The Kingdom of Copper

The Kingdom of Copper moves five years past the events of The City of Brass, and adds Dara as a new point of view. The characters are… floating. Nahri is trapped in an unhappy marriage to the prince of the city, Ali is in exile, hunted by assassins and with strange new water powers, and Dara is leading a guerrilla band under the fearsome (and thought-to-be-dead) Manizeh, plotting revenge on the ruling Geziri exiles.

The plot brings these three threads together, as Ali returns to Daevabad, and he and Nahri try and set up a hospital against the corruption and divide-and-rule politics of the city. Meanwhile, Dara is working on a sneak attack on the night of a major festival, with the assistance of the powerful water-elemental marids and a deadly poison gas.

Second books are hard, and if The City of Brass was a 4.5 star book, this is 3.5 stars. The (relatively) sophisticated of the validity of both Ali and Nahri’s politics is weakened when compared against the tyranny of the status quo and Manizeh’s ends-justify-the-means terrorism. The theme of a legacy of revenge leading only to ashes is hammered a bit too hard. And worse, the first book shined on the electric connection between the main characters, and they are sadly separated for most of this book.

Still, the ending shows some bold promises to disrupt the status quo, and this trilogy is some of the best fantasy I’ve read lately.