City of Brass

Book Title: City of Brass

Author: S.A. Chakraborty

Series: The Daevabad Trilogy #1

Date Started: March 19th 2018

Date Completed: March 25th 2018

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Historical
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Star

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to Netgalley for this ebook for review ◆

I was having a whale of a time reading City of Brass to begin with, but then it had some wobbles at the midpoint, and by the end I just didn't care. I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to get from reading it since it ended up just being set-up. In all fairness, the rest of the trilogy will probably be great. I'm just tired of saying that for every other book since I've been doing that for about three or four years now.

The idea of Egyptian/Arabian myth/folklore was what really pulled me to this book. I grew up obsessed with ancient Egypt and I'm still a history nerd to this day. Ultimately, the fairytales are only really there for the setting and political system. It could've been any sort of mythology put into those brackets. I wanted to learn specifically about this group of myths, this ancient culture. I don't know if it could've been more visceral descriptions or just the myths being a greater part of the story, but I wanted more. Much more.

As much as Nahri was a great character, she spends a whole lot of her time being led along instead of acting herself, and even more time telling the boys to stop fawning over/protecting her. I'm all for showing women being rebellious against men's expectations but when it takes over a character's plot it's not saying anything anymore. Again, this was mainly a problem because the story was being dragged out so that it could span multiple books. The only action really left was the melodrama.

Which brings me to the two problems with this book, both of which have the cliche of trilogies to blame: first, there's no structure past the midpoint, and then it doesn't deliver on the story that it's promised the reader at the start. We open with the traditional 'chosen one living in ignorance' and proceed to them accidentally discovering their heritage/magic/talents, and thus the adventure begins. Jumping to Daevabad to establish the worldbuilding, politics and other characters was a good call, but it's all pretty familiar. Protagonists being chased; there's a rebellion brewing; political intrigue and alliances being conflicted. You can see what's been promised to the reader already. But you get to the midpoint and suddenly, woah, we're going too fast, we got two more books to fill. The pace disintegrates and we get 250 pages of bickering and wandering around the city. It's engaging, yes, but my expectations have been set up and it now feels like I'm being strung along. I can count at least (at least) three plots that were executed like the main storyline then just disappeared. I'm sure they'll be back full-force in future books, but it left nothing for this book. I really want publishers to learn that I want to enjoy each book, regardless of if it's in a series. I want a story that is more than welcome to be part of something better - but I want a full story please. This book could've established what it needed to and wrapped up at least some things easily. Instead, it started at a normal pace and then did a counter turn before it gave too much away, and that's sad.

I feel like I'm saying I'm conflicted about a lot of books at the moment. I just want to enjoy them all but I'm just... not. And it's pretty much always to do with these little stereotypes that don't need to be there - I don't mind convention, it's something that we all need from time to time and it's effective for a reason. But cliches just throw you out of the story because you know exactly how it's going to work, so what's the point reading it? (There was a moment where I said I was going to throw my kindle across the room if there was a love triangle. It's now dented.) I'm sure there's a lot of people who will enjoy City of Brass - and I did, too - but it didn't match up to all the five-star ratings I've been seeing either.