The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

Harper Voyager, 576 pages, $17.99 (c2017)

This is not a mystery.

I admit a weakness for stories with genies. A recent favorite genie book didn’t even have an actual genie in it! “The City of Brass” is based on middle eastern tales of the djinn, or Daeva, as they are known in this book, 

Eighteenth-century Cairo is pretty much our eighteenth-century Cairo. Where it veers into the fanciful begins with the supernatural healing powers of a young ragamuffin girl who tells “healing” fortunes. She is about eighteen or nineteen, does not remember her family, and lives by her (sometimes criminal) wits. One day the girl, Nahri, accidentallyconjures something bigger than she can handle. The menace she conjures is an “ifrit,” or evil spirit. What also is conjured -- but to help her this time -- is an unexpected and equally menacing Daeva, Dara, who saves Nahri’s life.

From that point on Nahri’s story alternates with (Prince) Ali’s. Ali Qahtani belongs to the magical realm that exists behind a veil regular people cannot cross. His tribe members are the peacekeepers between the “superior” Daevas and the shafit, the descendants of Daeva-human couplings. There are other Daeva tribes and other magical beings, some of whom are hostile to everyone else.

Dara is a Daeva who was exiled from the main Daeva city of Daevabad about a thousand years back. His sad story is slowly revealed. His family are the ancestral guardians of Nahri’s ancestral family; in other words, Dara is Nahri’s guardian. Although Dara has been exiled from Daevabad, he risks re-entering the city as an escort for Nahri, to return her to her rightful place as the last of her once-powerful family.

S. A. Chakraborty has created a complex history of the magical world and its inhabitants. The main characters are trying to reshape the magical world to accommodate their interests and beliefs. It makes for a story that is very “human” at its base. 

“The City of Brass” is the first in a trilogy. The other titles are “The Kingdom of Copper” and “The Empire of Gold.”

P.S. There is a flying carpet.