The City of Brass (Part 5)
STATS
Title: The City of Brass
Series: The Daevabad Trilogy (Book 1)
Author(s): S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
First Printing: 2017
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Rating: 5/10 (Fantasy audiences), 7/10 (Muslim Young Adult audience)
SPOILER WARNING
Mild spoilers will be necessary to properly break down this story. I will include “Heavy Spoilers” in the heading for any section where further detail is required. I will keep the first paragraph of these sections as spoiler-free as possible in case you want to read the book for yourself before coming back for the full analysis.
PLOT
The plot of The City of Brass is not terrible. It’s also not good. I’d go so far as to say that it is bland and formulaic, though not in a manner that is any worse than might be expected for a Young Adult novel. Most of the “twists” lack emotional weight because they are unearned and / or are being thrown in just to add drama. The remaining twists make no sense.
Rather than summarize the whole book or go subplot by subplot, I will analyze the four main issues.
Problem 1: The Young Adult Template
There is nothing inherently wrong with a formulaic plot. Entire genres, like Romance, have flourished because of them. Sometimes an audience likes certain patterns to unfold within their entertainment. Young Adult Fantasy as a subgenre isn’t as reliant upon formula as, say, Young Adult Dystopia (The Hunger Games and its knockoffs) or Young Adult Paranormal Romance (Twilight and its knockoffs), but Young Adult audiences in general do seem to have a higher tolerance of formula than adult audiences.
The issue is that Fantasy as a genre is less constrained by formulas. They aren’t part of the appeal. I’m not saying this genre is a cornucopia of groundbreaking, original plots, but the ability to know exactly where the story will go without any foreshadowing is not generally an asset in this genre.
So, when I figured out that Nahri was a Chosen One from a special bloodline, that Chakraborty was deploying outrage bait to establish the shafit as victims, and that Dara was a Bad Boy Love Interest, I felt my interest waning. This was less than 100 pages into the text. I held out hope that things would improve, that Chakraborty’s nuanced factions would spice up the flavorless story, but it never happened. The plot just coasts along in its blandness until the bizarre climax.
(Don’t worry. We’ll get to that climax shortly.)
Problem 2: A Time and a POV
Telling stories with multiple POV characters requires balance. Give one POV character too much focus, and the inclusion of the others begins to feel artificial, exposing where the author wanted or needed to include information or events yet failed to think of a way to do so through the main POV. Give a POV character too little focus, and the audience will not be invested in said POV.
There are ways around these problems. Series with massive casts, like A Song of Ice and Fire or Hostage of the Empire, routinely have secondary POVs disappear into the background and resurface later. They establish a precedent that limited focus does not mean that a POV is unimportant. The right narrative framing can also justify having one-off POVs that support a main POV. Four of the seven Harry Potter books open with a chapter or two that is not from Harry’s POV, each of which is used to establish the status quo from which that book is beginning.
However, when you are dealing with just two or three POVs whose chapters are spread throughout the plot, these workarounds don’t have the same mileage. You can potentially end up in a situation where either the readers will notice the prolonged absence of an out-of-focus POV or the plot will need to be stuffed with filler so that the neglected POV has something to do.
I explain this because Chakraborty found herself dealing with this very conundrum. It takes Nahri and Dara a long time to travel from Cairo to Daevabad: weeks within the chronology of the story, and 171 pages of this book’s 526 pages. 89 of those 171 pages are from Ali’s POV, featuring multiple scenes to set up the status quo for Daevabad. That leaves 82 pages (16% of the book’s length) for scenes of Nahri’s POV during the journey. Those 82 pages are what constitutes the second paragraph of the book’s back cover blurb.
The problem is that, despite this interval being pushed in the marketing as a core aspect of the story, Nahri gets nothing of substance during this part of the story. Compared to what happens to Ali during this same section, it is painfully obvious that her chapters are filler.
Here’s what happens to Ali in this section of the book:
We are introduced to him as a POV character, and through him, we are introduced to Daevabad.
