S. A. Chakraborty – Required Reading

The River of Silver

October 25, 2022 Shay Shortt

by S. A. Chakraborty

ISBN 9780063093737

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this title from the publisher.

“This place, this palace, it eats people up from the inside. It takes everything that is kind and gentle in your heart and it turns it to stone.”

S.A. Chakraborty returns to her popular series, with a collection of short stories from the world of the Daevabad Trilogy. The River of Silver is less a collection of stand-alone tales and more deleted or expanded scenes, alternative epilogues, and other such material that gets left on the cutting room floor of a large series. In that sense, it is a book for established fans of the series and would not make a good entry point for new readers. Chakraborty has arranged the material chronologically, and each story includes a brief introduction that contextualizes its place in the series, and notes which of the books it contains spoilers for.

What I was hoping most for from this expanded peek into this world was an expansion on Jamshid and Muntadhir’s relationship, which was significant to the series, but took a bit of a backseat to Ali and Nahri’s (and of course all the many political machinations). Chakraborty did not disappoint, with four additional chapters about Jamshid and Muntadhir and their cross-caste romance. Muntadhir not only belongs to the ruling caste, but he is also a somewhat reluctant heir to his father’s crown. While Jamshid is the son of the king’s chief advisor, he is also a daeva, and the fire worshippers are the lowest class of djinn since they lost the throne. These additions allow us a peek at their first meeting, the development of their relationship, and an expanded look at how they are coping with the fallout of the invasion of Daevabad.

If the Nahids are your favourite part of the series, never fear! The very first story offers the opportunity to gain insight into the decision that proved to be a critical turning point in Manizeh’s life and set the series itself into motion. However, I particularly enjoyed getting a deeper look at her brother Rustam, who had none of her hunger for power and is a bit of a shadow in the main trilogy, albeit one with outsize significance. For Nahri herself, we get to see some events from the long gap between The City of Brass and The Kingdom of Copper, as well as a hopeful look to her future.

While most of the scenes take place before or during the series, the collection also includes an alternative epilogue to The Empire of Gold that provides a glimpse into Zaynab and Aqisa’s adventures together after they leave Daevabad at the end. This was simultaneously satisfying and tantalizing; their journey feels like it could be a story of its own in much the same way I could imagine a version of the Daevabad trilogy that had Jamshid and Muntadhir as its central characters. This story, more than any other, left me hungry for more.

If you missed these characters and wish this series weren’t over, The River of Silver allows fans to immerse themselves back in the world of Daevabad. The collection was released earlier this year in audio only, but for those of you have been waiting for print, your time has come!

Fantasy, Fiction, Top Picks

10 Years of Required Reading: Best Fantasy

October 20, 2022October 19, 2022 Shay Shortt

Fantasy is easily one of the largest categories on my site, with over 125 posts. So when it came time to make a list of some of my favourite books from the past decade, it’s no surprise that there were a lot! Here are five of the best. In the interest of avoiding duplication, I didn’t include anything that made the Best Fiction list from earlier this week, or that will be on tomorrow’s Best YA list.

Certain Dark Things

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

ISBN 9781250099082

Domingo is a street kid who scrapes by as a junk collector on the streets of Mexico City, one of the few vampire-free zones in a world that learned in 1967 that vampires are all too real. Domingo is fascinated by the pop-culture lore of these creatures, but he has never seen one until Atl drops into his life. The scion of a powerful northern narco-clan, Atl is on the run after a disastrous clash with a rival clan. Sneaking into Mexico City is risky, but she needs to buy the papers that will allow her to escape to South America. Atl wants to get in and get out quickly and quietly, but she needs a source of blood that will not draw suspicion or attention. Unfortunately, her rivals are much less discreet, and soon the human gangs and cops of Mexico City become aware that vampires have invaded their territory. Silvia Moreno-Garcia pulls together a diverse variety of vampire lore that showcases a deep love of the genre, and is able to incorporate many different traditions. Originally published in 2016, Certain Dark Things briefly went out of print, but it is now available again in paperback!

