Agent: Jennifer Azantian, Azantian Literary. There is enough material here-a feisty, independent lead searching for answers, reminiscent of Star Wars’s Rey, and a richly imagined alternate world-to support a potential series. Chakraborty combines the plot’s many surprises with vivid prose (“The cemetery ran along the city’s eastern edge, a spine of crumbling bones and rotting tissue where everyone from Cairo’s founders to its addicts were buried”), and leavens the action with wry humor. Nahri only avoids being killed through the intervention of Dara, a djinn, who reveals that Nahri is from a family of magical healers. Her routine, if precarious, existence, is shattered when a girl she is trying to help is possessed by an ifrit. Twenty-something Nahri, who has the ability to sense illness in others and to heal some ailments, supports herself as a fortune-teller and con artist in Cairo. An excellent debut that pulls from a rich and unique culture to create its fantasy, I give The City of Brass 4.0 stars out of 5. The City of Brass cover art A young hustler on the streets of 18th Century Cairo, Nahri lives by her wits and has always done so alone, using certain special abilities that help her get by. When I say the book’s ending ripped out my heart, I’m not exaggerating. The familiar fantasy theme of a young person learning of a hidden supernatural legacy is given new life in this promising debut novel, set in late-18th-century Egypt. The City of Brass is a powerful novel that I could not put down, especially that last quarter.
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