The City of Brass (Daevabad Trilogy)

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Knowing a djinn's name gives you power over them, especially if you're an ifrit or marid. Ali was never taught this, and answering the marid when asked allows them to use him as a weapon in the first book. Meaningful Name: Alizayd was named for Zaydi, the man who lead the uprising against the Nahids. Ghassan remarks at one point that it was not a good idea to name his son after a revolutionary. Depower: Manizheh sealed Jamshid's Nahid abilities shortly after his birth so Ghassan wouldn't discover his true identity. When the spell is later removed, his Nahid abilities return. So, I'm torn. I still don’t know if I'm happy or angry at this book. Initially, I rated it 4.5 stars (purely for the ending) but I don’t think spending almost the entirety of the book bored or confused only to get an explosive ending is a reason enough to be this generous so, I took it down a notch to 3.5 stars. Famed In-Story: Dara. To the djinn he's the monstrous Scourge of Qui-Zi & The Dreaded, while to the Daevas he's a heroic and romantic figure who fought to free their tribe from foreign rule.

Good Powers, Bad People: The Nahids were immensely powerful healers, but they were utterly ruthless, brutally repressed the shafit, and conducted horrific medical experiments. Best exemplified by Manizheh, who uses her healing powers to create a horrific superweapon. Animal Motifs: Comparisons to cats seem to pop up a lot regarding the various otherworldly beings—Dara is likened to a tiger a couple of times, and the Djinn's and Ghoul's actions are sometimes described as cat-like. The Nahids are even said to have ridden winged lions into battle. Walking the Earth: At the end of the third book, Dara embarks on a quest to find all the djinn relics stolen by the ifrit and return them to the city so that they can be freed of enslavement. He fully expects this to take millennia. Chakraborty’s latest unfurls like a scroll of ancient parchment, conjuring realer-than-life monsters, menacing magic, and a heroine with a gnarled, beating heart. An exhilarating, propulsive adventure.” The book has two perspectives, one of which is Nahri, who, at the beginning was primarily the kind of MC I love to read about. She was sharp-tongued, independent and a likeable con artist, who makes her living on the streets of Cairo by swindling nobles and also has the ability to sense illness in others and to heal some ailments. I mean, right!?Anti-Magic: One of the basic powers of Suleiman's Seal is shutting down the magic of everyone but the holder, which Ghassan is only too happy to demonstrate.

NAHRI, her daughter of uncertain parentage, left abandoned as a young child in the human land of Egypt Marid operate on a system of debts and dealmaking—taking Ali as a weapon to kill Dara puts them in debt to Dara. Because getting their help has traditionally involved blood sacrifice, they are abhorred by djinn. Their nature as communal beings also makes them difficult for everyone else to comprehend, and the feeling is mutual. In The City of Brass, Nahiri, an orphaned hustler/healer living in the streets of Cairo, accidentally summons a handsome, brooding djinn, Dara. He tells Nahiri of her magical origins and takes her on a reluctant journey to Daevabad, the magical city the djinns call home. Parental Substitute: Yaqub, a Jewish doctor and surgeon, is the closest thing Nahri has to one in Cairo. He fusses over her, passes his knowledge to her, and even offers to let her inherit his business when she and Ali are hiding in Cairo in the third book.Like a God to Me: The Daeva tribe holds the Nahid clan in high esteem as the descendants of revered Anahid, the woman who laid the foundations for both Daevabad and the modern magical world. The marid, by contrast, hate her guts for stealing their sacred lake. Invisible to Normals: Ali isn't totally invisible to humans, but they don't notice him unless he makes an effort to get their attention, and it only lasts a moment before they forget he's there. Achilles' Heel: Djinn, being creatures of fire, are justifiably terrified of igniferous weapons, like gunpowder, that might set them alight.

The epilogue for the trilogy also reveals the Egyptian shafit working in the palace kitchens was Nahri's grandfather.The feeling you get when one of your most anticipated books lives up to your expectations is one of the best. It’s the contentment that you feel about not hating everything you read. It’s the peacefulness that you feel knowing that you actually can like books. And most of all, it’s the excited feeling of finally NOT being crushed by overwhelming disappointment that a book turned out to be as good as you thought it was.

Meanwhile, Ali has been exiled for daring to defy his father. Hunted by assassins, adrift on the unforgiving copper sands of hisancestral land, he is forced to rely on the frightening abilities the marid—the unpredictable water spirits—have gifted him. But in doing so, he threatens to unearth a terrible secret his family has long kept buried. The world building is so….complex it actually crossed over into the line of “complicated” and overshadows ANYTHING ELSE ACTUALLY I feel like THE ISLAMIC aspect wasn’t EVEN NECESSARY to the story bc personally, it fell really flat and I can see how it would be confusing and maybe even counter-productive for people who aren’t well read in the faith. If it was just kept as a Middle Eastern rep, I probably would have liked it better. The City of Brass is an American science fiction and fantasy novel written by S. A. Chakraborty. It is the first of The Daevabad Trilogy, followed by The Kingdom of Copper in 2019 and The Empire of Gold in 2020.Insistent Terminology: The Daeva tribe claim the ancient name for the whole djinn race as their own; the other tribes think it makes them look arrogant. Thus, in an effort to save her, the mysterious protector and Nahri embark on a journey to the city of Daevabad, which’s where their adventure begins. In the third book, Manizheh invokes this when she gives the ifrit Nahri's birth name, allowing them to bind her. It's especially strong because only Manizheh knew the name, which increases its power. While bound, Nahri considers which name is her true name and realizes that every important event and choice in her life was made as Nahri, making that her true name. And since everyone knows it, it has no power to bind her. Really Royalty Reveal: Nahri is quite surprised to learn that she's actually the last surviving member of an ancient and revered lineage. Jamshid gets one as well when he learns Manizheh is his mother. Deadly Scratch: The magical poison of zulfiqar swords is universally deadly and defeats even Nahid healing, so the Geziri fighting style emphasizes mobility and shallow slashes. At the end of Kingdom of Copper, Muntadhir is cut, but the Seal of Suleiman disables the magic before it can finish him off.