Sagas & Sass covered The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty in 2021; this is our summary of book 1 – City of Brass – as it was written to introduce Episode 27, covering the entirety of that novel.
We are SO ready to dive into the Daevabad trilogy! City of Brass begins with Nahri, a 20-or-so-year-old woman living in 18th century Cairo who is part fortune teller, part thief, part healer…okay, so she’s part a lot of things, and she’s also really good with languages and performs what are essentially supposed to be exorcisms even though she doesn’t believe in any spirits, evil or otherwise. However, when she attends a zar for a girl named Baseema, she randomly decides to sing one of the songs in her natural language – a language no one else seems to know – and Baseema reacts strangely. Then Nahri hears a voice say “Who are you”…but it’s not from anyone at the zar!
This leads to Nahri being confronted by Baseema on her way home. Baseema is clearly ACTUALLY possessed, and by the way, Nahri decided to cut through a local cemetery on her way home, because who doesn’t do things like that all the time, right? So Baseema gets aggressive, a mystery warrior appears out of nowhere, and then the dead start rising and attacking Nahri and the warrior, who enchants a carpet so that they can fly away.
Next thing we know, Nahri and the warrior, who insists that he is a Daeva, not a djinn, are on their way to a place called Daevabad. At first he refuses to tell her, well, most things, including his actual name, though he pesters her with questions about her healing powers and affinity for languages. Nahri isn’t exactly happy with the situation, especially as he insists that she can’t go back to her world, not with the ifrit – which is what had possessed Baseema – after her…but there’s also the added bonus that the warrior says she must be a shafit, or someone who is part djinn and part human, and that shafit have to live in Daevabad.
If you think this all sounds confusing, you aren’t alone. Nahri’s confused, we’re confused, and while in the midst of all this confusion, we also meet Ali, a djinn prince living in Daevabad who has gotten mixed up with shafit rebels, and even though he’s trying to help the shafit, he’s…not doing a very good job of it. Seriously, on his first real mission his shiekh has to sacrifice himself so that Ali can escape.
Back with Nahri, who has made a failed escape attempt, we finally learn a bit more about what’s going on. First, the warrior’s name is Dara, and he explains some things about his world, including the different elemental creatures, as well as that ifrits used to be Daeva and that a human named Suleiman got a hold of a ring that allowed him to suppress Daevas’ powers, among other things. He also made them work for humans as slaves – though some refused, and became the ifrit, who now want revenge on both humanity and the Daeva who submitted to Suleiman.
Then the Nahids – who Dara believes Nahri is descended from, because of her healing powers – become the rulers, named their tribe the Daeva, and because they’re afraid that another Suleiman-type will come around again and destroy them if they have anything to do with humans, they end up notorious for not just discouraging mixing with the shafit, but killing them as well.
To be honest, there’s a whole lot more history than that, but tl;dr Dara keeps spilling his guts, things get kinda sparky between him and Nahri, and after a couple more run-ins with ifrit and ghouls and a water monster that has something to do with the water elementals called marids, they do in fact reach Daevabad and basically stroll in like they own the place…oh, and almost immediately help put out a brewing riot.
Meanwhile Ali has continued to struggle with trying to help the shafit and also like, not get executed by his own family for treason. But all of that suddenly takes a backseat to Nahri and Dara’s arrival, because his father the king welcomes them into Daevabad and immediately invites Nahri to begin training as a healer at the palace, while Dara goes off with the emir – that being the king’s son Muntadhir – to track the ifrit. Ali comes back into play when the king insists that he befriend Nahri, which Ali is not too happy about but let’s be real, he doesn’t exactly have a choice considering the fact that his father knows exactly how deep his involvement with the shafit rebels went.
Time passes, Ali and Nahri actually do become friends, the king starts plotting to marry Nahri to Muntadhir, Dara comes back from his mission empty-handed and starts plotting to marry Nahri to a Daeva named Jamshid, and Nahri rightfully gets pretty darn upset with him for trying to pawn her off because she kinda thinks she’s in love with Dara. So they have a falling out, and Nahri, who has been struggling with her healer training and realizes that the king doesn’t want her to succeed, finally sits down with him and agrees to marry Muntadhir in exchange for a huge dowry and protection for Dara.
Of course when Dara hears about this he decides they must be forcing her into it and hares off to the palace to save her. Unfortunately Ali shows up as Dara is trying to spirit her away and they have an epic fight, which Dara, who has amazing powers that Daevas shouldn’t have, wins. He then threatens to kill Ali unless Nahri comes with him, and the three of them are almost in the clear when – WHOOPSIE – turns out that the “””secret””” boat they were using to escape was cursed and using it brings a whole buncha war ships down on them. Dara fatally injures Ali, who falls into the cursed lake…and then Dara tries to kill Muntadhir, who is saved by Jamshid…at which point Ali pops out of the lake and kills Dara!
Though Nahri is devastated and Ali and Jamshid are still in a world of hurt, the king isn’t done with his nasty little plots. He strips Ali of his titles and claims to be banishing him from the city, which is apparently a death sentence of its own because Ali knows he will be hunted down by assassins. Then the king meets with Nahri and blackmails her into bringing the Daeva tribe, which began revolting after Dara was killed, back under control. And as if that wasn’t enough, the king is refusing to allow anyone to help Jamshid until Jamshid’s father, Kaveh, reveals who might have been helping Dara. So basically the king is a huge asshat and it’s pretty difficult to not hate him at this point.
While this is definitely the opposite of “all’s well that ends well”, we learn a couple of things at the very end that keep us going – one, Jamshid is a Nahid! Two, Nahri’s teacher, Nisreen, saved Dara’s ring and implies that he can be brought back to life. And three, Manizheh – presumably Nahri’s mother, and formerly thought to be the last Nahid before she met an untimely end – is ACTUALLY ALIVE!
So WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW!
