cbr17bingo – TBR (for The City of Brass) and my 3rd BINGO
The City of Brass
This has been on my TBR for ages, and I’m glad I finally got to it. It’s a Middle Eastern-inspired historical fantasy that follows the POVs of Nahri, a con woman living in Cairo when we first meet her, and Ali, the younger son of the ruling family of Daevabad (the titular city of brass). While he doesn’t get his own POV chapters, Dara is another important character rounding out the cast. He is the one who finds Nahri, realizes that she has powers she shouldn’t have, and brings her to Daevabad where djinn live. By the end of the book, it’s pretty clear that this was a setup novel for important events that will presumably happen in the next two books. It can be a bit info-dumpy at times, but I have a fairly high threshold for that.
I didn’t actually know what the novel was about. I’d read the blurb, of course, but that only provides so much information. Like a lot of fantasy books I’ve enjoyed, there’s a strong theme of oppression. The shafit—mixed race human and djinn—have limited rights compared to full-blooded djinn, which is surprising considering who rules the city and why they came to power. I’m really curious to see there this thread goes. I also really liked many of the characters are morally ambiguous. You may understand why they take certain actions (well, for at least one character, I don’t actually understand, but he’s not likeable anyway), but you can also see how they are being short-sighted or bigoted. I also genuinely liked most of the characters. I’m looking forward to book 2.
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping
I liked this one more than Mandanna’s first book, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. Main character Sera lost most of her witchy powers when she revived her deceased great aunt as a teenager. Since then she has been helping her aunt Jasmine run an inn while hoping to find a way to get her magic back. The character of Luke, a witch who’s trying to find a suitable environment for his autistic younger sister, also gets some POV chapters, and there’s a slow-burn romance that develops between him and Sera.
This book has perhaps the best found family I’ve ever read. The characters, both witchy and not genuinely like and care about each other. They are so welcoming and supportive, which generated such a warm feeling in me. There’s also a skeleton rooster named Roo-Roo, which was fun. He was a side effect of Sera’s spell to revive Jasmine. There’s a little bit of telling, not showing, that didn’t really work for me. In particular, Sera is described as grumpy or cranky, and I didn’t get a whole lot of that, but this was more a passing awareness for me, not a big detractor.
I will say there are people who absolutely hated the ending of this book, and I can understand why. While I don’t share that full-fledged distaste, I do understand it. There are certain expectations that often come with reading a book that is considered cozy, and a bittersweet ending is not usually one of them. So readers beware, but also know that I still really liked this book.
Killers of a Certain Age
I enjoyed this one, though not as much as I’d hoped to. It’s been described as a “romp” and “hilarious,” and while it is occasionally funny, I just don’t quite get those descriptors. The four main characters are retiring from a life of assassinating former nazis, traffickers, and other baddies, but during their retirement cruise, they realize someone from their former organization (known as the Museum) is after them. They escape and set about plotting how to get back at the Museum and clear their names of the supposed wrongdoing that put a mark on their backs.
While I certainly loved the concept that these are all older (60’s-ish) women, the characterization felt lacking. Chapters alternate from 3rd person in the past, during the early days with the Museum, with first-person narratives from Billie’s POV in the present, but aside from her having her own POV, there isn’t much to distinguish the characters. There’s the one who likes sex, the one who’s grieving her late husband, the one who’s good with poison and worried about the state of her marriage (she gets a whole two character traits!), and Billie, who seems to be the leader by default. I liked them all well enough, but I would have liked more from them.
This is kind of a cozy thriller. While it’s not low stakes for the characters, there actually isn’t a whole lot of tension and suspense, and there’s a relatively light-hearted feel to the book. I enjoyed seeing how the women tackled this challenge, and I will probably at some point check out the sequel.