The City of Brass

by S.A. Chakraborty

ISBN 9780062678102

Despite her abilities as healer, plying her con on the streets of French-occupied Cairo, Nahri has never really believed in magic. But when she stages an exorcism for a disturbed child, she accidentally summons a djinn who claims that she is that last descendant of the Nahids, the former rulers of the hidden djinn city of Daevabad. With murderous ifrits close on their heels, Dara vows to return Nahri to the home of her ancestors. But far from offering safety, Daevabad is a nest of politics that put the streets of Cairo to shame. While Nahri is a canny operator, she is naïve to the rules and traditions of her ancestors. The stand out feature of City of Brass is the complex dynamic S.A. Chakraborty has created between the different magical beings of this world, and even within the ranks and classes of the djinn themselves. In particular, the shafit—part human djinn—are an underclass poised on the edge of revolt. Happily this trilogy is now complete, plus a book of short stories that came out this fall, so you won’t have to wait impatiently for the sequels!

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

by Neil Gaiman

ISBN 9780062280220

A man returns to Sussex for a family funeral, but instead of attending the reception he finds himself exploring the scenes of his childhood. He is drawn down the old flint lane to the Hempstock farm, a property and a family so old they are listed in the Domesday Book. Sitting by the duck pond, he remembers his childhood friend Lettie Hempstock, who called the pond her ocean. But he also suddenly remembers other darker, more impossible things, things that cannot possibly be true. When he was seven years old, the suicide of a boarder at the edge of this ancient property set off a chain of supernatural events, unleashing a malevolent force convinced of its own beneficence. Magic is rife in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, but explanations are sparse and, for me at least, would only spoil the sense that children know but adults have forgotten. This novel is for those adults who do still want to read about daft things like “Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies.” If you were ever a bookish child, and if you’re an adult who still loves tales of unbelievable magic, you don’t want to hear any more about this book. You want to go read it.

Sorcerer to the Crown

by Zen Cho

ISBN 9780425283370

Following the death of his guardian, Sir Stephen Wythe, Zacharias Wythe finds himself Sorcerer to the Crown, and head of the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, the chief magical body of England. It was Sir Stephen’s dearest wish that Zacharias succeed him, but that does not stop rumours from circulating that Zacharias murdered his benefactor in order to seize the Staff. Worse, sorcerers disgruntled by Zacharias’ sudden rise to power have chosen to blame the ascent of a black orphan to the nation’s highest magical office for Britain’s longstanding decrease in magical atmosphere. Hoping to uncover the reason for the ebb of magic, Zacharias travels to the British border with Faery. Along the way he acquires a traveling companion, one Miss Prunella Gentleman, the mixed-race daughter of a deceased English magician who brought her to England from India shortly before his untimely demise. Prunella causes Zacharias to question the Society’s longstanding prohibition on women performing magic, for this untrained young woman may be the most powerful magician he has ever seen, and hold the key to unlocking the flow of magic into England. Since first reading Sorcerer to the Crown in 2016, I’ve been constantly recommending it to fans of Jane Austen and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, as well as following Cho’s other works.

The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

ISBN 978038554123

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student who studies video games, but has a passion for story and narrative in all its forms. Visiting the nearly-deserted library between terms, Zachary stumbles across an old book of short stories, an improperly catalogued and mysterious donation to the university’s collection. But what is truly remarkable about this book is that Zachary is in it; the third story perfectly describes a real incident from his childhood, one that he never dared to speak of, let alone commit to paper. Yet here it is, recorded in a book whose publication clearly predates his birth. And if his real story is recorded in Sweet Sorrows, is he to assume that the other stories, of pirates and bees, guardians and rabbits, owls and acolytes are true as well? And what then was recorded on the missing pages that have been torn from the book? The Starless Sea is a story that is less about individual people than it is about our collective propensity for storytelling, and our need to make meaning, and myth, and symbol into impossibly overlapping confections without beginning or end. It is about our love affair with the concept of Fate, and our fear that it might be real, and the way we both cling to it, and lash out against it. If you love stories more than you love breathing, this is the book for you.

