The Empire of Gold (The Daevabad Trilogy, #3)

by S. A. Chakraborty

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I've not been as diligent as I would have hoped when writing out my thoughts, but there are some books like this one where I really feel like I have a few things that I need get off my chest. First of all, I'm glad that I followed Nahri on this journey, it feels like a long time has passed since we started off from Cairo and it's been fun. That being said however, this book is the one I will consider the weakest in the series.

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I have tried to read this in July, but for some reason I wasn’t really feeling it so I left it aside until October. Picked it up on the 17th and proud to say that it was better this time around and I have actually finished it, I will admit that I have forgotten a bit of the details between the books given how long it’s been, but slowly most of it got cleared up. I say most, because there were some characters that didn’t really leave that big of an impression on me personally to have them remembered without a little more prompting like the other ifrits as an example.

I enjoyed seeing the journey to Daevabad in Empire of Gold just like I enjoyed seeing it in City of Brass, Nahri being presented with all of her options, now that she actually knows all of them and more importantly, knows where she stands with them, was interesting. Obviously, the choice that she will make could be seen a mile away, but options wise, I enjoyed seeing her struggle a bit. It’s unusual seeing a healer be the main character in a fantasy, or at least the fantasy series I have read in the past few years, so I’ll consider her unique in that regard. Which saddens me a lot when I think that this book wasn’t as enjoyable as either of its prequels in the end, the reasons for that boiled down to two for me, the romance primarily and Dara secondly.

Here’s the thing, I’m the biggest hater of romance you may have the displeasure of meeting, however, even when I dislike a romance, it’s because it makes the characters in question stupid to me (the one romance I will be behind till the very end is Uehashi Nahoko’s Beast Player because it only came into minuscule focus when nothing else was happening and even then, it was sidelined pretty easily when duty or family came into play), and I will persevere if I like the rest of it enough to do so, in Empire of Gold though, the way Ms. Chakraborty went about it makes it very clear that her western side greys out some very rigid Muslim rules that I can’t really get fully behind. It’s okay to think about another man’s wife, that’s between you and God, however acting upon it and she happens to be a relative’s wife is a huge taboo in Islam and extremely disgusting to read about for me. Therefore, a big chunk of this book to me was me being either disgusted or sighing in contempt that rules like these, that don’t have a what if in them, were not upheld for honestly, no good reason whatsoever from either character.

Not everybody has to end up with somebody, and this being a fantasy book aimed at Adult readers, I assumed that it wouldn’t be too farfetched that an author would prioritize character growth instead of romantic relationships. If anything, the focus put on romance and its supposed importance made me think its closer to a YA than its supposed intended demographic.

The real saddening part here is that THERE ARE things for the characters to do without needing to waste tens of pages on them ogling each other. For instance, Ali’s end game plot line, I was so disappointed that something that huge took so little to be resolved. We get to look at a recurringly mentioned entity in a much closer look than ever before and it’s such a minuscule number of pages in comparison to mundane nonsense that it was beyond disappointing. Nahri’s own newly acquired ally is another example to give here, why oh why, did something that badass have to be wrapped up so quickly? One more thing that could have been incredible to read about is if we had an extra POV for someone else, say Manizheh. Despite being the villain in this book, I honestly had more interest in her than most of the other characters and for sure, it would have provided a fantastic behind the scenes look to one more faction without having to see it from the eyes of Dara.

Speaking of him, I had a hard time accepting Dara from book 1 (I don’t care if you’re a bodyguard, possessiveness trying to be passed as okay bs can go kill itself). 3 books later, my opinion of him is a little better, but I can’t accept his redemption when he spent so much time doing things that he knows are wrong and went on to pages upon pages of self-loathing and lamenting on it. This is not a redemption to me, you don’t think that what you’re doing is wrong and continue doing it while expecting me to think “Oh poor baby”, no. He did two good things in this book, 1 was still shrouded with so much blood that I will not consider it a +1 to his redemption tally and the second will be considered in my books because the blood this time was out of his hands, but his last stand was well earned. After he completed the quest (which I believe is a very fitting ending for him), however, we can rediscuss this point, but for now, this is a subpar attempt at a redemption to me.

The things this book still does wonderfully are the politics, worldbuilding and the journey parts of everything. I can easily say that this would have probably been my favourite book of 2020 if it went more my style as selfishly as that might be, but at the end, the cons far outweighed the pros for me.