I loved this one! Such a strong sequel! 

Second in a trilogy, and I didn’t like it quite as much as the first, but it was still very enjoyable! (I think it dragged just a bit too much at the beginning for me.) I liked how the political intrigue played out and you see the characters respond to their situations. Many characters, especially Nahri and Ali, are given real development. I like that none of the characters are perfect, sometimes morally grey, sometimes just stupid. I don’t always like how their choices, but I still find them believable.

Nahri’s choices still drive me crazy sometimes and WTF @Dara how could you make the same monumental mistake a second time. I love Ali’s passion but like damn sometimes someone just needs to put a hand over his mouth! Ghassan deserved worse. I still hope for the best for Jamshid and Muntadhir, but this hope might hurt me later… Maybe a hot take, but Ali deserves Nahri far more than Dara.

"Daevabad had crushed everyone in it...Fear and hate ruled the city—built up by centuries of spilled blood and the resulting grievances. It was a place where everyone was so busy trying to survive and ensure their loved ones survived that there was no room to build new trust."

Summary: With its vibrant prose, political intricacies, and slow-growing, tender love, The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty went above and beyond my expectations for the follow-up to The Daevabad Trilogy’s first novel, The City of Brass.

The novel picks up the story five years after the events of the City of Brass took place. We meet up with Nahri, Muntadhir, and Jamshid, stuck—especially in Nahri’s case I’d say imprisoned—in Daevabad; while we find Ali in Bir Nabat, a quiet community where he’s grown from a privileged prince into a fierce yet kind man, and Dara, brought back to ‘life,’ as the first Daeva or Djinn to be freed from Suleiman’s curse, meaning he now takes a new form that is less conducive to the human world.

Chakraborty navigates the thin line of disappointment, betrayal, and loss of love and life between Nahri and her respective, yet completely different, relationships with Ali and Dara.

What begins as an angered encounter after seeing Ali again after five years, the two slowly return to friendly graces and discover they are working for the same goals—a world where all the designations that separate their people no longer matter. But they are alone in a crowd of many who will do anything but let that happen.

The ties that bind Ali and Nahri together are strengthened as a deep connection between the two begins to solidify into something very tangibly sweet, tender, funny, and even heartbreaking. Meanwhile, Nahri’s connection to her first love, Dara, dwindles away as he seeks to start another war that will tear the progress Nahri and Ali have made, apart.

"To believe that the boy who'd taught her to conjure a flame was real, and that the man he'd become was not manipulating her yet again, to believe that not everyone and everything in this miserable city had to be second guessed."

Thoughts: To me some of the most powerful themes weaved into this story are the ways fragility between the separate groups—and two people who are especially drawn to each other but were born to be enemies—and the yearn to return to a society that values personhood over tribe, humanity (for lack of a better word) over violence. And all the while, Chakraborty ties in an incredibly slow-burn romance that allows all the complex feelings of hatred and admiration and the desire to avenge generations of loss.

"Who's died in your arms? Who have you begged to come back, to look at one last time?"

I absolutely adored the way Nahri goes from angry, yet worried for, Ali to seeing his gentle heart, and wanting to help him get out—to live a happy life, even if it means she realizes she doesn’t want him to leave. The slow tenderness is extremely touching and felt almost viscerally real to me.

"He does care...recklessly so. Passionately so...He cares so much he's willing to risk himself and everyone around him, unwilling to accept a shade of gray or a lesser evil in service to the greater good."

This is not a love that is born out of ease, it’s a love born out of true understanding, complex desire, and simple adoration of another’s pure soul, somehow not marred despite the violence that seems to envelop their world.

"She cupped his cheek, her thumb brushing his beard. She didn't miss the sudden racing of his heart.
Nor the sadness rising in her own...
'Go steal some happiness for yourself, my friend,' she said softly. 'Trust me when I say the chance doesn't always come back.'"

"Nahri did not think she had it in her to watch the kind man who'd built her this office—this quiet homage to the home she still loved—the man who'd taught her to read and helped her summon flames for the first time—to be executed in the arena."

I could say a lot of things about Ali and his growth, but all I’ll say is in the first book he begrudgingly taught her how to read, and in this book he said this to his brother:

"She is worth ten of you."

And finally, the slowly woven story of Dara

and Manizheh, aka Nahri’s MOTHER

who plan to re-take Daevabad.

"You will make us monsters...'
'Then we will be monsters.'"

Violence comes, as to be expected with any takeover of a city, and Nahri finds herself on opposite sides of someone she’s always dreamt of, and someone she once loved.

I honestly do not have any negatives about this book. It was excellent and much faster-paced than the first novel due to world-building and Nahri’s journey to get to Daevabad. From the first two chapters of Kingdom of Copper, I was fully invested in the direction the story was taking and felt completely swept away by the new developments.

The mysteries of the series are slowly woven through this novel, but still leave more to be discovered in the finale, The Empire of Gold, which I appreciated. It’s answering some things, so not leaving us totally in the dark, but also enticing the reader to keep reading for full enlightenment.

This is one of the first sequels I’ve read where I felt the content and plot completely surpassed the beauty and perfection of the first. If I could give more than 5 stars, I would.