Book Review: The City of Brass

Title: The City of Brass
Author: S.A. Chakraborty
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction

What It’s About:

In the early morning of Cairo days, Nahri swindles two men out of some rings, gold and what not, from a reading of the tea leaves.  One of the men, who believes he is sick, is actually healthy, but his brother, who is against all of this is very ill. Nahri is capable of seeing illness in the body and knows that but says nothing as the man is adamantly against it.  She tells them to go to the apothecary down the street to purchase some items, and later she visits the man himself—the closet thing she has to a father.  They talk, while she helps him prepare his elixirs and what not, and he tells her that she does not know things and she should not meddle in the matters of the djinn.  Nahri laughs it off, and heads over to do the Zar—a ceremony to get the djinn out of people as many country folks were moving to Cairo and still believed that certain illnesses were the result of djinn possessions. She watches the girl at the Zar named Baseema, who is supposedly cursed and she uses a song she heard, singing it in Arabic, and then translating it into her own tongue, one she is able to hear and speak only.  Basema doesn’t look to be saved, so Nahri tells Baseema’s mother that she cannot be saved, but the family still pays her for her services. 

Nahri gets lost in the city on her way home, and starts to head through a graveyard, when Baseema catches up to her. The girl speaks in a deeper voice, one not typical for an eight year old girl.  Suddenly a man arrives, and fights Baseema off, specifically the ifirit that is inside her, but there is unfortunately no saving the girl.  The graveyard itself starts to shake and the man has no choice but to take Nahri with him. He tells her that she is a Shafit-a half blood and when they have a respite from being chased through the city, he tests her ability to understand any language and her ability to heal.  He reveals that she’s a Nahid. 

At an oasis, where they find refuge, the man calls a Peri—a bird-like creature that is one of the mythical creatures surrounding the djinn.  The Peri, named Khayzur tells the man, whose name is Dara, to head to Daevabad with Nahri.  So the two of them head out across various countries and see Heriapolis, where they get attacked.  Dara reveals his name is Daravayhoush e-Afshin after Nahri asks for it while they are in danger, and they continue together until the Gozan River, where Nahri and Dara share a kiss. But they are attacked again by Ifrit, and Nahri kills one of them, who had told her that her mother is Manizheh—the last Nahid healer, who died.  Dara and Nahri manage to cross the Gaza River with Khayzur’s help as the River Marid seemed to have woken up, and only the Peri could control the Marid, but Khayzur dies after saving them, having been hurt by his own kind for treason.

Dara and Nahri push on until they find the lake, and the ferryman takes them across it to Daevabad. Not long after their entrance to the city, a riot breaks out, incited by a man claiming that the daevas are at fault.  Dara fights off the men and protects his people, when a man arrives on an elephant and shoots some arrows—Jashid e-Pramukh then takes them to meet the King. 

Ali had grown up at the Citadel, and he has been supplying cash to the Tanzeem, an organization that was working to save shafit children, but was also buying weapons.  Sheikh Anas meets with Ali and invites him to a meeting, where Ali sees a slaver sell shafit babies to pureblood.  They are suddenly surrounded by the Royal Guard, so Anas tells Ali and their other co-conspirers to run, while he distracts the guards. Anas is subsequently tortured and then executed, an execution that Ali is required to attend as the acting Qaid.  The words Anas spoke to him, “Earn this,” haunts Ali long after Anas’ death. He encounters his brother, Munthadhir, his father and a daeva man plotting, and Munthadhir takes him aside and tells him to not interfere with anything they’ve planned. Munthadhir, to keep Ali busy and away from being embroiled in the plans, takes Ali deep into the castle where Munthadhir shows Ali the coffins of all the Nahids that ruled centuries ago as well as the Bracelet containing Dara as a slave—the one that would call the Scourge of Qui-Zhi. 

Nahri and Dara are taken to the king, and King Ghassan quickly calls her Manizheh, and then shows everyone that she is a pureblood, but her ears are hidden by magic—they are invisible to everyone else, but when the King presses on the mark in his skin known as Suleiman’s Key, the magic ceases.  He tells Nahri that her mother and her uncle, Rustam, died in an attack 20 years ago as they headed to Kaveh e-Pramukh’s estate of Zaraispa due to some illness of the plants there.  The King seems a bit put out that Manizheh had a child and had been pregnant when she died. 

Nahri stays in the palace and realizes that she cannot trust Zaynab, the king’s daughter.  Nisreen is her maid and she had worked with Manizheh, so she begins to teach Nahri how to heal.  Nahri isn’t able to heal anyone and gets frustrated. 

Dara leaves Daevabad to search for the Ifrit because the story of how he was found alive 20 years ago and how Dara and Nahri found each other makes no sense.  He goes traipsing around looking for the Ifrit with Munthadhir, but then comes home early and visits Nahri.  Dara takes her to the Grand Temple.

Ali is forced to kill the Shafit that “instigated” the riots, but he cannot bear to watch as a young boy cries that he hadn’t done anything. The young boy gets caught on the ship that they use as torture and Ali jumps aboard to behead him.  He then goes to his father and tells him that he cannot be Qaid. His father reveals that he’s figured out that it was him who had been funding the Tandem, as it was Ali’s economic studies that made them capable of hiding money and his treasury account was audited.  Ali apologizes and King Ghassan forgives him for it and removes him from his position as Qaid, but tells Ali that he wants Nahri to marry Munthadhir, so he wants Alizayd to befriend her.  When Nahri comes across him swimming after dealing with her first patient—a woman who had a fire salamander, for which Nahri was wholly unprepared, they strike up an unlikely friendship.  Ali teachers her to read in Arabic and she learns about Economics.  When Dara returns, Ali and Dara spar, with Dara easily taking him down even hurting Ali’s wrist, breaking it.  This is all the more shocking as Dara should not have been able to do this, as he was wielding a Geziri weapon that only Geziri people are capable of weilding and Ali was the best one of them all at the weapon.  Ali continues to get pressured by Rashid, his secretary to continue helping the Tandem, even after he’d seen the orphanage with the sick kids, but Ali refuses to help, having promised his father to stay away from it all. 

