Forgettable Djinns

[mtvessel]

Sep 2019
The City of Brass - S.A. Chakraborty – HarperVoyager, 2017
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This book was an airport read for a punishingly early flight which may explain why I forgot all about it until I saw it in my e-reader the other day. It's a perfectly serviceable Arabian fantasy featuring Nahri, an off-the-peg female thief in Cairo who accidentally summons a dodgy djinn called Dara and gets mixed up in some overly complex magical politics. The use of Islamic and Middle Eastern folklore is interesting, but the descriptions of fantastical locations are very bland and the relationship between Nahri and Dara, where she basically effaces herself to please him, left a bad taste in the mouth.