The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) by S.A. Chakraborty - Restarting May 12th 2020

[Anna 'Bookbuyer']

Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, healings—are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles.

But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass, a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.

After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for...

[NataliaVictoria]

Sorry I’m starting a bit late, but I’m really excited and have high expectations, because I usually love novels centered around ancient Arabia and it’s lore - fingers crossed🤞🏼

[NataliaVictoria]

almost 50% (view spoiler)[I’m almost halfway thru, and I’m liking it a lot - it’s pretty fast paced which I’m glad for. Idk if I like how it’s split between the two perspectives, though - I feel like I’m only getting snippets of each story line, and I was hoping for many more detailed adventures and encounters with Nahri and Dara on their journey, I feel like so much happened but is all skipped over or summarized except for a few important days. We’ll see how it plays out once Ali and Nahri’s stories finally connect though... (hide spoiler)]

[NataliaVictoria]

Finished and wow - I'm very conflicted. (view spoiler)[On one end, it's overall themes and ideas are everything I love in fantasy - thieves and warriors, ancient societies with complex races and politics, adventures and mysterious yet extravagant settings... BUT, the characters and flow of the plot just didn't meet my expectations. It was a great novel in theory, but as I said in my review, there was a weird mix of dragged out chapters that explained very little, and large gaps that would have been exciting and fun if filled and elaborated on. Of Nahri and Dara's entire monthlong journey, we only saw like 4 days, but we got to see all the interworkings and drama in the Quatani palace? What about Dara's two month long journey to find the efrits? All summarized (and I still don't really know what happened), but we got to see Nahri in drawn out conversations/interactions with almost every character since entering Daevebad. And what about that whole scroll scene? Did they ever even find out what it said, because I'm pretty sure a month or so of time has passed since then. Also, the characters' actions don't really match their stories. Ok - I know that characters with similar backgrounds across different novels don't have to fit the same mold of how they think and what they do, but these characters seemed to never develop. Every time they took a step forward, they took another back - except Ali of course, he was the most interesting and intricate character. He was the one person I was actually rooting for. Also, I liked how there was no clear "good" and "bad" side when it came to politics, and it made the world much more believable and multidimensional, but overall, just too much politics for my liking. The last few chapters picked up the slack and actually built the plot far more than the entire rest of the novel. Not sure if I'll be reading the next one - idk if I'd be able to get through... (hide spoiler)]

[Aly]

Woah those are long :) Also maybe want to tag them as spoilers.

[Aly]

ch 8 (view spoiler)[ I'm pretty invested in this, the story is really interesting. I like Nahri's parts more, that she can heal people and isn't all human is cool. Ali is okay, I don't understand the difference between djinn and daeva though. Is it a class thing or are they actually very different? (hide spoiler)]

[Aly]

ch 15 (view spoiler)[ well now that I said the pacing was good it slowed down a little, but I'm still intrigued. Nahri saved Dara a couple times and Ali is dealing with his father thinking they should basically kill the Daeva. Now they're all coming together! (hide spoiler)]

[Aly]

NataliaVictoria wrote: "I’m almost halfway thru, and I’m liking it a lot - it’s pretty fast paced which I’m glad for. Idk if I like how it’s split between the two perspectives, though - I feel like I’m only getting snippe..."
I don't mind getting both points of view, but Ali is less interesting to me. I'm looking forward to seeing them come together too

[Aly]

ch 22 (view spoiler)[ this is draaaaagggiiinnnggg for me. I'm so bored and frustrated that Dara is pushing Nahri away. She's starting to like Ali, but I think Dara would be her better match since she loves him. I hope this last quarter is better (hide spoiler)]

[Aly]

finished (view spoiler)[ I feel like Nahri's character development went backward. She started out strong and capable, then ended up weak. I'm disappointed that now she's a puppet and kind of pathetic. Hopefully next book she bucks up.
Poor Ali, torn between family duty and what he knows is right. And now he's banished and possessed by a water creature.
AND Dara is dead maybe? Such a depressing ending. (hide spoiler)]

[Aly]

NataliaVictoria wrote: "Finished and wow - I'm very conflicted. On one end, it's overall themes and ideas are everything I love in fantasy - thieves and warriors, ancient societies with complex races and politics, adventu..."

I agree that pacing was off for sure, I didn't even realize (view spoiler)[Nahri and Dara's journey took a month because we barely saw any of it (hide spoiler)]

[NataliaVictoria]

Sorry I haven't been checking the thread - and about the spoilers, I just figured out how to do that lol. But I agreed with everything you've said, though looking back on it I may have been a biiiit critical, probably because a lot of the actions and events near the end were frustrating. I did enjoy it though! I've been looking through a few reviews, and a lot of people seem to like Dara a lot - idk if I'm the only one but something was way off for me and he was just confusing from my perspective

[NataliaVictoria]

Aly wrote: "ch 8 [spoilers removed]"

Yea I feel like the politics got a bit too complicated, especially introducing it all right from the start. I think, however, that "daeva" is their term for themselves and their entire race (every tribe included), and "djinn" is the term that humans created to refer to them in their legends. A lot of the purebloods (especially the Daeva tribe, the tribe that are so obssessed with pure blood and not associating with humans that they adopted their race name as their tribe name) despise the term "djinn" because it was created and used by humans, which they don't want any association with, but the Quatanis and their tribes accept the term "djinn" and adopted it because they're ok with humans, maybe even like them. Essentially they refer to the same thing, but they have different historical origins that piss some of the daevas off. Yea... definitely a bit too complex to fit in a novel with so much else going on around it.