Book Review:
Title: The City of Brass
Author: S.A. Chakraborty
Publisher: Harper Voyager UK
"Often the mightiest things have the humblest beginnings."
Nahri has never believed
in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th 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.
But when Nahri
accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to
her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical
world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the
warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with
creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins
of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the
circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city
of brass, a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.
In that
city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six
gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when
Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce
and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court
politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly
consequences.
After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for...
