Review: The City of Brass, Plus a Giveaway!

Next week the second book in the Daevabad Trilogy, The Kingdom of Copper, releases. I'm giving away a paperback copy of the first book, The City of Brass, below. Here's my review of City of Brass from December 2017.


The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Over the past year, I have read several impressive debut novels (Katherine Arden and Ruth Emmie Lang specifically come to mind) where authors have built unique and magical worlds in which the reader can lose themselves. S. A. Chakraborty joins this group with a novel that is mesmerizing and steeped in Arabic and Persian folklore. The City of Brass takes its title from a less well-known tale in A Thousand and One Nights/"The Arabian Nights". (You can read a quick synopsis of the story of the City of Brass, and the seal of Suleiman/Solomon in A Thousand and One Nights here.) As in The Arabian Nights, Chakraborty's City of Brass is set in a world of djinn, ifrits, marids, and daevas* - ancient Avestan/Persian creatures that were considered chaos-promoting and deemed false gods by the Zoroastrians. Here, we travel the paths of the legendary Silk Road and Spice Route, from the bazaars of Cairo to the foothills of the Hindu Kush, Ancient Persia and the legendary City of Brass, Daevabad.



(You find can a key to this map, its various locations and their relevance to the Daevabad Trilogy world here.)

Equal parts fantasy and political intrigue, the first book of The Daevabad trilogy gives us alternating chapters about two main characters, Nahri, a girl with a mysterious history, and Ali, a djinn prince, in a story arc that brings them steadily closer to meeting one another. The inscrutable daeva Dara, a third main character, who rescues and protects Nahri, provides a vivid and visceral presence and has a recent past as mysterious as Nahri's. Chakraborty manages to make what becomes a love triangle an enjoyable read and everyone knows how I loathe love triangles. Nahri's relationship with Dara, grounded in emotion versus that with Ali, grounded in intellectual companionship, forms one of many interesting elements of the book. The misfortunes of being an idealistic second son, and the political implications of racism and slavery figure prominently in this tale. After the rather stunning last few chapters, I am eagerly awaiting The Kingdom of Copper. Although...

"Be careful what you wish for..."

*These are not quite related to the Vedic devas of Indic culture.

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Here's a chance to win this first book in the Daevabad Trilogy! For your primary entry, comment on this post. For additional entries, subscribe to the Marzie's Reads by email. You can also follow Marzie's Reads through Bloglovin' (see link on sidebar), and you can follow Marzie's Reads on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, but your extra entries will only count if I can link them to YOU. Otherwise it's very hard to connect one entry to another, assign and contact the winner.

This giveaway will be open until Saturday, January 19, at 11:59 PM, EST.

On that note, there seems to be a lot of confusion about how to sign up for the email subscription so here's a screen capture of where you sign up in the sidebar:

When you sign up, you'll receive an email asking you to to VERIFY your subscription to Marzie's Reads. If you do not verify, you are not subscribed, and sadly you do not have an extra entry plus even sadder, you might miss reviews and giveaways! If you send me an email (Contact Marzie's Reads) instead of subscribing, you do not have an extra entry, either. :/

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