City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

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 .

As with most people in the book community I was really excited to read City of Brass because there has been some really positive buzz around it, and I wanted to see if the hype was worth all the attention. Now having read the City of Brass I can safely say that this book deserves all the hype, all the buzz, and actually it deserves even more because City of Brass is an amazing read that will transport all readers to a world where they will want to stay and never leave.

In City of Brass we have two main characters, Nahri and Prince Ali. When there are two main characters in a book, there is normally one character you like more than the other, however in City of Brass I loved both Nahri and Ali equally and enjoyed reading about both characters. The story starts off with Nahri and by the end of the very first chapter I knew I was going to love her because she is such an interesting and well thought out character. You can tell that the author has spent time building her a back story and thought about how to best write Nahri as if she was a real person. Then when the chapters started to switch to Prince Ali, I was a little annoyed because I didn’t want to leave Nahri, but again after reading Ali’s chapter I install connected with him and thoroughly enjoyed reading this chapters.

Even after reading the first few pages I was immediately transported to Cairo. I would see, taste and feel the world, everything read as if it was so real and lifelike. I read many books but this is one book that I found the world to be so detailed and described so well that it was hard not to feel as if you were part of the story. When I had to put the book down I felt disappointed that  I was leaving the world and the characters because I became so invested in the story and the people.

The size of this book is a little intimidating, and I am not going to lie I was a little worried that the story wouldn’t interest me enough to continue with to read this book until the very end. But I am happy to report that wasn’t the case and if you are anything like me, you will not want the book to finish at all. This is my first read about Cairo and Djinns so I didn’t really know what to expect but I absolutely loved every page. The pacing never dipped and it always kept me interested and involved, I think this helped with the shifting view points between Nahri and Ali. The chapters are relatively long compared to what I am used too but I didn’t find that a problem because the story felt so original and new.

It has taken me a few day to try and compose my thoughts to try and get them into to some sort of review, but I still don’t think I could ever but down in words how amazing this book is. City of Brass is one them books that you will never forget, and I can see myself turning to this book when I need to loose myself in a really brilliant story for a few days. If you are only going to buy one book this year then please buy City of Brass because you definitely won’t be disappointed. I am so glad that City of Brass is part of a trilogy because it means that I will have more books to read about this world and the characters again in the future.

I rate this book 5/5 stars