Reviews and Comments

It took me a long time to pick this book up because even though Kingdom of Copper left me wanting more, the sheer size of this tome was intimidating. And the end of Kingdom of Copper was so bleak that I knew there would be some rough things ahead.

In the end, the hardest reading by far were the chapters from Dara's perspective. On the one hand because of a sense that he really was trapped, over and over again, until finally figuring out how to break out. On the other, because they are ultimately the self-justifications of a war criminal. That probably makes them even harder reading today than they were when the book came out, but it also makes them particularly important to face up to today. And I think one of the really powerful things Chakraborty does with this series is to face up to various different ways people use their convictions to justify atrocious things to themselves.

I loved the Ali-Nahri interplay, watching Muntadhir grow into a more three-dimensional person, and getting some portrayal of Rustam. I also appreciated how even though he doesn't appear in the book, the character of Ghassan gets fleshed out more by peoples' recollections of and reactions to him. The book left me simultaneously more disgusted with him and more empathetic towards him, which is quite a feat.

At the same time it did have some parts I found distractingly clunky. Just like the middle of City of Brass, the climactic battle feels too Marvel movie for my taste - it could have done with being a little less turned up to 11, less breathless, and less impossible feeling. Every time the peri have appeared in this series they've felt like a too-convenient deus ex machina, and I think the author found herself having to do that because she painted herself into corners with the impossibility of odds against Nahri. By the end, Manizheh had turned from a sympathetic villain into rather too much of a cartoon. And Dara's resolution was a bit too neat, though I did appreciate how the bonus material at the end complicates that some.

But this was still a satisfying end to a series I have loved.

I loved this book as I read it. It probably helps that I identified with bits of the [unnamed but clearly an authorial self-insert] narrator/protagonist's experiences from before the book started; more on that in a moment. But it's also an entertaining story, and very engagingly written - many chapters had me laughing out loud at key moments even though the book's in no way a comedy overall.

Much of the book feels like a very sharp criticism of British society--I identified strongly with the narrator's endless experiences of people putting their assumptions over her experience, and needing to remind her that she doesn't quite fit in--and of the government / civil service's overconfidence in its own intrinsic goodness. In the face of that it was at times frustrating seeing the protagonist be so deeply invested in the Ministry and her job standing in it, but if I take a more critical eye to myself it becomes easy to understand as a reaction to that never quite being allowed to fit in. That part cut deep for me personally.

I also appreciated how much the book is also a lockdown story. I've been grumbling lately about how little art I've encountered that seems to process the covid pandemic and the experience of lockdowns in retrospect. And here came this book, clearly using the roommates-in-hiding portion of its arc to work through some feelings about that experience. More of this please!

The ending felt... not exactly too neat in that it does leave some ambiguity, but too abrupt. It felt like most of the story proceeded at a fairly comfortable pace, and then suddenly the author felt a need to bring it to a close with a sharp turn.

#SFFBookClub