City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

"It was only seconds, but the moment between seeing Dara thrown in the air and seeing him vanish seemed to last an eternity..."

Nahri is a con-artist in Cairo, advertising herself as a faith healer then ripping off her patients. One night, while performing a ritual, she accidentally summons a djinn... and he's pretty angry about it. Dara aka The Scourge decides he can protect Nahri from the forces she mistakenly awakened by kidnapping her and taking her to his world. There she discovers she's the last living descendent of the Nahids, a race of djinn that specialized in healing, and she can either fulfill her destiny or write her own. 

I loved the characters in this story. I liked Nahri from the first sentence. It was five little words written to be cocky as hell, and why not? She's a criminal and she's getting away with it. Dara enters the story like a wrecking ball, so it took me a little bit of time to warm up to his character, but I liked how he's not quite the hero of the story and he's not quite a villain either. I feel like the most amount of thought went into the creation of Ali, who is a collection of contradictions; he's a scholar at heart, believing all the answers can be found in a book, but he's also been trained as a soldier and he's deadliest with his people's weapon of choice. Ali is a spoiled rich boy but he's also a philanthropist. And of course there is Ali's brother, Muntadhir, the party boy who happens to be heir to the throne.

The setting is lovely, I can see it in my head. The bright sun shining down on the desert that's hiding a secret world of djinn. It does make me think of Arabian Night Theme Song (Will Smith version) and honestly, the more I sing the lyrics in my head, the more this feels like an Aladin retelling... Which isn't a bad thing if you like Aladin (which I do).

And if you need more than magic to sustain you, SAC offers us a subplot of political intrigue, including questionable donations, bizarre executions, arranged marriages, and an awkwardly large dowry.

While I mostly loved the story, there were a few things that I didn't like. The thing that stands out the most to me, was the excessive blushing between Nahri and Dara. One's a 1400 year old djinn and the other is a street criminal... Why are they embarrassed by their own emotions?

There were also a couple of moments in the book that made no sense. The one that comes to mind is Ali finding Dara with his brother in a cathouse. Dara and Muntadhir were set up to be at odds with each other, so it didn't make much sense that they'd be party buddies. It felt like Charkraborty had written herself into a hole and the only way to climb out was for this scenario to play out.

Otherwise, this is a lengthy novel that reads like lightening, with intrigue and magic and a little romance thrown in.