Fantasy, Fiction

The Empire of Gold (The Daevabad Trilogy #3)

June 30, 2020June 27, 2020 Shay Shortt

by S.A. Chakraborty

ISBN 978-0-06-267816-4

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this title from the publisher.

“I find that those who look on politics with contempt are usually the first to be dragged down by them.”

Daevabad has fallen to the machinations of Banu Manizheh, and her Afshin, Darayavahoush. Nahri and Ali have fled, leaving the city in the hands of a brutal conqueror who seems poised to be even crueler than the tyrant she overthrew. But Suleiman’s Seal was never meant to leave Daevabad, and the consequences reach across much of the magical world, stripping the daevas of their powers. Only Dara and Manizheh’s ifrit retain their magic, leaving the people of Daevabad helpless, though the Geziri and the shafit try to mount a resistance led by Zaynab al Qahtani. Even Ali’s mysterious marid powers seem to have been affected in strange ways, though perhaps this is because he now bears Suleiman’s Seal. Thrust unexpectedly into the human world, Ali and Nahri must decide whether to return to Daevabad and fight for the throne to which each of them might stake a claim.

While five years passed between The City of Brass and The Kingdom of Copper, Empire of Gold picks up in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Daevabad. After five years as a prisoner of the al Qahtanis, trapped in a political marriage to Ali’s brother Muntadhir, Nahri is finally free, and unexpectedly finds herself back in Cairo. Returned to her human home, and stripped of her Nahid powers, Nahri seriously considers letting Daevabad fade into memory, and apprenticing herself to her old apothecary friend Yaqub. Meanwhile, Ali’s thoughts turn to Ta Ntry, and the possibility of reuniting with his exiled mother, Queen Hatset. He has questions about his marid magic, and suspects that the answer lies in his Ayaanle heritage, which he has long been subsuming in favour of his father’s Geziri bloodline. But with Ghassan dead, and his djinn magic snuffed out, the water is calling to Ali in new ways. Neither Nahri nor Ali ever expected to be called to rule, but now the question of that potential responsibility weighs heavily on them as they look to an uncertain future.

One of the stand out features of this series has always been the complex dynamic S.A. Chakraborty created between the different magical beings of the world, and even within the ranks and classes of the djinn themselves. Those rivalries come to a head here, as Manizheh takes revenge for the deposed Nahids, having conquered Daevabad by unleashing a genocidal magic against the Geziri in The Kingdom of Copper. Though she has reclaimed the palace of her ancestors, and nominally rules the city, the various quarters remained locked tight against her, with the daevas fearing to trust such a brutal takeover, even by one of their own. Once, Manizheh was Ghassan’s prisoner, bent to his purposes, and fighting desperately to prevent the union she knew he desired. But while her past is tragic, she now she seems determined to visit that abuse upon others, willing to pay any price for power.

In the midst of all this, Dara takes center stage. As Manizheh’s long-trusted servant, and one of the only magical beings left in Daevabad, it is up to him to control the city his mistress has conquered. If he refuses, control falls to the conniving ifrit Aeshma, whose influence with Manizheh Dara already deeply mistrusts. Chakraborty delves deeper into Dara’s backstory, revealing the scene in which as a young Afshin, the Nahid council called him to Qui-zi, the massacre that would earn him the moniker Scourge. Dara may be even more hated in Daevabad than Manizheh herself, and it seems impossible for one person to hold the city against the inevitable uprising forever. Worse, Dara is tortured by the question of whether he made the wrong choice when he remained loyal to Manizheh rather than following Nahri. Manizheh seems to be turning ever further towards darkness as she seeks to replace the power she lost when Suleiman’s Seal slipped through her fingers. And Dara must face the question of what further horrors he is willing to perform in the name of the loyalty he swore to the Nahids long ago. Although a sympathetic character, Empire of Gold calls Dara to account for the orders he has willingly obeyed.

