The City of Brass
by S.A.
Chakraborty
Publication Date:
November 14th 2017
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Rating: 3.5/5
An eARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
The hype for this
book was so real that I somehow managed to get through this even though I can’t
normally focus on ebooks. I loved how much cultural information was packed into
this book and all of the political details between the daeva tribes and their
magic system. I didn’t find much of the ending predictable in the slightest
which was really refreshing but honestly most of it is hard to talk about and
discuss unless you’ve already read it!
I must say I only
vaguely new about Djinn, Ifriti, Marid etc. from my Bartimaeus days (I love
those books and I love Jonathan Stroud) and that being said it really felt like
I was getting thrown in the deep end with the MC Nahri who was also being
introduced to everything around her. A paperback/ hard copy is definitely the
way to go with this book because there are a lot of mythological/cultural terms
that were a pain in the ass to flip back to the glossary of the ebook every
time, but I did feel like I learned a bit which is always something I enjoy
when reading. There where plenty of terms I didn’t know and just went along
with not really knowing and getting context clues to work things out which was
weird, but something I can appreciate. So many books are written by white women
about white women for white women and I think this book had an all non-white
cast with a minor side plot of lgbt diversity. A breath of fresh air, honestly.
What could have
added to the experience for me might have been doing something similar to the
beginning of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns where the author gives readers the
pronunciations of the character’s names. I do understand this is a bit of a
double edged sword though. On one hand, it’s ridiculous that names like Julia
and Margot aren’t expected to have pronunciations accompanied with them while
names like Darayavahoush are, but at the same time as a reader I want to
completely respect the character’s name and the culture behind the story by not
butchering their name. It’s certainly an interesting debate to say the least
and I would love to hear other opinions on the subject, but I suppose this is a
bit of a tangent in regards to my purpose being to review the book!
Another quick side note, there's a bit more swearing (the f word) and a bit more sexual content than I was expecting from a YA book. Not anything explicit, just more than expected i.e. insinuating sexual rumors, calling character whores etc. though that again could be a result of a more conservative culture being the background of the novel.
Like I said, the
last 100-200 pages (again this was on ebook I read on my phone screen so real page numbers are a mystery) were a wild ride with a lot happening at once and a
lot of the stuff happening at once was really unexpected. Everything felt like
it was really wrapping up into a stand alone book and I was wondering where the
story was going to go since I had heard this was to be a trilogy. It only made
me realize that what I thought was the big picture wasn’t actually the big
picture! I will definitely be reading the next book but the hype won’t be as
intense for me as I don’t think my favorite character will be receiving a lot
of screen time especially considering how book twos are primarily just less
interesting set-ups for the end of a trilogy. However, I seem to be in for an
amazing book three and I anxiously await a conclusion (and my fav character
better be stellar in it or I will fight someone)!