Everyone’s the hero of their own story … but that usually means they’re the villain of someone else’s. S. A. Chakraborty ramps up the moral ambiguity and political tensions in book 2 of The Daevabad Trilogy, The Kingdom of Copper. Just over a year ago, I reviewed book 1, The City of Brass, after it impressed me with its intricate world-building and nuanced characters. Now those characters are back and they have to make increasingly tough decisions about where they stand and whose side they’re on in a millennia-old conflict between factions of the djinn society, and between the djinn and magical forces even older and more powerful.
The Kingdom of Copper picks up right after the dramatic ending of The City of Brass. Nahri is forced to forge her own way forward through the political machinations of the palace, now that her best friend has been exiled and the man she loved slain before her eyes. Calling on the cold-hearted practicality she learned while growing up among humans on the streets of Cairo, Nahri enters into a politically motivated marriage with the crown prince of Daevabad. She struggles to balance the restrictive role of wife and princess with her profession as the city’s official healer and her responsibilities as the leader of the Daeva clan.
Meanwhile, Prince Ali finds that helping the people of a small desert village is far more fulfilling than being the second son of the king ever was. And farther away, Dara is once again summoned back from death, this time to fulfill a plot for revenge that has been centuries in the making. Each thinks they know what’s best for the city of Daevabad, but when their schemes collide, the damage is greater than any of them could have imagined.
The Kingdom of Copper is most certainly no second-book slump. The moral complexity and high stakes in this book kept me glued to every single page. There is no true villain of the story, but rather protagonists on both sides, working toward very different goals. In the first book, I came to love and root for Nahri, Ali, and Dara. But it’s hard to know who to root for here when one’s victory means the other’s defeat. Along the way, they each question whether they’re doing the right thing, though sometimes they plow ahead instead of truly engaging with the answer.
This book also had some surprisingly Gothic elements to it. My favorite, of course, being the monsters. In The Kingdom of Copper, we finally get to learn about the marid—ancient and powerful beings that have lain practically dormant in the depths of lakes and rivers. We also get to see some more of the ifrit—fiery demons that represent what the djinn used to be before they were locked into human form and stripped of most of their magic by Suleiman. When Dara returns from the dead for a final time, he finds he has become a monster, himself—in more ways than one. The story also has some fun plot lines about architectural ruins, family secrets, and hidden identities, but I don’t want to give too much away!
The Kingdom of Copper comes out tomorrow, January 22. You’ll be able to find it at your local retailer, or you can order it online and support The Gothic Library in the process by clicking on this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you finish, be sure to share your thoughts in the comments!