The Daevabad trilogy
S.A. Chakraborty
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Ever since I decided to stop feeling guilty about not finishing a book I don’t enjoy, starting a series became much less of a commitment. Is there an unspoken rule that says fantasy novels have to come in the form of a trilogy? Perhaps the Lord of the Rings has reached a biblical status that fantasy writers are obliged to follow the canon. The most recent fantasy series I read was yet another trilogy.
The Daevabad trilogy was written by S.A. Chakraborty. The story centers around a young, quick-witted, and resourceful orphan Nahri as she is swept away into a whirlwind of adventure with djinns, marids, and other mythical creatures. Despite this very archetypal premise, the unusual setting lured me in. Nahri is from Egypt and the capital of the djinn kingdom Daevabad is located somewhere in the Middle East. I was mesmerized by this fantastical world that doesn’t resemble medieval Europe where customs, aesthetics, religion, architecture, food, weapons, and landscape are refreshingly different from what I’m used to reading. What remains constant is emotion, trauma, conflicted loyalties, duty, love, vengeance, and everything else that makes us human.
The first book <City of Brass> opens with a brief introduction of the worlds of humans and djinns and immediately plunged into a cascade of actions. The story is well-paced, alternating between two point-of-view characters Nahri and Ari until culminating in the merging of the two storylines. The only issue with this construction is that Dara, the much loved and feared legendary Daeva warrior, is often elusive. We have very little understanding of his motivations beyond his desire for retribution. Everything about him is told from the perspective of others. He only exists in relation to the characters around him and to his own traumatic yet mysterious past.
The main cast of characters is well developed, some of whom are gifted with long arcs that span over all three books, which proved to be satisfying. The relationship between Nahri and Ali is a delicate slow burn and is treated with care. In the second and third books, <Kingdom of Copper> and <Empire of Gold>, Dara is added as a POV character, which rounds up the viewpoints and deepens the complexity of his character. The ending seems a bit weak compared to the scope of the story. The villain of the story Banu Manizeh isn’t as well fleshed out as I would have liked. While her desire for vengeance is well justified, her recklessness and ruthlessness render her a bloodthirsty psychopath without much depth. Heroes need to be set against worthy villains in order to shine. I find this aspect of the book a little lacking.
Now let’s discuss the symbolism of the story.
Djinns, while powerful and magical, are not above tribalism. Their manifest bigotry and prejudices inevitably lead to a path of conflict and war. We don’t have to look far to see these fictional strifes reflected in our own reality. Apartheid in South Africa, racial segregation in the US, the mistreatment of people of mixed heritage in Latin America during the colonial period…All because we as humans cannot see beyond our fears and prejudices. And of course one of the most emblematic of all conflicts, Jerusalem. Who gets to lay claim on the holy land? Who gets to impose their beliefs, religious or secular, on others? The tides of power come and go, leaving a scarred shrine to witness the best and the worst of humanity.
The story also interrogates the question of “who is the terrorist?” Shafits are beings are mixed heritage: part djinn and part human. They are not fully accepted in either world, feared, shunned, and discriminated against. They live with the burden of being the minority, where each member’s behavior is taken to be representative of the whole. When a small fraction of the shafits commits a crime against the pureblood djinns, their entire race is put on trial and punished. They are labeled as “terrorists” because they are the minority using violence to rebel against suppression. But what about the atrocities committed against them by the majority in the name of peacekeeping? This is the cycle of vengeance that has no end, not even after both sides have bled for centuries…
Overall I would highly recommend this series to people who are interested in a non-Euro-centric fantasy with solid world-building, a well-developed cast of characters, plenty of palace intrigue and politicking, and thought-provoking themes. We truly need the near- and middle-east to be better represented in the literary world.
