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A review by fruitcd
The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty
A fine conclusion to a fine series. Despite all my critiques, I enjoyed this and would be interested to read more from this author. I think this series' weaknesses are its pacing (each book could honestly have 100+ pages removed to great benefit), the way romance is handled, and the over-reliance on action and magical deus ex machinas to solve political intrigue. This book (and series in general) would work best as a politically focused novel, but the problem is the characters are simply too stupid and bad at politics for that to really work, so instead we get a lot of actions scenes to solve political problems. Yes, this is the finale to the series and we need bigger, more exciting setpieces, but a lot of these action scenes just felt like they went on WAY too long. Each book also has some kind of new magic come out of nowhere to add cheap tension, like the true names giving the ifrit control over djinn thing here, which ultimately doesn't matter and adds nothing to our understanding of of the world or magic system.
But I take back my criticism of it not feeling like any of the characters had an arc or growth. Looking back, I can see a lot of change from book one. The exception is Nahri, who seems like she's going to get a corruption arc at the end of book two but then is right back to her regular self in book three. It felt like the author realized heading into this book that the whole "Nahid blood purity" thing is not the greatest ideology for our main character to be aligned with and had to suddenly reorient the ship to deal with that, at the expense of Nahri's consistency as a character. I did like the way that was handled in this book and how Daevabad was changed, although I kind of cringe at the oversimplistic"what we need is democracy!" underlying message.
Despite coming around to Dara in book two, I never really felt as emotionally connected to him as I think the author wanted me to be. She puts him through a LOT of torture in this book, physically and emotionally, presumably to tug at your heartstrings. But every time some fresh horror got heaped on Dara, it lessened the effect it had on me. Dara and Nahri's relationship is also still the weakest part of this series, which is a shame because a lot of the tension at the climax relies on you caring about their relationship and their love for each other. But I just never believed they loved each other in the first place.
Similarly, I felt completely ambivalent towards Nahri and Ali's romance, although at least this romance felt more well developed since they have the benefit of three books of interaction before anything romantic starts to happen. Although again, Chakraborty over-relies on sudden physical attraction, having Nahri think about how hot Ali's ass is and having Ali act like a Victorian man seeing a woman's ankle whenever Nahri shows the tiniest bit of skin. That isn't endearing or romantic, by the way, it just kind of makes him seem creepy and sheltered. Just take out all of that and I would have actually been onboard with this romance, especially with how they end the story in a very realistic place.
But I take back my criticism of it not feeling like any of the characters had an arc or growth. Looking back, I can see a lot of change from book one. The exception is Nahri, who seems like she's going to get a corruption arc at the end of book two but then is right back to her regular self in book three. It felt like the author realized heading into this book that the whole "Nahid blood purity" thing is not the greatest ideology for our main character to be aligned with and had to suddenly reorient the ship to deal with that, at the expense of Nahri's consistency as a character. I did like the way that was handled in this book and how Daevabad was changed, although I kind of cringe at the oversimplistic
Despite coming around to Dara in book two, I never really felt as emotionally connected to him as I think the author wanted me to be. She puts him through a LOT of torture in this book, physically and emotionally, presumably to tug at your heartstrings. But every time some fresh horror got heaped on Dara, it lessened the effect it had on me. Dara and Nahri's relationship is also still the weakest part of this series, which is a shame because a lot of the tension at the climax relies on you caring about their relationship and their love for each other. But I just never believed they loved each other in the first place.
Similarly, I felt completely ambivalent towards Nahri and Ali's romance, although at least this romance felt more well developed since they have the benefit of three books of interaction before anything romantic starts to happen. Although again, Chakraborty over-relies on sudden physical attraction, having Nahri think about how hot Ali's ass is and having Ali act like a Victorian man seeing a woman's ankle whenever Nahri shows the tiniest bit of skin. That isn't endearing or romantic, by the way, it just kind of makes him seem creepy and sheltered. Just take out all of that and I would have actually been onboard with this romance, especially with how they end the story in a very realistic place.