I’m so glad to be wrong about a fantasy trilogy. By mistake, I started the Daevabad Trilogy at an awkward place—the beginning of the second book—because I mixed up City of Brass with Kingdom of Copper . At the start of Kingdom of Copper , the three main characters, Nahri, Ali, and Dara, are reeling from the events of the first book. I thought that they were flailing about with no motivation, and that the worldbuilding was too cute. Why was “grand vizier” spelled “grand wazir?” Why should I care what the aba
Nahri, an orphan teenager in Cairo, discovers she has magical ancestry. She’s not only djinn, but lost djinn royalty. She travels to Daevabad, the magical hidden city of the djinn, where she grapples with court intrigue and her birthright. This premise should be a pile of epic fantasy clichés, with djinn swapped in for elves, but S.A. Chakraborty is cleverer than that.
Chakraborty has a deep understanding of Middle Eastern history—scholar was her original career plan. She draws from Middle Easter folklore about djinn, ifrit, daevas, marids, and ghouls, and all of these peoples have roles in Daevastani society and fraught interactions. King Solomon, who commanded demons in Biblical and Quranic legend, plays an outsize role in their collective history. Disney-style genies, who are obedient and attached to a bottle? They’re real, all right, and the reason is horrifying.