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Daevabad trilogy
Jan. 31st, 2021 09:57 amI'm halfway through S A Chakraborty's Daevabad trilogy - City of Brass, Kingdom of Copper and Empire of Gold - and I keep on changing my mind about whether to bother finishing it.
It's a sprawling Middle Eastern epic about djinn and magic and myth and city politics and civil war. There are three major factions who all hate each other - two pureblood djinn factions, the Daevas and Gezeri, each of whom think the other are evil and only they deserve to rule, and a mixed race oppressed minority, the shafit, who are regularly beat on by both the djinn factions and occasionally fight back. ( mild spoilers, mention of violence against and death of children ) I stopped reading it once already, but then I went back to it, and I still want to know what happens next.
Because the world-building is rich and detailed and vivid, the court politics and intrigues are convincingly chilling and complex and difficult to navigate, the backdrop of myth and history that's gradually revealed is compelling, and many of the characters are fun to spend time with - I love Ali, Nahri, Jamshid, Zaynab, and even Muntadhir, for all his flaws. It's lovely to read a book populated exclusively by people of colour, many of them Muslim and dark skinned. It has canonically queer main characters, moral ambiguity, and genuinely tense, difficult situations where there's no easy answers and every action has a million unwanted consequences.
So for now, I'm keeping on reading it - but it's still touch and go whether I'll make it to the end.
It's a sprawling Middle Eastern epic about djinn and magic and myth and city politics and civil war. There are three major factions who all hate each other - two pureblood djinn factions, the Daevas and Gezeri, each of whom think the other are evil and only they deserve to rule, and a mixed race oppressed minority, the shafit, who are regularly beat on by both the djinn factions and occasionally fight back. ( mild spoilers, mention of violence against and death of children ) I stopped reading it once already, but then I went back to it, and I still want to know what happens next.
Because the world-building is rich and detailed and vivid, the court politics and intrigues are convincingly chilling and complex and difficult to navigate, the backdrop of myth and history that's gradually revealed is compelling, and many of the characters are fun to spend time with - I love Ali, Nahri, Jamshid, Zaynab, and even Muntadhir, for all his flaws. It's lovely to read a book populated exclusively by people of colour, many of them Muslim and dark skinned. It has canonically queer main characters, moral ambiguity, and genuinely tense, difficult situations where there's no easy answers and every action has a million unwanted consequences.
So for now, I'm keeping on reading it - but it's still touch and go whether I'll make it to the end.