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Aug 25, 2018PimaLib_ChristineR rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Once Nahri's story became as interesting as Ali's the story really got going. Dara is a Daeva (Djinn) that appears to Nahri after she does one of her "fake" ceremonies in Cairo. When the girl she is supposed to be helping tries to kill her, Dara tells Nahri that she will be chased to the ends of the earth by these creatures and she will only be safe in Daevabad, a special city visible only to the Djinn. Okay, so that all seems straightforward. And I love how Chakraborty wrote this, because obviously we've got magic going on and giant bird people popping in and possessed corpses, so Dara seems to fit right into this scenario. It is only as Nahri becomes part of the political life of Daevabad that it becomes clear that Dara has not told her the truth, and he may not even know the truth about himself. I found this part of the story to be so interesting because none of it is exposition; everything is people around him discovering things about Dara's powers, or noticing that he has abilities which he should not. Chakraborty does a nice job of dealing with racism, religious extremism, etc... Both Dara and Ali have their own long-ingrained biases, and we are shown how they truly affect the people with whom they interact. It was especially important in the relationship between Dara and Nahri, where they seem to be building a relationship, but Dara's unthinking bias against the Shafit (part human, part djinn) hurts her time and again. And Ali's religious beliefs keep him from seeing the most obvious things about his family. In all, not only are the characters wonderful and sometimes mysterious, but so many parallels can be drawn to politics from the local to the international, without the story beating the reader over the head with morals. The City of Brass didn't suck me in...at first. Chakraborty added a lot of backstory for Nahri that I think could have been added later as flashback, or left out entirely and readers could have figured out about her previous life in Cairo. I would have loved these early chapters to focus more closely on Ali and the politics of Daevabad, because it is so convoluted that even with explanation it is sometimes difficult to keep straight and understand who is allied to whom and why. There were also moments that actions and motivations didn't make sense to me, but it wasn't enough to make me not want to find out what happens. Chakraborty is a strong new voice in YA Fantasy (are we all calling that "Speculative Fiction" now?) that will likely get stronger with each new novel.