Power dynamics and factions are demonstrated to the audience.
Ghassan is set up as the antagonist.
Ali stumbles through his dealings with the Tanzeem and the court of Daevabad.
Despite Ali being merely a POV with no agency, there is still a sense of progression and mounting tension here.
In this same interval, Nahri has four very repetitive chapters, each of which recycles at least two of the following variables:
Sexual tension increases between Nahri and Dara.
Nahri extracts an exposition dump about Daevabad and the djinn from Dara by asking him questions.
Nahri and Dara escape or defeat a supernatural threat, which manifests and is resolved within a single chapter. The ifrits, who necessitated this journey, only appear in the last one.
One of these filler chapters would have been fine. Four was too many. There is no sense of consequence or progression. Only the sexual tension develops, but since that was telegraphed by the formulaic plot, we would have had the same payoff if the story skipped from the start of the journey to the arrival in Daevabad. Furthermore, none of these events have any weight after Nahri and Dara enter Daevabad. This is particularly noteworthy because a secondary character dies within this period, and his death is treated as a big deal in the moment, but he is barely remembered or mentioned afterwards. It reads as if he only existed to be killed in a filler chapter so as to wring some emotion out of the audience.
There were ways to address this problem. The four chapters could have been written as a cohesive mini-arc that changes Nahri as a character before her arrival in Daevabad. The ifrits could have directly menaced Nahri and Dara in each of the filler chapters. Chakraborty could have reduced the journey to a travel time and reshuffled Ali’s POV chapters so that some of them came before Nahri and Dara set up from Cairo. She could have streamlined Ali’s POV chapters so that only one Nahri filler chapter would be necessary. There were so many options here, yet this lump of filler is one of the worse ones available.
Problem 3: All the Telling
This has been touched on already, so I won’t belabor the point. I’ll only add that pivotal scenes and chapters of missing. Ali’s decision to not follow through on the shafit crackdown, Nahri being a cunning negotiator who can put even Ghassan on the back foot, and anything that would explain Ali being viewed as a zealot are just missing. I assume that this was done to keep the focus on elements that a Young Adult audience would prefer, yet the result is a plot that feels incomplete.
Problem 4: The Holdo Climax (Heavy Spoilers)
The climax of The City of Brass is … vexing.
When Dara abducts Nahri, Ali tries to stop him. This results in Dara taking Ali hostage. The three of them use secret passageways to leave Daevabad and board a boat to cross the lake that surrounds the city. However, Ghassan anticipates the abduction and deploys a naval blockade.
Thus far, we have multiple issues.
This whole climax hinges on Dara’s character assassination.
The fact that Ghassan knew about Dara’s escape boat is not only another case of telling (Ali literally tells Dara that Ghassan knew about the boat when the blockade is revealed) but also deliberate withholding of information from the audience for the sake of manufacturing a twist. (I’m not against this in principle, but the execution here feels very artificial.)
There is the logistical question of how the blockade was mobilized so quickly. These are “a dozen or so warships” with crews and soldiers. Muntadhir is on the one that intercepts the escape boat. This means either that Ghassan deployed all these assets and his heir well in advance of the abduction or that the djinn can mobilize these vast assets in a time frame that is maybe a few hours. The former requires no one in the city to notice this mass deployment, as otherwise, a seasoned warrior like Dara would have picked up on the rumors and anticipated the blockade. The latter requires that this city that doesn’t seem to be involved in any active military conflicts keeps a small fleet of naval assets ready to launch at a moment’s notice.
The fleet is explicitly placed outside of the magical barrier that conceals Daevabad from the human world. This is used to explain how the blockade was hidden from Dara until the last minute. The problem is that this same barrier should keep the blockade from seeing the escape boat until it emerges, yet the ships are so close to the barrier that they could only intercept the escape boat if it crashes into them (which is exactly what happens).
Ghassan was aware of the escape boat, yet didn’t bother to post soldiers to guard it, nor did he send soldiers there when the abduction attempt occurred.
One of these issues would be forgivable. Collectively, they make the climax feel contrived.