In the final volume of the Daevabad trilogy, S.A. Chakraborty delivers a whopping 784 page series ender that upends the established politics of Daevabad by delving into questions of family legacy, intergenerational trauma, monarchy, governance, genocide, authoritarianism and the distribution of power. Dara, Nahri, and Ali share narration through rotating perspectives with escalating cliffhangers, though many of Chakraborty’s other conniving, memorable characters appear as well as she brings this sprawling Islamic fantasy to its epic conclusion.

—

You might also like The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

Top Picks

Top 5 Fiction 2019

December 24, 2019December 18, 2019 Shay Shortt

Another year of reading draws to a close. These are my favourite fiction books read or reviewed (not necessarily published) in 2019. You can click the titles for links to the full reviews. Check back on Thursday for my top non-fiction picks!

The Confessions of Frannie Langton

Frances Langton was born on a sugar estate in Jamaica, the property of a depraved scientist who gave her his name, and educated her for his own ends. But Sara Collins’ novel is the story of Frances’ free life in London, and how she came to be accused of murdering her employers. The Mulatta Murderess is a broadsheet sensation, the talk of London, the boogieman in the Old Bailey, but Frannie is a woman determined to tell her own story, and to be seen as a real person, one who loved and was loved, and paid a terrible price for daring to reach above her station. By far the strongest feature of the novel is Frances’ voice. She is an avid reader, and that love of language seeps into her own writing, colouring her descriptions and insights. She consciously writes back against the slave narrative, the formulaic accounts peddled by abolitionists and anti-slavers to further their cause. Although framed by a murder mystery, The Confessions of Frannie Langton is, at heart, a tragic gothic romance.

Categories: Historical Fiction, LGBTQ+

The Dragon Republic

Grappling with the consequences of her genocidal actions in Mugen, her involvement in Altan’s death, and her new responsibility for the Cike, Runin “Rin” Fang turns increasingly to opium to dampen the whispers of the god of fire and vengeance. Her mission to assassinate the Empress is the only thing giving her purpose, but to do so she will need to make common cause with Yin Vaisra, the Dragon Warlord, and father of her old school rival, Nezha. Vaisra promises a democratic republic that will usher in a new age of prosperity for Nikara, but when the other warlords refuse to join him, he turns to Hesperia for help. While The Poppy War focused on the conflict between Mugen and Nikara, with The Dragon Republic attention begins to turn back towards the old wounds left by Hesperia’s imperialist ambitions. In her second novel, R.F. Kuang brings all the strengths of The Poppy War, and continues to combine 20^th century Chinese history with the best conventions of dark fantasy, taking the series to new highs as Rin continues to fight for her future, and try to figure out how best to wield her power for the good of Nikara, despite terrible trauma and impossible choices.

Categories: Fantasy

The Kingdom of Copper

It has been five years since Nahri and Muntadhir were forced into a marriage alliance, and Ali was exiled to Am Gezira. Ghassan’s iron-fisted rule has only tightened on the hidden djinn city of Daevabad. In the second volume of S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy, rival factions collide, and war is brewing. Tensions between the clans within the magical city are escalating, with the half-blood shafit always paying the largest price for the conflict between the Daevas and the Geziri. Chakraborty has developed a fraught dynamic by granting the reader access to multiple narrative perspectives. The warring groups are not speaking to, or sometimes even aware of, one another, but the reader can see the collision course that is being charted as the generation festival of Navasatem approaches. Their prejudices threaten to poison everything, and even Nahri is not immune to this thinking as she struggles to find her way out from under Ghassan’s thumb.

