Book Review: “The Kingdom of Copper” (by S.A. Chakraborty)
By: Dr. Thomas J. West Iii
Tags: Books, Literature, Fantasy, Book Review, Reading

As soon as I started reading S.A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass, I was hooked. The way that it brought Middle Eastern mythology into conversation with the fantasy epic was truly ingenious, and I absolutely loved the characters. If anything, The Kingdom of Copper is an even greater success than its predecessor. The stakes are higher, the characters and their struggles even more wrenching, and the emotions more heightened.

When the novel begins, the city of Daevabad teeters on a knife’s edge. While Nahri has forged a peace of sorts with the stern and cruel King Ghassan by marrying his elder son Muntandhir, Ali has been banished, his very life forfeit to any assassin who wishes to take it. Meanwhile Dara, who seemingly perished at Ali’s hands at the end of the previous novel, has been brought back to life so that he can serve in the army of the also-alive Manizheh, Nahri’s mother (who herself has been believed to be dead). These three characters will find their lives, and their fortunes, intertwined as war inevitably arrives.

As with The City of Brass, this novel is very much about the intertwining of religion, race, and identity. The various factions that inhabit Daevabad are riven by deep tensions, both religious and ethnic, for while Ghassan, like his ancestors before him, has sought to keep the various tribes from killing each other, his regime of brutal suppression has accomplished the opposite. The deep hatred between the Daevas, some of the most devout and pure-blooded of the tribes, and the shafit (half-human/half djinn) grows ever more intense. Thus, all of the actions that Ali, Nahri, and Dara take necessarily intersect with these larger conflicts, all of which threaten to destroy the very world that they all, in their own ways, seek to preserve.

However, despite its epic scope, it doesn’t shy away from diving deep into the personal dramas of its characters. Ali, Nahri, and Dara all feel themselves pulled apart by the competing loyalties that they all have, and all of them are subject to the crushing weight of history. Daevabad, as beautiful and magical as it is, is a city torn apart by the unhealed wounds of the past, and time and again we see the ways in which the blood of history continues to soak the present. Revolts and assassinations become ever more commonplace, and even the simplest actions by any of the characters often have unintended consequences.

This weighs especially heavily on Nahri who, time and again, finds those she loves tortured by Ghassan in order to control her rebellious nature. I’ve loved this character from the moment that we first met her in the human city of Cairo, and I’ve really enjoyed watching her develop as a person. Throughout The Kingdom of Copper, she does everything that she can to try to bind up the wounds of both her tribe (the religiously devout Daevas) and the shafit — including initiating the building of a hospital — but even she is powerless to really effect the change that she wants to see, particularly since her tribe are some of the most unbending in their loyalty to the old ways of doing things and to their loathing of the shafit.

Though they are on opposite sides of the conflicts roiling their world, in many ways Dara and Ali are two sides of the same coin, each of them torn between what they know is right and their loyalty to those they live. For Ali, this involves rebelling against his father and his beloved brother — with heartbreaking consequences — and for Dara it involves the (belated) recognition that the Manizheh that he serves with such devotion may be no better than Ghassan himself. In fact, in some ways she might be worse.

All three of the main characters are complicated, and while we’re invited into their heads to see what they are thinking and why they do the things that they do, none of them are without their flaws. Nahri is incredibly stubborn, and she has shown time and again that she really struggles to trust, even when doing so might make her happier and allow her to live a more fulfilling life. Ali is similarly inflexible, driven by his faith and his unshakeable belief in his own rightness, no matter how frequently things don’t go according to plan. And Dara is, of course, haunted by his blood-soaked past and the history that he can never fully forget or move on from.

Narratively, the book is a page-turner, for while we know that Dara has become part of Manizeh’s fearsome plan to bring the city of Daevabad to its knees, neither Ali nor Nahri know of this until it’s too late and the city is already under fearsome attack. As a result, we know that all of Ali’s and Nahri’s plans are doomed to failure, even as we also realize that Nahri’s inevitable reunion with her mother will not be nearly as happy as we would like. And so it proves to be, and Nahri has to make a terrible choice as a result.

And, as with the best epic fantasy, there are quite a few tragic moments, most notably the near-death of Munandhir who, despite his disagreements with Ali, still opts to sacrifice himself to save his younger brother’s life. In fact, there are a startling number of deaths peppered throughout, some of which are heartbreaking (particularly that of Lubayd, Ali’s best friend and Nisreen, Nahri’s mentor and a secret ally of her mother) and some of which are horrifying but also perversely enjoyable to witness (as with Ghassan, who is felled by a cursed mist developed by Manizeh). These deaths make it clear that the stakes of the battles unfolding are very high, indeed.

The book leaves on the edge of our seat, and it’s truly one of the best fantasy books that I’ve read this year. I can’t wait to see what happens in The Empire of Gold. Stay tuned!