2017 fantasy, first of a tetralogy. Nahri is a successful con artist
in 18th-century Cairo, but she knows that all magic is trickery. But
when she accidentally summons a djinn, she steps into a larger world…
The bad first: there's a lot of this book, at 160,000 words, and
it sometimes feels flabby. I think this is a first novel, and
certainly Chakraborty is determined to get in everything.
But on the other hand that often ends up as a good thing, because
while this is a story about people with magical powers, it's not about
the powers as such; rather, it's much more about court politics, and
the desire (in various strengths) to improve the lot of the oppressed
while still having to rely on the political support of the oppressors.
Another major character, Ali, the second son of the King of the City
of Brass, gets some of the narrative viewpoint and seems quite
reasonable in his own head, but everyone else treats him as a violent
and dangerous radical—and one comes to see why. There are no outright
villains here though there are certainly better and worse people, and
while Ali would see himself as a hero, very few others would agree.
Things do move quite slowly, and this is perhaps best read with few
distractions; there are many foreign terms, some taking on different
meanings depending on who's using them, and a glossary is provided at
the end. That said, there's a whole cosmology to build here…
Heavier-weight than the later Amina al-Sirafi which was my
introduction to Chakraborty, but I ended up enjoying it.