The Kingdom of Copper: A Novel

Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during one of her schemes. Whisked from her home in Cairo, she was thrust into the dazzling royal court of Daevabadand and quickly discovered she would need all her grifter instincts to survive there. Meanwhile, Ali has been exiled for daring to defy his father. Hunted by assassins, adrift on the unforgiving copper sands of his ancestral land, he is forced to rely on the frightening abilities the unpredictable water spirits have gifted him. But in doing so, he threatens to unearth a terrible secret his family has long kept buried. And as a new century approaches and the djinn gather within Daevabad’s towering brass walls for celebrations, a threat brews unseen in the desolate north.

Kingdom of Copper has such amazing depth to it, from the way it is written to the characters to the plot, and so much more. Right off the bat, the writing style hit me as beautifully written, not too heavy on the details, but offering just enough to supply the reader with a knowledge of the world of the Daevabad trilogy, including the world of Kingdom of Copper itself. In all honesty, I forgot that I was reading a book and not living my own life. The second thing that hit me was how the characters were written; each character was beautifully written and fleshed out. The story revealed their faults while leaving them room to grow. For crying out loud, even the secondary characters seemed as though they got the same amount of time in creation as the protagonists. Though I hold nothing but high regard for Kingdom of Copper, I found it incredibly difficult to connect to the most part of the story, due in part to the five-year time jump from the previous book in the series. Though I have nothing against time jumps in general, especially when it helps with writing a novel, I just found it incredibly difficult to connect with the characters, especially those with whom I had had an easy time connecting in the previous books. And I felt a slight disconnect from the storyline itself as well. Despite my mixed feelings about the whole time jump, Kingdom of Copper was a wonderful read, and I would definitely recommend it.