The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty​

The City of Brass

by S.A. Chakraborty​

Mrs. Chakraborty was born in New Jersey on December 7th, 1984 to working-class Catholics. She converted to Islam in her teens and attended The American University in Cario. It was there that she first read the stories that would provide the seed for The City of Brass. Already studying to be a historian specializing in the Middle East, she researched the region's belief in Djinn and other spirits as well as the rituals used to summon them in folklore (Neat! Also: Fuck off Islamophobes.). Fast forward to 2008, and Mrs. Chakraborty is married and her husband is attending medical school. The economy has collapsed (Oh, the 2008 crash was so good compared to the one we’re in now. That was just a correction caused by the efficiency of the free market a collapse of a speculation bubble combined with predatory lending practices and what amounts to an economy wrecking gambling addiction. The current one is even worse, caused by an economy that does not have the resiliency to withstand a demand shock because efficient markets cut the fat that allows for that, combined with a consumptive economy where workers are paid barely enough to consume and sustain those supply chains without being able to save for disasters. If you’ve ever heard the term “crisis of capitalism” this is it. Internal contradictions coming home to roost.) and she is volunteering at her local mosque and found herself frustrated that young Muslim men were really only shown one way in entertainment and young Muslim women were rarely shown at all (I for one want to see more and better of both, so good for her!). So she sat down and wrote what started off as, in her own words, Historical fan fiction and turned into a full-blown fantasy novel. Setting fantasy in history is honestly a fine American tradition, Burroughs did it before World War I. Robert E Howard's Solomon Kane series was basically historical fan fiction with magic and fantasy added in. Even the poor mad Lovecraft embraced the use of history as a setting for his fantasies and Mrs. Chakraborty provides a splendid modern example of this tradition. Let's turn to the novel though, shall we?

The City of Brass was published in 2017 by Harper Voyager, a US imprint of the publishing company HarperCollins that handles science fiction and fantasy books. Harper Collins is a fully owned subsidiary of News Corps (Excuse me as I vomit, because that’s Rupert Murdock’s company.). A subsidiary just so everyone knows is a fancy way of saying it's a company owned by another company as opposed to being owned by an individual person. News Corp was founded by Rupert Murdoch in 2013 (See?), and I'll ask my editor to keep the rant to 2 lines so as to keep the review on topic (Request pre-empted {Thank you}). The City of Brass debuted to thunderous applause with a number of magazines and reviewers listing it as the best book of the year and it was a finalist in a number of awards, winning the booknest.eu award for best debut novel and only missing winning the Joseph W Campbell award by a single vote.

The novel is set in the 1800s, during the time of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt but swiftly leaves the real world. The main character of the novel is Nahri, an orphan who grew up on the streets of Cairo. She has used a combination of inborn healing gifts, knowledge she has stolen, begged for, scraped up, and outright theatrics to con wealthy Ottoman nobles and every now and again actually heal someone (Good for her. Always good to con the ruling class to survive. Beats stealing from your fellow poor people. Praxis! {Ehhh, the story makes it clear that Nahri and her fellows will gladly prey on each other but Nahri is smart enough to scam where the money is} Fair.). She'll also rob the homes of various marks, especially rude ones as a single piece of Turkish jewelry can feed her and pay her rent for months. However, with the invasion of the French army under Napoleon bringing in a wave of refugees, Nahri gets the idea to try a new sideline. Much like how Christians believed or still believe in demon possession and witchcraft, Muslims at the time believed (I imagine some still do believe but I have no knowledge of it) that spirits called Djinn would possess people and that complicated exorcisms were necessary to cast the offending spirit out or if the spirit was too powerful at least keep it quiet (There are Muslims who still believe this, yes.). Witnessing a number of these ceremonies Nahri is confident enough that she can fake one well enough to get a payout from wealthy families and maybe even achieve her dream of gathering enough money to bribe an academy into letting her study to learn enough to become a real doctor. However, things go off the rails when Nahri exercises her gifts with languages. You see, Nahri has a gift where hearing a language in conservation is enough for her to understand it and speak it as if she was a native. She also has a language that no one else can speak or learn, one that she assumed was the language of her unknown parents. So when she decides to incorporate her unknown language into the ceremony singing a summoning spell for a Djinn, she gets more than she bargains for and that's a vast understatement (Uh Oh. Elder speech. That’s not good. Or isn’t it?).

Nahri suddenly finds herself at the center of a conflict between Djinn and Ifrits, now these are not demons or angels but are spiritual beings. According to legend and as Nehri is told in the novel, the Djinn are made from fire and smoke, while humans were made from dust and the earth. Because of this, the Djinn have vast powers and it's hard for an average human to even see a Djinn let alone fight one. So the Djinn would at times make a sport out of tormenting humanity because there were no consequences for wrecking a human city if they felt like it. Unfortunately for them, divine consequences ensued. A human king and prophet named Suleiman (for westerners that would be Solomon) called up the Djinn and demanded that they submit to his judgment or be stripped of all their powers. The Ifrits refused and spent every moment of every day finding ways to gain new powers, even if that meant trafficking with hell. The Djinn submitted and were broken up into tribes and had their powers limited. They also had their nearly immortal life span limited to centuries. One Djinn woman not only submitted but aided Suleiman because she felt that the Djinn had gone too far in tormenting humanity and the punishment was just and Suleiman not only gave her more power than any other Djinn but set her in charge of everyone. That woman's family had immense powers of healing and harm, being able to set disease right or command the body to destroy itself. They were not only the political leaders of the tribe but the objects of intense religious devotion. They ruled from the great city of Daevabad until... We'll get to that. More immediately it turns out that Nahri is distantly related to that Djinn woman. In fact, she might be the last living relative of that family and the Ifrit hold a grudge... They're not the only ones and they might not even be the most dangerous enemies that Nahri has (Okay, this is all… pretty damn good as far as background goes, and I commend the author. Also: Holy crap poor Nahri.).

