But it does promise that things will be better, and that’s about as good an ending as I can hope for.

I don’t feel those 350 pages did anything for the story other than develop a romantic relationship between Nahri and Ali. I really enjoyed this trilogy despite this last book, first of all because I now know about Jamshid and I’m very sad I can’t read about him again. Like the rest of the Daevabad books, this is a slow burner until it reaches its climax, when everything moves at fever pitch.How the trauma of conquest persists on occupied people for generations after the main event has plenty of resonance with the world today. 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 also a lot of digging into the founding of Daevabad and a much more critical look at the Nahids of the past. I felt a little cheated that Dara’s arc didn’t end in the way I thought it should, but the eventual resolution did work out well, with an ending that both fitted his character but didn’t give him undeserved redemption for his crimes. From book one, it just seemed so violent and brutal so it felt like a series where important people would die.

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.

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 😅). Especially because I knew there was no reason for them to be sad, so I just wanted to jump into the book and tell them everything was fine. You know that childish excitement you feel when you’re reading a really good book that you are super invested in? This is, admittedly, a good conclusion to the series, but I’m delighted to know that such a vibrant world, peopled by such complex figures, is going to live on, wrapping us up in its turmoil and beautiful, deadly magic. 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.

Having narrowly escaped their murderous families and Daevabad's deadly politics, Nahri and Ali, now safe in Cairo, face difficult choices of their own.

His chapters were heavy and kind of dark while he came to terms with what he’s done, what he did, the conflicting emotions between what he’s trained to do, and what he feels is morally right. It’s the best kind of slow burn; their friendship is so strong, and Ali’s conservative reservations so great as Nahri slowly overcomes them. Having narrowly escaped their murderous families and Daevabad’s deadly politics, Nahri and Ali, now safe in Cairo, face difficult choices of their own. In addition to having to endure the awfulness of Manizeh’s rule, Daevabad, the capital city of djinn-dom, has lost its magic, and is falling apart, literally. Empire of Gold by SA Chakraborty – great character arcs, lush world building, a little bittersweet but ultimately satisfying.

They’re all so wholly different than who they were six years ago when they all came into each other’s lives. It’s a realistic portrayal of such a conflicted character with an ending that is earned if not feel-good. As he progresses into the complicated story of his own true identify and grows closer to Nahri, he begins to see the overarching complications of love, interaction, and history.Personally, I also wanted to see Nahri beg for Jamshid’s forgiveness and him being reluctant to give it, but that’s probably just me. The body count in Daevabad is considerable, helped along by Manizeh’s incapacity for politics, and a mega death-dealing field commander in Dara, who would like nothing more than to follow his own conscience, but is his will truly and fully his own? I’d left off at a very emotionally stressful moment towards the end of the book, and I was terrified to find out what was going to happen next.