The Empire of Gold: 3 (Daevabad Trilogy)

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It seems wrong when so many minor characters died (and there are ways to kill characters that won’t crush the reader’s soul like A Little Life 😅). Ahhh, this was the perfect balm for my soul after it was left in absolute tatters by A Little Life 😭 I’m still not sure whether I’ll ever recover, but reading about Daevabad is a nice start. There’s a pretty fair amount of exposition and info-dumps throughout all three novels, but it’s all delivered pretty painlessly. I do wish I’d picked up The City of Brass when it first came out, but I’m just glad that I gave it a chance and fell in love with it. Like the rest of the Daevabad books, this is a slow burner until it reaches its climax, when everything moves at fever pitch.

As to how the book hid from the reader how Manizheh would be defeated: I hated that with a burning passion 😡😤 I already ranted about this in my own review, but YOU DON’T DO “PlOT TWISTS” THIS WAY! Even though it's a dangerous job, she teams up with Tae-joo to take down the Choi family and their business empire. The titles sound cool and allow the author to strike the right balance between cryptic and engaging.

They’re in near-constant conflict throughout all three novels, but each one has his/her own strengths and weaknesses. Robert Jackson Bennett’s excellent Divine Cities trilogy all had titles like this, as did the first two books in Chakraborty’s Daevabad trilogy before Empire.

The series is a multi-generational saga that covers a twenty-year span from 1990 to 2010, and follows one chaebol family as it arises out of the ruins of the 1990s IMF financial crisis that wreaked havoc on the Korean economy, becoming one of the top conglomerates in the nation. By the time that The Empire of Gold begins, it’s clear that he has some significant doubts about his mistress, who increasingly demonstrates that she’s not that much different from the tyrant that they have just overthrown.

Eight Hundred pages flew by, and by the end of it, I knew two things, one that I loved it and two that I needed time to process before writing a review because this last book and especially the ending were beautiful. You know that childish excitement you feel when you’re reading a really good book that you are super invested in? We get a much better look at piris, and some crocodilian Nile dwellers, and ancient gods, and there is even a battle that involves kaiju-level beasties. The inspiration and motivation is palpable and you will miss out on a veritable wealth of goodness if you try to jump on board at this point – well, at best you’ll miss out – at worst you’ll be in a positive world of hurt with absolutely no idea what’s going on. In Empire of Gold, that personal journey delves ever deeper as Nahri navigated all of her past alliances to find a place where she belongs.

But yeah, generally I don’t like this thing of hiding stuff from the reader when we’re so much in the characters’ heads.

I have never done that before in the history of my reading experience after finishing a book - well maybe only one other time - but certainly not since The Empire of Gold, that’s for sure. The brass walls were tarnished, the edifices—on closer inspection—riddled with missing bricks and blackened mortar. With her grip slipping, political intrigues roiling beneath the surface, and her Afshin developing a disturbing rebellious side, she sees only one option left. PICTURE THIS: Dara dropping off slave vessels to the cave, Nahri showing up at the same time to check if some have been left - either alone or with her children (or maybe it’s just her children, oh my gah) (I also don’t even know if this is possible with the veil up, ha).