Let’s face it. We all need some escapism right now, and Fiction Unbound continues to celebrate non-Western fantasies—that is, stories whose settings and magical systems are rooted in traditions other than the well-worn, Anglo-European histories and mythologies—that are providing welcome relief from the problems of a very Western moment. The Daevabad trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty draws you into an intricately crafted fictional world replete with layers of palace intrigue, surprise reveals of progenitors and their secret powers (of course), gruesome, godless murders, genocidal wars, and a cast of self-serving political characters crafted so complexly and with so much background, we understand why they go over the line. Okay, so it sounds a bit like our big Western moment after all, but this makes it more relatable. Good and evil is pretty black and white here, but we understand how the evil queen falls further and further into evil based on her beliefs, her reactions to outside forces, and her prior mistreatment.
S.A. Chakraborty's debut novel, The City of Brass, debuted to high acclaim, and was a finalist for several science fiction and fantasy awards, including the the Locus Award, British Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award. I’ve reviewed the earlier two entries in the trilogy along with other non-Western fantasies, and now we’ve arrived at the hard-to-put-down third and final installment of Nahri’s journey from orphaned (of course) healer-apprentice, scraping by in the streets of Cairo’s 18th Century, to princess healer of Daevabad, stuck in a political marriage neither partner wants. Nahri was raised to rely only upon herself and by conning the rich Egyptians and Ottoman oppressors. By this third novel, these skills have translated to palace politics rather well: the liar’s face, the sleight of hand, the self-reliance. It is the lack of trusting in others that she must overcome to allow herself friends and to realize some enemies cannot be bargained with, as, by the third novel, she has become one of the most powerful Nahid magical healers within the realm of the magical fire creatures known as daevas, or djinn.
The novel’s chapters switch points of view between a few main characters, giving us deep insights into the history and reasoning of these complex and torn characters. Many of the characters believe what they’re doing is the right thing for their people, or for the whole kingdom, but by this third installment, many of the major and minor characters will do anything to regain or keep power. This is fundamentally a novel about how power corrupts. The daeva rulers are so determined to avenge their earlier losses, they will bargain even with ifrit, the daeva/djinn’s godless, devil cousins whom everybody was horrified of in the first book, to do the unthinkable: raise the dead by using blood magic and condemn djinn ancestors to serve as bound human slaves for eternities.
That kind of winner-takes-all realpolitik sounds familiar, doesn’t it? While that makes it feel realistic, The Empire of Gold is set in a world-within-our-world, the djinn capital city of Daevabad, somewhere in the Middle East, perhaps Persia. Chakraborty populates her realm with traditional Middle and Near Eastern fire creatures, djinn and ifrit; and water creatures, marid; air creatures; and part human-part djinn shafit. The djinn have been power-limited by a curse placed upon them by the Prophet Suleiman, but the evil ifrit refused to accept these restrictions, learned a darker form of magic, and can bind other djinn as the wish-granting, super-powerful slaves Western media is familiar with.
An ancient Assyrian depiction of a shedu - just one of the many mythical beings we learn about in The Daevabad Trilogy.
By this last novel of the trilogy, within the city, the divisions revealed in the first novel have worsened. The half-human, half-djinn dwellers battle discrimination by the pure-blooded daevas, and the daevas’ sparring among themselves has resulted in a coup and war. The djinn/daevas have a long history of genocide and repression of each other, often based on religion, another reflection of the outside world. The devout Muslims rulers from the Saudi peninsula look down upon the fire-worshipping clans from the Persian regions.
In the first novel, the delicate balance these beings live in was disturbed by the reappearance of a 1,500-year-old djinn with pre-Suleiman level powers, who committed genocide when young: Daravayahoush. He is sworn to obey the ruling Nahids, the founding rulers of Daevabad. Meanwhile, the alt-Earth human world outside is going on about its turbulent political transformations of the 18th century, but it is the advent of firearms that impinges upon the aloof djinn and threatens another change to the balance of power in their world, for iron bullets hurt them badly.
When djinn of certain factions adopt the new human weapons, they find they can wound the seemingly unstoppable Daravayahoush. “Dara,” devastatingly handsome but not the brightest candle in the chandelier, is loyal to a fault and follows his ruler down darker and darker paths until he must begin his own efforts at diplomacy to, he believes, save the kingdom (everyone's motive, remember?) Knowing what we know about him, it is no surprise when he is outmaneuvered by intellectually superior connivers. But he can still be sent to destroy entire districts with a snap of his fingers, never mind how the guilt tortures him.
As mentioned, what makes this book more intriguing than most is that we get to live inside the heads of several major characters, and be with them at the most important turning points, when they make their most important decisions, or when their parentage is revealed, or when they hear the real story behind some dastardly happening from earlier novels. We’ve been inside these characters’ heads for hundreds of pages in earlier books and have seen them innocent and then broken, but now they rebound as stronger and wiser people, and we understand why.
Some critics argue that multiple POVs can derail a novel, but I believe that leaving one viewpoint (our own) is part of the magic of storytelling and that it instills empathy in us as children. This is a book about three major characters, not just one, whose lives are intertwined, and it’s part of the unlimited fun of escaping into The Novel. In life, we’re limited to our own POV, so why should we be similarly limited when reading fiction? Fiction is all about leaving the mundane limited real world to examine it from all kinds of “What Ifs” that show us extreme examples, in this case, of absolute power corrupting absolutely. Likely, Chakraborty wants to warn us against the downward slope possible in the real world by examining possibilities through fictional elaborations. But she also leaves us with hope: some characters, based on their backgrounds, lessons, and philosophies, can rise above the urge to rule and control others. They can learn to rely upon others, and to trust counselors and beings of other races and classes.
Enjoy, and take the lessons to heart.
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In this final novel of The Daevabad Trilogy, Ali, Nahri, and Dara are morally challenged beyond endurance by the rise of death magic in their beloved kingdom. How they respond changes everything.