The Empire of Gold

 S.A. Chakraborty's The Empire of Gold (#945) is the third and final volume of her epic science fiction/fantasy Daevebad Trilogy.  I zipped through the The City of Brass (See my post of 8/19/20.) and The Kingdom of Copper (See my post of 9/3/20.) and couldn't wait for The Empire of Gold to show up on my Holds list at the library.  As it turns out, I could have waited.

This engaging Arabian Nights type fantasy series goes back and forth between the human world of Egypt during the Napoleonic and British invasions and the mystical kingdom of Daevebad, shielded from the outside world.  Full of fantastic creatures, magnificent architecture and seething political, religious and cultural divides living uneasily together in the capital city of Daevebad, it is ruled by the Emir Ghasan who wears the Seal of Sulieman on his face as  his magical authority.  Into this mix is dropped Nhari, an Egyptian street girl who accidentally conjured a ghoul in Cairo.  She's rescued by a djinn, Dara, who whisks her off to Daevebad where she is recognized as a Nahid, the beings who founded Daevebad itself. Sought by different factions as a tool to obtain power led to most of the fast-flowing action of the first two volumes, which seems to come to a screeching halt in The Empire of Gold.

Things just seemed to drag on and on here.  I swear it took me a month to finish reading this book, and there were times I wasn't sure I would.  The author keeps going over and over the same psychological and emotional ground with each of the characters as the narrative viewpoint switched from one to another.  The action, when it did take place, was usually gory, but at least it kept the story going until things are more or less resolved at the end according to the ideals of Nahri and her hard-won suitor of choice.  I think this book would have been much better if it had been much shorter.  For what it's worth, my husband agrees with me on this.

I am going to pick a nit here, though.  Chakraborty does a fine job of creating her fantasy world and peopling it with intriguing cultures and languages to match.  I suppose that's the reason that every time she uses the word "okay" (which is often, indeed!) it grated on me, jarring me right out of the fantasy world of Daevebad.  Couldn't she have found a more suitable word?  "Okay" wasn't even used until 1830, but the American adoption of it as a political slogan in 1840 is what cemented its place in our language today.  It made me wonder if Nahri and Jamshid and Alizayd and Dara were going to start Instagramming or Tik-Tokking.  I know it's just me, but I had to say it - I hate anachronisms!