Title: The Kingdom of Copper
Series: The Daevabad Trilogy #2
Author: S.A. Chakraborty
Genre: Fantasy
Trigger Warnings: Forced marriage, sexual content, imprisonment/confinement, medical content, injury, racism in allegory, structural inequality, body horror
Read to: 23%
Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series, so reading beyond this point will most likely expose you to spoilers of the first Daevabad book, The City of Brass.
Back Cover:
Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during one of her schemes. Whisked from her home in Cairo, she was thrust into the dazzling royal court of Daevabad and quickly discovered she would need all her grifter instincts to survive there.
Now, with Daevabad entrenched in the dark aftermath of the battle that saw Dara slain at Prince Ali’s hand, Nahri must forge a new path for herself, without the protection of the guardian who stole her heart or the counsel of the prince she considered a friend. But even as she embraces her heritage and the power it holds, she knows she’s been trapped in a gilded cage, watched by a king who rules from the throne that once belonged to her family–and one misstep will doom her tribe.
Meanwhile, Ali has been exiled for daring to defy his father. Hunted by assassins, adrift on the unforgiving copper sands of his ancestral 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.
And as a new century approaches and the djinn gather within Daevabad’s towering brass walls for celebrations, a threat brews unseen in the desolate north. It’s a force that would bring a storm of fire straight to the city’s gates . . . and one that seeks the aid of a warrior trapped between worlds, torn between a violent duty he can never escape and a peace he fears he will never deserve.
Review:
Reading this book was a really good lesson in one particular writing concept: You have to give your characters at least some small wins or the reader is just going to get frustrated.
One of my two big problems with The City of Brass was that nobody would give Nahri any agency over her own life. She had things she wanted to do, but everybody around her had things they wanted her to do and no matter what she tried she couldn’t seem to do anything that wasn’t in one of the powerful men around her’s idea of what she should do. That came back in this book, but worse. Nahri still had independent desires, but even the smallest expression of them was cracked down on brutally. And Ali didn’t even have much agency in this book–other people’s political machinations ended up forcing him to do what they wanted regardless of what he wanted.
And Dara is a point of view character in this book, and I’m still super mad at him for being one of the characters who wouldn’t let Nahri have any agency in book one, so I only barely tolerated his parts for the little bits of the world they revealed.
I really do like this world. This book starts to expand on the djinn world beyond Daevabad and the history of the djinn, and that part was really interesting. And I actually do like the characters – Nahri is great, and I even like Ali after the first book. The City of Brass was perfectly readable, and I think this one could have even been enjoyable if I wasn’t so completely frustrated.
There was no winning for any of the characters. Despite what they wanted and all the things they tried, every spark of independece and making their own choices was quashed by the people around them. You have to give your characters some wins, even small ones, or the reader is going to rage quit. And even for a great world and secrets that seem likely to be revealed soon, I really have no interest in continuing with the total frustration that is reading this book.
The Daevabad Trilogy:
- The City of Brass
- The Kingdom of Copper
- The Empire of Gold
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