Categories: Fantasy

Ninth House

Alex Stern never expected to end up at Yale. She spent most of her teen years going from fix to fix, looking to numb out, to forget. But when an overdose lands her in the hospital, she wakes up to an unexpected visitor. Dean Sandow of Yale University knows much more about her than any stranger should, and he has an offer to make Alex; come to Yale on a full scholarship, in exchange for serving as the watchdog to Yale’s secret societies. When she arrives on campus, Alex descends into a world of privilege and magic, monitoring the arcane rights of the societies, and ensuring that they follow the proper occult forms for their rituals. Told in alternating chapters, Ninth House toggles between Alex’s arrival at Yale in the autumn, and the investigation into the murder of Tara Hutchins during the winter. Leigh Bardugo carefully peels back the layers, doling out information in dribs and drabs. This novel might be best described as a dark fantasy with horror vibes. It is set in our own world, but to the privilege of wealth is added the privilege of magic, the one contributing to the other. The fact that it feels just one step to the left of what is real only serves to make it that much more eerie.

(Trigger warnings for this title include, but are not limited to: rape and sexual assault, ritual gore, drug use, and self-harm. Bardugo is examining these events from the point of view of the victims and survivors, but nevertheless, some of these occurrences make for difficult reading.)

Categories: Fantasy, Horror

Sorcery of Thorns

As a child of the Great Libraries of Austermeer, orphaned Elisabeth Scrivener has been raised surrounded by the magical grimoires that house the arcane secrets of the kingdom. Since sorcery is only possible via demonic bargain, magic users are necessary to the security of the kingdom, but also suspect, and never to be trusted. Librarians and their apprentices, like Elisabeth, tightly control access to magical knowledge, and are responsible for containing and protecting the most dangerous books. Worse, if a grimoire is a damaged, it can transform into a violent Malefict, wreaking havoc until it is bound or destroyed. When a disaster at the Great Library of Summershall forces Elisabeth to ally with the taciturn young sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his demonic servant, the precepts of the Great Libraries are called into question, with the fate of Austermeer hanging in the balance. In Sorcery of Thorns, Margaret Rogerson has created a tantalizing world, both filled with magic, and where magical knowledge is forbidden, with the practice of sorcery tightly controlled by law. But while sorcerers are dangerous, they are also powerful, and the checks and balances of power in such a world make for intriguing politics. Who gets access to knowledge, and who gets to decide?

Categories: Young Adult, Fantasy

Looking for more great reads? You can check out my Top Picks from past years. Or check back later this week, when I’ll feature my top non-fiction reads of the year.

What were your top fiction reads of 2019?

Fantasy, Fiction

The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy #2)

February 26, 2019February 18, 2019 Shay Shortt

by S. A. Chakraborty

ISBN 978-0-06-267813-3

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this title from the publisher.

“To be a Nahid in the throne room was to have her family’s stolen heritage thrust in her face while she was forced to bow down before the thieves”

It has been five years since Nahri and Muntadhir were forced into a marriage alliance, and Ali was exiled to Am Gezira. Ghassan’s iron-fisted rule has only tightened on the hidden djinn city of Daevabad. Nahri has spent her days in the infirmary with Nisreen, mastering the Nahid art of healing, and trying to figure out how to fix the damage that was done to Jamshid, despite the curse that seems to prevent her magic from properly acting on him. But as her powers grow, and the old Nahid palace begins to respond to her magic, Nahri worries that if Ghassan discovers what she can truly do, he will eliminate her once and for all. But she will not be content to remain under his thumb much longer.

In the second volume of S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy, rival factions collide, and war is brewing. Tensions between the clans within the magical city are escalating, with the half-blood shafit always paying the largest price for the conflict between the Daevas and the Geziri. Relations with Ta Ntry have grown fraught, as Queen Hatset punishes her husband for exiling her son by cutting off the flow of necessary taxes from the wealthy land of her birth. Meanwhile, unknown forces are gathering outside the city, setting themselves against Ghassan’s rule. Chakraborty has developed a fraught dynamic by granting the reader access to multiple narrative perspectives. The warring groups are not speaking to, or sometimes even aware of, one another, but the reader can see the collision course that is being charted as the generation festival of Navasatem approaches.

