The City of Brass

By: S. A. Chakraborty

Narrated by: Soneela Nankani

Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Discover this spellbinding debut from Sunday Times bestseller S.A. Chakraborty.

‘An extravagant feast of a book – spicy and bloody, dizzyingly magical, and still, somehow, utterly believable’ Laini Taylor, Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author

Among the bustling markets of eighteenth century Cairo, the city’s outcasts eke out a living swindling rich Ottoman nobles and foreign invaders alike.

But alongside this new world the old stories linger. Tales of djinn and spirits. Of cities hidden among the swirling sands of the desert, full of enchantment, desire and riches. Where magic pours down every street, hanging in the air like dust.

Many wish their lives could be filled with such wonder, but not Nahri. She knows the trades she uses to get by are just tricks and sleights of hand: there’s nothing magical about them. She only wishes to one day leave Cairo, but as the saying goes…

Be careful what you wish for.

©2018 S. A. Chakraborty (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

" The City of Brass is the best adult fantasy I've read since The Name of the Wind. It's stunning and complex and consuming and fantastic. You must read it." (Sabaa Tahir, New York Times best-selling author of An Ember in the Ashes)

"An extravagant feast of a book - spicy and bloody, dizzyingly magical, and still, somehow, utterly believable." (Laini Taylor, Sunday Times and New York Times best-selling author)

"A richly imagined, stunningly immersive book that takes you into a world. You will race to the end of this bold and brilliant debut." (Ausma Zehanat Khan, award-winning author of the The Bloodprint)

Give it a chance past the first hour

The tale starts with a boringly predictable love interest growing. Several occasions of the reader being obviously hinted to know things before the unwitting characters finally find out, simple plot twists, etc. Both make the story seem like one more standard love triangle with magic, rags to riches tale without much interesting to offer.

Then we get to the second part of the tale with palace, family and heritage politics and much more interesting characters being introduced. This is where the story becomes worth its stars, unpredictability makes you interested to know what happens next. The aforementioned three elements of interest have long histories to twist and affect the tale, making it an enjoyable listen.

The performance is clear and emotional although strangely unfitting inflections are somewhat irritating.

All in all a recommended listen for easy entertainment.

BOOM!

This is the kind of story that sneaks up on you. It builds and builds without you even realizing then it explodes with epic proportions. It so intricate and complicated and full of twists. Love love love!

Good story but the romance was overdone

The story and overall world were impressive and believable, so kudos to the author for that. From my perspective, the love triangle/quadrangle/quintangle was overdone, and for large part overwhelmed the rest of the story, to the point where major plot points were often ignored for hours on end (or more).

A good book, but more plot and less romantic angst please. Not sure I will be able to stomach a sequel if the balance stays as is.

Fabulous characters and world-building and plot

It’s been a long time since I read a fantasy that felt new. This one does. The world feels real and consistent and magical, the characters are whole people with all that entails, and even the food is enticing. More, please!

Three and a half stars, rounded up.

I did enjoy this book, I love tales of magical realms, and it's been a while since I've read an epic of Middle Eastern flavor.

But there were some flaws that prevented me from rating it higher. For such a long book, the world described seemed to lack breadth, and the peoples and creatures populating it lack depth. The differences between them, their lore, and most importantly, their magic, only sparingly described.

Nahri, the protagonist, seems rather naive and easily shocked for a street-smart con-artist survivor. This might be partially due to the audio narration, and might come across differently in print.

The political intrigue was set to be the most disappointing aspect of all, just to be saved in the last stretch by a ramped up string of twists and turns.

So I will definitely continue on to the next book in the series, optimistically.

Trope city

At best an average book. A weak and wushu washy main character, a love interest who treats her badly but who she worships anyway and a dull plot. The strong American accent of the narrator took me out of the middle eastern setting right from the start.

Wildly uneven

I wonder at the rave reviews for this book. Did the reviewers read the whole thing? It certainly started out well, with fabulous worldbuilding and a wealth of lovely description. The heroine is clever and ambitious, but she lives in a world where women cannot become healers. Because of her inate talents, she would make an excellent physician, but it is a futile dream. Then one day, she accidently conjures a djinn, a powerful, supernatural being, who rescues her from certain death and carries her off on a flying carpet towards his land, where, he assures her, she will be honored and be able to realize her dream of becoming a healer. But all she wants to do is escape him to regain her "freedom" (why? she has nothing to go back to - if the author had taken the time to give her something real to go back to I might have understood, as it was, the heroine just comes off as a fool). The story soon degenerated into a very puerile 'she hates him, but she has tingles in her lower stomach when she looks at him' triteness. The djinn, of course, is incredibly handsome, and she, of course, finds out she has djinn blood, which makes her a halfbreed. During their trip to his lands they quarrel, she tries to escape numerous times - despite not knowing where she was or where she wanted to go. I kept reading, hoping for something more - there is a parallel story taking place in the djinn's land that started out well and also soon fell apart. I finished the book, but it took an effort and I won't, I'm afraid, be buying the next in the series. I applaud the author's world building, but I despair of the "she hates him on first sight; woman falls in love with her abuser" romance theme that denigrates so many women in fiction.

YA

This book should have been marked as Young Adult, because it is. Not a fan of YA and wouldn’t have bought it if I had realised, and would then not have been disappointed by it.
The narrator is annoying as well. Ends pretty much every sentence as a question.