Reviews with content warning for Blood - The City of Brass

I was entranced from the beginning of this book. Politics, schemes, magic, brutality, and beauty all wrapped into one. I cannot wait to continue with the series.

I’ll be doing a full review and discussion on my channel.

Re-read 2022: I adore this book and it was just as good on re-read as there were many things I had forgotten. The scope of these themes, wrapped up in the immersive setting and with characters that you both love and hate, this remains one of the best books I have ever read and I'm excited to read this whole series this year.

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deezy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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hadley_w's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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kindra_demi's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I'm so sad this book didn't live up to the hype I've seen about it. Maybe it's part of the journey, but it felt like this book was 400 pages of exposition and world building, and the story actually began in the last 100ish pages. The TL;DR of my review basically is the complaints stem from this. The fact that not much really happened for so many pages set up so many characters/aspects to not really grow or be developed more.

I get that the characters have 3 books to grow in, but I do wish we saw a bit of growth and change. Yes you see characters who initially weren't going to help because of their beliefs start to help, but their "help" is outweighed with how stubborn/closed off they were still being in other areas. I recognize that Nahri is thrown into a new world and so there is going to be shock and resistance from her, but we barely get a taste of her taking her new life into her own hands (truly and genuinely. Not in a way where she is just trying to figure out the basics of her new life) in the last few chapters.

What had me most excited was that it was a book for those who love politics, and while yes it does have some politics, because of how it was written and the overall progression of the storyline, you just kept getting told the same things over and over again. Most of this book is setting up alliance and rivalries, the background to a couple of those alliances and rivalries, but it's those last 100-150 pages where we see action and the effects of those alliances and rivalries. I will also give that if I wasn't super into political stories, it would get confusing to follow the political world building.

I really hope that the next books are better because I was initially so excited for the trilogy, but this first book isn't meeting what I hoped for it.

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