Ali had been settling into a quiet life in Am Gezira, making peace with the results of his fall into Daevabad’s haunted lake, and trying to use his abilities to benefit the people who live in Am Gezira’s draught-stricken desert. But Daevabad is not done with him yet, drawing him back into its web, and the intrigues of his father’s court. Once trained to be his brother’s Qaid, the military seems to draw hope from his return, but commanding such loyalty is a dangerous thing for a younger prince. The two once-close brothers have been converted into bitter rivals, and Ghassan seems torn on the question of which one should inherit his throne, and Suleiman’s Seal with it.

Nahri is likewise trying to make peace with her choices, and the harm they have done to people she cared about. Once an outsider in Daevabad, she has stepped into the shoes of the Banu Nahida, a role that is at once powerful amongst the Daeava, and powerless thanks to Ghassan’s tight control over her life. This tension leads to her relating more and more strongly to the Daeva, at the cost of potentially playing into the deadly rivalry that has left deep wounds in the city’s psyche. Their prejudices threaten to poison everything, and Nahri is not immune to this thinking. Nor can she really understand why, when she seeks to ally herself with a shafit doctor, the woman is distrustful of her motives. The more Nahri hates Ghassan and resents Muntadhir, the more she seeks refuge in her Nahid heritage, little knowing what it truly means to be a Nahid.

Volume three seems set on a collision course with the woman who began this saga when she faked her own death, and abandoned her half-blood child in the slums of Cairo. Nahri does not know her mother, and has no reason to trust her. She knows the al Qahtani siblings, even if she has little reason to trust in them. The Kingdom of Copper is a gripping continuation of The City of Brass that will leave you eager for The Empire of Gold, due out in 2020

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You might also like The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker.

Canadian, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Top Picks, Young Adult

Top 5 Fiction Reads of 2017

December 31, 2017December 31, 2017 Shay Shortt

These are my favourite fiction books read or reviewed (but not necessarily published) in 2017. Click the titles for links to full reviews where applicable. Check back later for my top five non-fiction picks of the year.

The Break

ISBN 978-1-4870-011-7

I first read Katherena Vermette’s novel earlier this year as part of Canada Reads Along 2017. The Break is the heart-wrenching story of a community that has been repeatedly torn apart by violence, as Winnipeg’s indigenous population struggles with the lingering effects of colonization. Through the skillful use of multiple narrative perspectives, Vermette illustrates how trauma accumulates and cascades down through the generations, becoming compounded as those who have been hurt try to raise the next generation of children. When a young indigenous woman is attacked on Winnipeg’s troubled North side, her family gathers around her hospital bed. Four generations of women close ranks, belatedly trying to protect their victimized relative. However, as they struggle to understand what has happened, the spectres of their own traumatic pasts begin to rise, demanding to be acknowledged at last. US readers, this book is coming your way March 6, 2018 from House of Anansi Press.

Categories: Canadian

The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give is a brutal coming-of-age story about the harsh realities that face young black men and women in America. Starr Carter is a girl with a foot in two worlds. By day, she attends Williamson, a suburban prep school where she is one of only two black students in her year. In the evening, she goes home to Garden Heights, the city’s poor, black neighbourhood, where she has lived all her life. She is one person at home and another person at school, because she can’t be too “bougie” in the neighbourhood, or too “ghetto” at school. But the wall she has carefully built between her two selves begins to crumble when she is the only witness to a police officer shooting and killing her childhood friend, Khalil. Thomas’ debut novel is fundamentally about identity, and Starr’s struggle to bring the two halves of herself together. But it is also about families, communities, and building relationships. The strength of this narrative is in the way it balances the hard topics—racism, police violence, gangs, drugs—with themes of family, friendship, justice, and love.

