The City of Brass

The City of Brass is the first book in a trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty. It is a fantasy novel that also includes aspects of history and science fiction. Chakraborty converted to Islam in her teens and studied the history of the Middle East, the influences of which are both present in this novel.

This guide is based on the 2017 Harper Voyager Kindle edition.

Content Warning: This novel explores racism, enslavement, and misogyny. It also discusses murder, rape, and self-harm.

Plot Summary

The novel begins from the perspective of Nahri, a girl around 20 years old living in Cairo, Egypt. The first four chapters are written from her perspective as Chakraborty establishes her character, her lifestyle in Cairo, and the foundation for her journey into the magical world. Nahri lives day to day in Cairo on the profits she makes mostly from scamming or robbing rich men. She has always had special healing and language skills, but she has no family and does not believe in magic. Most others in Cairo do believe in magic, so she profits off of that fact. While performing a ceremony, she accidentally summons a real djinn (a spirit) that inhabits a young girl’s body. While walking home through a cemetery, she has her first confrontation with an ifrit, who she later learns are cursed magical beings hunting her because her bloodline is powerful when used against them. She also meets a warrior, Dara, who fights against the ifrit and helps her escape on a magic carpet. He wears an emerald ring, and when she touches it, Nahri discovers that Dara was once enslaved.

The history of the magical world and its characters’ identities are slowly revealed to Nahri throughout the book. Dara reluctantly tells her the basics after they escape. He explains that daeva (or djinn, as humans know them) are beings with souls, but rather than being made of earth like humans, they are made of fire. Marid are the race made from water and the peri are made from air. Long ago, the daeva were far more powerful, but they interfered in the human world and used humans for their entertainment. Eventually, a human king named Suleiman was granted powers that extinguished all other magic, and he used them to control the daeva. Those who were willing to present themselves to him for judgment and made penance were released, but with the caveat that they were far less powerful, stuck in humanlike bodies in six different tribes intentionally spread apart so as to cause conflict within their race rather than outside of it. Those who did not present themselves for judgment were made into ifrits, cursed and bound to their daeva bodies but making every effort to use their powers despite the curse. Because Suleiman gave the first group of daevas such humanlike bodies, they began mingling with humans and having children, half human and half daeva, called shafit. The existence of shafit is contentious because Suleiman ordered the daevas not to create more shafits, but some tribes ignored his wishes. When Suleiman split the daevas into six tribes, one tribe named themselves Daeva and controlled the city of Daevabad. Nahri’s ancestors ruled Daevabad and Dara served them. Terrified of Suleiman’s powers, the Nahids (one of the tribes) took the problem of the shafit seriously and brutally enforced this rule. Another tribe, the Geziri, became close with human society to the point that they called themselves djinn, the humans’ word for them. The Geziri, backed by all other tribes, eventually led a revolution against the Nahids and destroyed the city of Daevabad, killing most Daevas and Nahids. To this day, the Geziri descendants rule the city of Daevabad.

Dara has not entered Daevabad since the Geziri took over, but he explains that he and Nahri must go there to escape the ifrit hunting her and present her as the last surviving Nahid. In the beginning of their journey, Nahri tries to escape to return to Cairo, but eventually she chooses to go with Dara to Daevabad.

The fifth chapter is the first written from the perspective of Alizayd (Ali), the second son of King Ghassan. Ali and his sister, Zaynab, are half Geziri and half Ayaanle (another tribe) because of their parents’ efforts to create a lasting alliance between the two tribes. Behind his father’s back, Ali uses money from his family to fund a group called the Tanzeem that is dedicated to helping shafits in Daevabad who have fewer rights and opportunities because they are not pureblood djinn. His sheik, Anas, sacrifices himself to save Ali so that he can continue to help the shafits. In an effort to discover who is funding the Tanzeem, Ghassan sends his Qaid (military confidant) to Ayaanle to investigate and appoints Ali to serve in his place until he returns. Ali is deeply religious and grew up training with the Royal Guard, so he is a skilled fighter and disciplined man. Muntadhir is Ali’s brother and Ghassan’s first son who will one day become king. He often replaces his responsibilities with drinking and sex, and Ali sees him as a liability. Muntadhir knows that Ali is involved in suspicious activity to help the shafit and begs him to stop betraying his family.

When Dara and Nahri enter Daevabad, Ghassan immediately offers to accept them as his guests if they swear their loyalty to him. He tells the public that Nahri is pureblood Nahid, but she is under a curse to make her look human. They gather that Manizheh, Nahri’s mother, before she was murdered by ifrit right outside of the city, somehow planned to have a child and protect her in the human world. Nahri’s new Daeva tribe celebrates in the streets at the return of the Nahid bloodline. She is expected to learn to heal immediately with the help of Nisreen, who was an advisor to the Nahids before they died, but Nahri struggles to keep up with the new customs, expectations, and medical information. She is alone, too, because Dara leaves the city with Muntadhir to try to find the ifrit and learn more information about Manizheh.