Hanno, one of the co-conspirators that met Ali and Anas, sneaks into the palace, and when Ali returns from a night of stargazing, once Nahri, Zaynab and Munthadir have left him alone, Hanno stabs Ali three times.  Ali manages to kill him when Jamshid shows up, and Ali orders him to throw the body over and take him to Nahri. That day, Nahri had tried to slow down the process of death for a man on his death bed.  This man happens to be King Ghassan’s dear friend, and she fails to slow it.  As a result, she gets into an argument with Nisreen about how she should’ve been able to do it all if she had more practice.  She shuts herself in her room, and refuses to respond to Nisreen.  She’s only interrupted by Jamshid with Ali, and she saves Ali’s life while Jamshid gets Munthadhir, who thanks her and takes Ali back to his room.  At that point Ali reveals a lot but not all of his involvement with the Tanzeem and Munthadhir is mad. 

Nahri loved how she felt after saving Ali’s life, so she begins to practice on her own, and once she is able to do something, she makes the decision to go see the king.  In the meantime, Ali is swimming when Zaynab brings him the news that Nahri had negotiated her dowry with the king. Ali is proud of her.  He realizes that one of his stitches had disappeared and the others hurt less after his swim, so he goes to see Munthadhir to see how best he can support him with the arranged marriage and finds him at the courtesan’s alongside with Jamshid and Dara.  Getting a little drunk, Munthadhir tries to insult Dara, who in turn reads what seems to be Munthadhir’s love’s wish—to marry Munthadhir and have a home.  Munthadhir goes to punch Dara, but Ali gets in between them and takes Munthadhir’s punch to the face, later telling him that it was for his sake. 

Nahri gets a visit from Dara, who tells her that they are leaving, and they have friends elsewhere that will give them safety.  They get interrupted by Ali, who asks Nahri to heal his stitches, but Dara and Ali get in a fight and Dara takes him out.  Nahri heals Ali and Dara puts iron cuffs on him.  Soldiers hear Ali, but Dara takes them through a secret tunnel, to a boat and they head out from the castle only to be be met by warships on the lake. Ali apologizes to Nahri and tells her that they’ve known about the boat in the hidden cavern for a while. 

A fight ensues, and Dara takes everyone out while Munthadhir cries over Jamshid. Nahri and Ali get on the boat, but Dara takes out Ali.  In his anger, Munthadhir tries to fight Dara though he fails.  Then he calls out in shock when Ali steps back onto the boat, and kills Dara.  Ali had fallen into the lake with an arrow through his throat and was swallowed whole by the lake. While he was sinking, someone demanded his name, and looked through his memories to find Dara.  He gets images of his family dead, and as a result gives up his name, where he then blacks out.  When Ali comes to, he’s in the infirmary with Nisreen taking a look at him and King Ghassan.  Between the King and Munthadhir, he gets told the story and munthadhir tells him that he’s done protecting Ali.  The king visits Ali alone in his own rooms later, having been told the truth by Munthadhir about Ali and that people have been executed.  The King then tells him that he named Alizayd for Zaydi, the man who ran the rebellion after he had been approached by assassins offering to kill him. He handed him over to Wajed to be trained for Qaid, but that Ali would probably want to be King.  So King Ghassan strips him of his title, accounts and sends him to Am Gezira, effectively exiling Ali and signing his execution—as Geziri assassins would come for him without his title and royal protection. Ali must be gone the very next day from the city. 

Nisreen gets Nahri washed and tells her to do what she can to survive. Nahri goes to the King and he tells her that he can spin the whole story any which way he wants even if Nahri knows it’s not true—it ultimately won’t matter because people will believe him.  So she agrees to his terms, even if she doesn’t want to, and delivers the edict as asked to the people at the Grand Temple.  They all show her solidarity, which annoys King Ghassan. 

Kaveh rushes to the infirmary and tells Munthadhir the name of the guy who supplied items to Dara—it’s a patsy but he hopes that it will get him into the good graces of the King.  He advises Munthadhir to go with the name to the king and once Munthadhir is gone, he turns to his son. Jamshid has not been healed yet because the King hasn’t allowed it until he gets a name.  Kaveh doesn’t want his son to die, so he cuts open the shirt and goes to the tattoo on Jamshid’s shoulder that was placed there by his mother to protect him and hide his abilities—which also appear to be healing as Kaveh cuts him.  Nisreen catches him, stops him and tells him that Jamshid will be in even more danger if he does that.  Instead, she hands him the ring belonging to Dara, telling Kaveh to get into the King’s good graces so that he can go to Zaraispa and get the ring to Manizheh as she is the only one who can get Dara back.  Nisreen confirms that Nahri knows nothing and that it’s better that way so that she cannot be implicated if they are captured or found out. 

My Thoughts: This story is so well written and the characters are deep–I really love Nahri and Dara together so I’m curious to see what happens with the two of them. Rarely do I enjoy djinn stories, but this one is masterfully written, and the story well woven. Can’t wait to read the next one.