The city of brass

No cover

S. A. Chakraborty: The city of brass (2017)

532 pages

English language

Published Oct. 29, 2017

ISBN:
978-0-06-267810-2
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
972383644

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (2 reviews)

"Step into The City of Brass, the spellbinding debut from S. A. Chakraborty--an imaginative alchemy of The Golem and the Jinni, The Grace of Kings, and Uprooted, in which the future of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom rests in the hands of a clever and defiant young con artist with miraculous healing gifts. Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of eighteenth-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 and a reliable way to survive. But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she's forced to question all she believes. For the warrior tells her an extraordinary …

3 editions

A big story with a lot of humanity in its magical beings

4 stars

Content warning major spoilers

Review of 'The city of brass' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

Is good solid book, with characters that aren’t idiots and are all playing to further their own agendas while still making nice in public. There is magic and violence and road trip to begin with, but once you get to the city it becomes far more political and tense as everyone realizes what a powder keg they are sitting on.

I especially liked that there is no wish fulfillment in this book. There is no Manly Bigpants/Mary Sue character here. The lead protagonist is a girl who thinks she’s an expert manipulator but is still weak for abs or a friendly face (and the other characters know and comment on this teenager thinking she’s such hot shit), and the male dreamboat is a religious zealot out of time who is borderline abusive and controlling, and again the book knows this.

Harry Potter this is not, and even the male dreamboat …

Subjects

  • Imaginary places
  • Jinn
  • Fiction

Lists