Because that family, her family, was overthrown by another tribe from the harsh desert sands of Arabia. While Nahri's ancestors were members of a fire worshiping religion that reminds me a bit of Zorasterism, the tribe that overthrew them had converted to Islam. Of course, no one claims it was a religious dispute, instead what's pointed to as the issue is the treatment of the shafit. The shafit are people who are born from Djinn/human relationships. They have enough magical power that they could run rampant over humanity if they chose to but while they can be dangerous to an unprepared full-blooded Djinn, they are usually no match for the magical powers a trained adult can bring to bear. Nahri's family viewed shafit's as an abomination and destroyed them whenever possible, which admittedly makes her very existence… Interesting. It was to stop this that the Muslim tribe rose up, or so they claim. However, in modern Daevabad the shafit is oppressed and exploited underclass with few if any legal rights beyond existing (Hypocrisy thy name is human…{You mean Djinn in this case}). They can be enslaved, they cannot carry weapons or learn too much about their inborn powers, they often have no legal recourse against mistreatment by purebloods. They can even have their children taken away at a moment's notice by any pureblooded Djinn who claims a relationship with them. Meanwhile, the original tribe that maintained Daevabad (called the Daevas) and served Nahri's power remains wealthy and strong and still in the city. However, anytime they displease the Royal family to much the guards step back and whip up the shafit to attack, murder, and rob them. The Daevas are also still fire-worshippers, which the shafit who are almost entirely Muslim deeply resent. Things aren't all that great for the Daevas though, as they are constantly under the threat of abuse from the Muslim majority and face laws discriminating against their religion. The current ruling family rather cold bloodily play the Djinn tribes against each other, the fire-worshippers against the Muslim and the Purebloods against the Shafit to maintain their rule.

This is becoming increasingly difficult as decadence and corruption in the royal government become harder and harder to cover up (Haaaaa! They’ve gone Full Hedonism Bot). Among the shafit, a movement known as the Tanzeem has sprung up. It preaches the idea of equality before the law for all Muslims and an end to oppression for the shafit and champions a large list of reforms that are both religious and political in nature. However, the Tanzeem is utterly and completely hostile to the Daevas and wants to pass laws restricting their religious freedom and increase the pressure on them to convert or be dispossessed (Historically Islam has this tendency, as do some sects of Christianity like the Levelers in the English Civil War. There is a massive social justice current within Shia Islam in particular, but its development is parallel with similar currents within Western thought, and religious people for faiths other than People of the Book didn’t feature as strongly. This isn’t to say that Muslims never value it’s just that it wasn’t a thing in the 1800s as much, which is also true of most Christian sects. There’s been a lot of cultural and political cross-pollination since then, and bluntly, as a gay atheist, I had more to worry about from my Baptist neighbors than my Muslim ones in graduate school.) Meanwhile, the Deavas remember who actually built this city and have organized themselves. For the most part, the Deavas have focused on getting in good with the royal family but the Tanzeem have their own noble and royal backers. Some Deavas however remember the abuses and mistreatment that the Muslim royals and other tribes inflicted on them and the humiliations they are continuously forced to swallow don't help. Into this simmering fire of piled resentments, overlapping hierarchies of power, wealth, magic, and oppression, is walking Nahri. She's almost completely ignorant of the complicated and violent history that everyone else is carrying around, barely able to control her powers, and has no idea who is actually her friend and who is actually her foe. What she does have going for her is the fact that she is ruthless, intelligent, and has instincts built from a lifetime of cheating and lying to the wealthy and powerful. Whether or not that will be enough is something you'll have to find out.

The City of Brass is a story about pressure. Of a society under the pressure of religious, ethnic, and political conflicts (How very… Ottoman.). Of families and individuals under the pressure of conflicting loyalties and sympathies. Of Nahri under the pressure to learn how to use her powers and to learn about the dangers, she is surrounded by and maybe even to learn about her heritage, which means learning about some really dark chapters and awful actions. Pressure isn't always a bad thing, the pressure to excel is what drives many of us to learn and master our chosen fields. Pressure can lead to reform and positive change. In fact, without some sort of pressure, it's almost impossible to compel a change in government or society. That said pressure can also lead to atrocity, brutality, and oppression, and let's be honest dear reader there isn't a single one of us on Earth who doesn't have a story about a terrible decision or action taken under pressure that we would have otherwise avoided (He’s right on all of this. You know that.). Now some of you may be wondering why I've refused to discuss the male characters in the story and my answer is both for reasons of space and to make sure we avoid as many spoilers as possible. Trust me, you'll thank me when you read the book. Mrs. Chakraborty creates a richly colored setting with intense feelings that make the history and the resulting hatreds and grudges seem incredibly real. That setting is in turn populated by characters who are also very real and three dimensional, with grand virtues and fatal flaws that have consequences for their entire society. While this is the first book in a trilogy, Mrs. Chakraborty tells a complete story in this book avoiding the trap that many other authors fall into leaving the story unfinished for the next book. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty gets an A from me and I hope that this is the start of a long and productive writing career for her.

So City of Brass was the winner of the August vote for our ever-wise patrons, next week our second-place winner, Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu will be the subject of our review. If you would like to join us and cast your own vote on upcoming reviews, themes or books to be added to the review list, join us at Frigid Reads is creating book reviews, book discussion | Patreon where a dollar a month gets you a voice on what we review next. The September poll is up and taking votes! Until next week, stay safe and keep reading!