I didn't honestly think I was going to follow up with the other books in this trilogy by the time I was about 300 pages through this book, but I must admit the final act is a wonderful magic trick that really puts the pedal down all the way to the last line.

Naturally, a lot of the early goings of this book consists of exposition and flying through the desert, else the race to the end wouldn't feel kind of jarring. When a trilogy is confirmed to be down the pipe, I'm a little more willing to be lenient and think the work should be judged as a whole. As it stands, I think City of Brass suffers as it sets up its world and characters (not especially standout, but I found myself quite invested to see what will happen next. The story's true villain stands out as an excellent character once they're really given time to shine) for hopefully more fun in future books.

I don't think it was particularly difficult to understand, but I do feel like some of the early Ali chapters are a hurricane of proper nouns and explosion that makes the prose really taxing to read at times. What I am NOT saying is that these names are difficult to understand because they aren't rooted in a western-medeival setting like most traditional fantasy. I don't think that's the case. But if you line up pages side by side, sometimes it can feel more dense than the story you get for 75% of this book is worth.

Overall I can't say I loved the book, but I think it's set itself up wonderfully.