And these aren’t even the main problem.
Next, we get a twist: Dara is enslaved to Nahri and needs to grant her wishes.
This is bright spot in this chaotic climax. It was set up by earlier developments and mysteries, and the reveal pops up naturally. Nahri begs Ali to intervene and stop Muntadhir from executing Dara and accidentally ends up wishing Dara into slaughtering the soldiers on Muntadhir’s ship. This culminates in Dara shooting an arrow through Ali’s throat. Had the climax ended with Dara killing Ali, I do not think I would consider this climax to be problematic. This was a powerful moment backed up by a gripping twist.
Then Ali sells his soul to the marids, rises from the dead, and kills Dara.
If that sounds dumbfounding random, good. You know how I felt while reading it.
This development comes completely out of nowhere. The association between the marids and the lake around Daevabad was previously established, but the idea that they could make Faustian bargains with people was never even suggested as a possibility. This is the exact opposite of the Dara twist in terms of both quality and impact.
It’s also a final slap in the face for Ali’s characterization. This was his last chance to make any meaningful decision on his own initiative. He could have embraced the marids’ offer out of fear of death, a crisis of faith, or a desire for vengeance. Chakraborty instead had the marids mind-rape Ali until he breaks down and agrees to whatever it took to make his agony stop. She went out of her way to deny him agency in the one moment when it looked like he would finally have it.
In the reviews for Notorious Sorcerer and The Stardust Thief, I noted how both books felt like standalone stories whose endings had been altered to force a series into existence. This bizarre ending reads like Chakraborty had a series outlined but wrote herself into a corner, resorting to Deux ex Machina to force the end of this book to connect to the beginning of the sequel (The Kingdom of Copper).
Lessons Learned
Even if we are writing for an audience the expects formulaic plots, there are corners that just can’t be cut. Twists need proper context. Characters should not need to be assassinated to facilitate developments. What’s more, we need to be shown proper developments. Neglecting any of these results in a plot that fails to deliver the emotional satisfaction that it potentially could.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For all the flaws of The City of Brass, what it suffers from most is poor marketing. Chakraborty wrote this book with a specific audience in mind, then she chose to market it to a completely different audience without making the necessary edits to account for that audience. The result is a book that feels like it has cut corners.
The final lesson to take away from this is that we need to write with our audience in mind. We need to know who we intend to market to. Marketing to a different audience than the one for whom we have written only produces a subpar experience for the audience.
ROMANTASTIC FARCE
The City of Brass failed to understand its audience, but it was not a terrible book.
Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros, doesn’t understand its genre, and that causes the book to break into ever-smaller pieces the longer one reads it.
As I was reading this book, I was posting my reactions in the moment in the Shadiversity Discord server. At first, this was all in good fun. There are a lot of tropes in this book that earn a good laugh, yet the story itself had a decent foundation to work with. I was fully prepared to give a glowing review filled with praise.
Much like with Notorious Sorcerer, this honeymoon period did not last. By the midpoint of this book, signs of trouble were already evident. Then it became an utter slog. The Protagonist-Centered Morality, which had shielded the main character with limited success through the first half, came apart at the seams. The worldbuilding, already on shaky ground, crumbled. The plot ran out of gas and resorted to increasingly contrived developments to justify the book’s immense length. I was really feeling that length throughout the entire back half of the book.
Despite all of that, I don’t think Yarros is a bad writer. I think that she is very comfortable in her established niche as a Romance writer and failed to fully consider the challenges of tackling Epic Fantasy.
Fourth Wing will be a 13-part series. It will open with a prelude, conclude with a retrospective, and go through the book in chronological order for the 11 parts in the middle. This will allow us to fully explore how this book started strong and deteriorated over time. It will also allow people to read along with the review, or else to pause and read the book and full when they have had enough spoilers.
The prelude will drop in two weeks (on September 29th). The series will release weekly on Fridays until right before Christmas. It’s going to be a wild ride, and I hope you'll join me for all of it. Until then, have a good day.
