An absolutely decadent and luminous fantasy novel- I loved every single page! Nahri is one of my new favorite characters and she really carries the novel so well. Ali became more interesting as the story went on, and I'm super curious to know what happens next with his plot. Super hyped that the third and final book in this trilogy comes out this summer so I can binge the second one and be ready for the finale. :) ( )

Kinda confusing but merman ending so what’s not to like ( )

I love this book. It has been while since I've read a good epic fantasy and I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I can't wait for book 2. ( )

Well-written; fully fleshed characters; imaginative world building; complex social/cultural/personal issues that preclude anyone being all good or all evil. But at the end of the day, it just wasn't my cup of tea. But I can nonetheless recommend it to those whose cup of tea it is. ( )

This is book 1 in a very interesting fantasy series with a different background. The two main characters are Nahri, who is a con artist and thief in 18th century Cairo during the French occupation, and Ali the son of a King in the hidden city of Daevabad. Nahri has always had strange abilities, such as picking up languages without even trying and being able to diagnose and even heal illnesses. When she hosts a ceremony to quieten a disturbed girl, supposedly by pacifying a djinn possessing her (which Nahri knows is not the case), she makes the mistake of chanting part of the words in a language which she believes to be the one her unknown parents spoke but has never met anyone else who knows it. Despite her lack of belief in magic, she summons up a powerful djinn, called Dara (for short as his name is much longer), and the girl who is the subject of the ritual becomes possessed by an iffrit , a demonic type of djinn. This creature comes after Nahri, who is apparently a descendent of the Nahdi, a tribe of djinn healers and rulers believed until now to be extinct, and Dara ends up rescuing her despite his anger at her for dragging him from another dimension to serve her.

The other viewpoint character, Ali, is a djinn himself, younger son of the ruler of Daevabad. His tribe converted to Islam, and Ali is a devout believer. His moral standards have led him to provide monetary and other assistance to the downtrodden part-human inhabitants known as shafit, but his good nature has been abused, and the recipients of his largesse are arming themselves against the rulers. Ali is then torn between his loyalty to his family and his compassion for the downtrodden, with tragic results.

The two characters come together after Dara brings Nahri to the city, which is a refuge from the iffrit who cannot enter. A love triangle of sorts develops. I wasn't a fan of that as I didn't think the story really needed it: I could believe an attraction developing between Ali and Nahri due to their common interests, but the relationship with Dara seemed to be a kind of instalove and pure physical attraction. He has a lot of unpleasant character traits including misogyny, racism and a tendency to resort to violence as the answer to conflict.

The worldbuilding in this book is extensive and intricate. It runs the risk of causing confusion at times. There is a lot of backstory about the origin of the six djinn tribes and why they are corporeal and no longer creatures of fire as originally created. Quite often this becomes an infodump. There are unresolved contradictions, such as the original reason for Ali's family being rulers of Daevabad. Their ancestor led a rebellion against the Nahdi, the old rulers, because of the cruelty they inflicted on the shafit - but in the present day, Ali's family use the same brutal methods against the shafit and his father compels Ali to preside over a horrific Nahdi style execution.

The last part of the book is a rollercoaster but it does take a long while to get there and I got a bit tired of Nahri's brattish behaviour once they reached the city and she was supposed to be learning how to heal the Nahdi way. I'm not sure I understood all the nuances: the djinn have relics, items in which part of their soul has been placed, but I think there were also other objects of significance. Some of that went over my head. It was also a bit confusing that the tribe who are still loyal to the Nahdi (and hence Nahri) are called Daeva rather than djinn - it seems djinn was an Arabic word which Ali's family adopted for themselves and other tribes came to do the same. That seemed an unnecessary complication. But I have already purchased book 2 on Kindle because I enjoyed the opening volume - only my reservations held it back from being a 5 star read. ( )