Categories: Young Adult

Neverwhere

ISBN 978-0-06-282133-1

I’ve owned a copy of this novel for some time without getting around to reading it, but this fall the kind folks at HarperCollins sent me a copy of a new edition illustrated by frequent Gaiman collaborator Chris Riddell (see also The Sleeper and the Spindle). The new edition contains the author’s lightly edited preferred text, and is newly illustrated for the book’s twentieth anniversary. It also appends the short story “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back.” Richard Mayhew is an entirely ordinary London businessman, whose spur of the moment decision to help a young girl in need causes him to slide through the cracks of reality, and into the dark realm of London-Below. But to be honest, Richard Mayhew is the least interesting or memorable part of Neverwhere. He is merely the reader’s access point to a uniquely atmospheric world just sideways from our own. Door is the last scion on a Neverwhere family endowed with unique abilities, and some of the residents of London’s underworld will stop at nothing to catch her and take advantage of her powers. Full of memorable villains, and unusual allies, I can’t believe I waited this long to read Gaiman’s earliest solo novel, but Riddell’s illustrations made it well worth the wait!

Categories: Fantasy

The Jane Austen Project

When Rachel Katzman and Liam Finucane arrive in England in 1815, it is by unusual means, and with an even more unusual mission. Sent back in time from a somewhat dystopian near-future, they are charged with identifying the cause of Jane Austen’s untimely demise in 1817 at the young age of 41, and with recovering and bringing back her lost manuscript of The Watsons, as well as her letters to her sister Cassandra. This top-secret mission is known as The Jane Austen Project, and it has one very important rule; they must change the future as little as possible while achieving their objectives, or risk being stranded in Regency England forever. With this highly unusual premise, copy editor and ardent Austenite Kathleen A. Flynn has captured something of Austen’s tone and pacing, without trying to entirely mimic her style. The suspense of the narrative caught me by surprise, and I found myself barely able to put this novel down. This was in spite of the fact that there is a fair bit of set up involved in getting two people believably situated upper-class residents of 1815 London, and then into Austen’s family circle. Rachel is in the unenviable position of flirting with Henry Austen, while also getting to know her partner Liam, who is—awkwardly—posing as her brother for the purposes of the trip. Highly recommended for fans of time travel fiction that is more about the destination than the science of such an endeavour.

Categories: Science Fiction

City of Brass

Despite her abilities as healer, plying her con on the streets of French-occupied Cairo, Nahri has never really believed in magic. But when she stages an exorcism for a disturbed child, she accidentally summons a djinn who claims that she is that last descendant of the Nahids, the former rulers of the hidden djinn city of Daevabad. With murderous ifrits close on their heels, Dara vows to return Nahri to the home of her ancestors. But far from offering safety, Daevabad is a nest of politics that put the streets of Cairo to shame. While Nahri is a canny operator, she is naïve to the rules and traditions of her ancestors. The stand out feature of this novel is the complex dynamic S.A. Chakraborty has created between the different magical beings of this world, and even within the ranks and classes of the djinn themselves. In particular, the shafit—part human djinn—are an underclass poised on the edge of revolt. City of Brass was an utterly gripping novel from start to finish, but the last few pages introduced several plot twists that have me waiting with great impatience for The Kingdom of Copper to be released in 2018. Thanks to the fine folks at Harper Voyager, who provided me with an advance copy of this novel!

Categories: Fantasy

Honourable mentions also go out to Leigh Bardugo and Gail Carriger, as I finished reading series of theirs that I started last year. I utterly enjoyed both Crooked Kingdom, and The Parasol Protectorate, but as I’ve named books from those worlds to my top five in previous years, I decided to present a more varied list for those looking for my Top Picks. That’s it for fiction for 2017. Check back later for my non-fiction list!