Note: I am still struggling with the death of a good friend. I apologize for the brevity of the reviews for the next few books.
“She told me to keep myself whole. That there wasn’t any shame in taking care of yourself in order to help those who needed you”
The Empire of Gold is the end of the Daevabad Trilogy (which includes The City of Brass and The Kingdom of Copper). I admit when I picked up The City of Brass I didn’t much care for Nahri. It took me well over a year to decide to keep going with the series and pick up The Kingdom of Copper. S.A. Chakraborty grew a great deal as a writer between those two books, and more again with The Empire of Gold. It is the longest book in the series as there are several major threads to tie together. There is so much incredible character growth throughout the series that by the end, I could identify with Nahri and feel for her — something that when I started the series, I never would have guessed. There were plenty of moments I still felt like shaking her, but they were far more tolerable.
HOW TO WRITE A CIVIL WAR (SPOILERS AHEAD)
As a reader, my greatest struggle to wrestle with while reading the Daevabad Trilogy has been the fact we the reader are an outsider presented with three different perspectives. Three perspectives often in stark opposition with each other in terms of bigotry, racism, religious zealotry, and nationalism. It is muddy and murky trying to wade through it all and figure out if any of the characters have a solid foundation to stand on, or a middle ground that anyone can agree upon. There has been so much pain and suffering on all sides, suffering that goes back generations and millennia, that prevents a clear judgment of right and wrong on many issues. That multifaceted whirlwind makes the profoundly evil moments all the clearer in contrast.
That is how you write a war. That is how you write a revolution.
The Empire of Gold and the Daevabad Trilogy will stamp all over your emotions. It might make you cry. And it is absolutely worth it.
5/5 stars
L.J.
“Not wanting to be destroyed by despair doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you a survivor”
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