Struggling with his responsibilities as Qaid, Ali finds a scribe, Rashid, who vows to help him. Rashid brings him to an orphanage, and Ali realizes that he works with the Tanzeem. They beg Ali to continue helping, but Ali remembers the promise he made to Muntadhir to stop his dealings with the shafit so that later, when Muntadhir is king, he can truly help them.

Ghassan assigns Ali to become close with Nahri to convince her to marry Muntadhir, so Ali begins teaching Nahri to read and write. Despite their initial dislike for each other, they form a friendship. Nahri is the middle ground between Ali and Dara, who have completely different views of the history of the city of Daevabad. Ali views Dara as truly evil and Dara views Ali as a descendent of the traitors who sacked his city.

A member of the Tanzeem attempts to assassinate Ali, but Jamshid (Muntadhir’s closest friend and advisor) finds him and brings him to Nahri to be healed secretly. She notices that water also helps to heal Ali. Soon after, Muntadhir, Ali, and Dara have a heated argument after which Dara decides that he must leave the city with Nahri to save her from marrying Muntadhir. When he goes to retrieve Nahri, she tells him that she wants to stay. Ali happens to come to Nahri’s room to ask for help healing his stab wound that has reopened, and Dara takes Ali hostage to force Nahri to flee the city with him. The three of them emerge from the magical protection of the city on a rowboat to find several warships waiting for them. Nahri begs Ali to spare Dara’s life, saying that all she wants is for him to survive. Dara then loses himself and gains a level of power that no one has seen before, killing hundreds of soldiers in one motion. The battle becomes chaotic and all four of them—Nahri, Dara, Muntadhir, and Ali—find themselves on the ship as Dara continues to kill everyone in his path. Ali throws himself in front of Muntadhir only for Dara to push him into the deadly water. Horrified at Dara causing her friend’s certain death, Nahri begs him to stop. Muntadhir taunts Dara, and Dara fulfills his namesake, “The Scourge,” by whipping him. Ali then emerges from the sea as a creature no one has seen before—he is covered in seaweed and debris, whispering that they should kill all the daeva, with Suleiman’s seal carved onto on his face. Subdued by the seal, as Dara kneels in front of him, Ali cuts off his hand that holds the ring and Dara crumbles to ash.

The ring was Dara’s vessel from when he was enslaved. The vessels and relics of enslaved people are what tether them to this world. Relics can return them to their bodies after being enslaved, and the vessels are what trap the enslaved people in the first place.

Ali wakes up in the infirmary with Ghassan in front of him. He does not remember how he got there. From Ali’s perspective, the narrative conveys that in the face of sure death in the cursed water, a voice asks his name. At first, he did not give it, but they showed him visions of his city burning with his family within it. He begged for death, and when it did not come, he provided his full name and remembers nothing after that. His body is different when he wakes up, still covered in scratches and ocean debris, but he also realizes that he is sweating, which he’s never experienced as a pureblood djinn. They theorize that a marid possessed Ali’s body. Ali protests, saying that no one has seen the marid in thousands of years, but his father informs him that their family carries the secret that, when the Ayaanle helped them overthrow the Nahids, their tribe commanded the marid to help. Ali is horrified at this secret.

After Ali challenges Muntadhir’s narrative of the events that wrongly incriminates Nahri, Muntadhir storms out and says that he is done protecting Ali. Ghassan later approaches Ali as he prays and explains his decision to protect rather than kill his second son. However, Ghassan says that he does not trust Ali not to betray his brother when he sits on the throne. Ali is too empathetic and easy to convince. Ghassan believes that Ali does not want to kill Muntadhir right now, but too many people want Ali on the throne over Muntadhir to protect their own interests. Ghassan banishes Ali from Daevabad. Ali sees this as a death sentence, because someone will be paid for his assassination.

Nahri and Ghassan meet to discuss what happened that day, and Ghassan openly considers what kind of story to tell the public. He proposes that they claim that Dara raped Nahri and tried to steal her from the city. She begins to refuse, but when Ghassan proposes alternative stories that would paint her as evil and get her killed by her people, she realizes that she does not have any bargaining power as a woman and an outsider. Devastated, she agrees to lie about Dara’s character. Nahri is forced to tell the public this story. Instead of hatred or betrayal from her people, they give her a signal of respect and resistance. She turns around and smiles at an uncomfortable Ghassan.