S.A.Chakraborty - The City of Brass

I was looking forward to reading The City of Brass. The cover grabbed me and the outline describing a young woman in eighteenth century Cairo living by swindling and stealing seemed fun. The added bonus, that our hero Nahri, can also magically heal people added to my interest. I do love a good bit of escapism.

Sadly while enjoyable, the book did not live up to my expectations. I enjoyed the idea that Egypt, fought over between European colonialists was also the site for a hidden struggle between spirits and fantastical djinn, whose own cities were torn between struggles between pure blood and others. But the story itself is too complex. The novel follows two threads, that of Nahri who accidentally summons a dead Djinn back to life, and who takes her to the hidden city and Ali, a younger prince of the ruling family in that city, torn between loyalty to his family and concern for the oppressed in the city.

But the overlapping stories, while fun to read, have too much overlapping back story. Understanding the complex rivalries requires getting to grips with some detailed lore that wasn't described well enough for me to remember the nuances. That said there are some great aspects to this book. Nahri is a brilliant hero - we rarely get female, Muslim, main characters in fantasy novels - and I suspect that Chakraborty's depiction of Nahri is one reason for the book's success. I also thought the depiction of oppressed minorities (and the racism directed against them by the elite) and poverty among the masses was well done. And it was good to see the resistance to this also portrayed, even if the rebels came close to caricature. 

I'm unlikely to read the rest of the trilogy. But I appreciate that others will devour them.