored me to death. Compared with Nahri and her magic and adventures, the palace niceties and politics in his sections were pretty bland. He also started out as a wide-eyed innocent kid taking his first steps into adult responsibilities, and that was a little grating, but he got wise pretty quick and I liked him and Nahri about equally by about halfway through. I enjoyed their friendship a lot, actually, and I hope it continues in the rest of the series.

I love how steeped this story is in Arabic culture. Unlike the author, I'm not a convert to Islam, but between my research into Islam and my studies of the Arabic language I understood all of the terms mentioned and could even spell most of them, which made me feel pretty proud of myself. Plus (as you might have guessed by the fact that I've studied Islam despite not being Muslim and am teaching myself Arabic) Middle Eastern and especially Islamic culture is fascinating to me, and I love worlds set there - even though this story mostly took place in the fictional djinn city of Daevabad as opposed to a real-world setting, it was still unquestionably an Arabic world.

Up until the very end, I was on the fence about whether I'd continue reading the series. It wasn't a bad read, it just didn't grip me as much as I would have liked. But I really like the world, I can't wait until Nahri finally snaps and unleashes hell on these people, and the ending picked up steam and left me with enough unanswered questions to be interested in continuing. If nothing else, my library has the rest of the series on audiobook too, so they'll at least be reasonably interesting work reading.

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