A review by mooshake
The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty

adventurous tense medium-paced

3.5

with the way chakraborty wrote the kingdom of copper i genuinely thought that this wasn't getting any lower than a 4.5.... lmao

it sucks because there are still things that i loved: chakraborty's character work remains strong, her writing is engaging and sharp, and i do appreciate the themes of the cycle of trauma. but there were also problems that i had that, at certain points, made me wonder if a different person wrote certain chunks of the book

the pacing was bizarre, especially at the start of part 3 where

narhi goes to confront manizheh, and then jamshid, ali, and fiza appear with a bunch of back up and the narrative is like " for you see, jamshid and narhi came up with a plan and ali managed to convince a massive fleet of djinn to fight alongside them off page!" fuck all the way off with that.

actually

why was ali given such little page time during the final fight? the man summons an entire seafood boil to fight and then nothing, the rest of the climax takes place on a roof lol

. the end felt too easy overall, for a villain that was genuinely terrifying manizheh went down like a lead balloon lol 

i'm unsure

if the ending narhi and ali got was the right one for them. they both clearly hated being in positions of power and the fact that they're both essentially stuck in daevabad forever doesn't sit right with me no matter how much "daevabads a democracy now!" you plaster over it tbh? i really liked daras ending; choosing to atone for his past after being used as a pawn for milenia, finally letting nahri go, realizing the propaganda he was fed, and actively trying to work to make it right. you love to see it! i just wish that ali and narhi had gotten a similar catharsis

in conclusion: rip the

cairo apothecary

ending you will always be famous xo