By S.A. Chakraborty.
Once I read this first book, I just had read the others. Not only did the author do extensive historic research — and you can tell — but her characters are absolutely engaging. The politics, between tribes, between old and young, between powerful and not, feels so relevant to what is going on in the Middle East: the old and new coming to terms with the atrocities of the past and the inability to forgive them despite the desire to create something better. The emotional struggles of the warrior Dara, a once enslaved “djinn” whose upbringing asked and accepted him to commit absolute war crimes, is one of the most profoundingly-beautiful soldier characters I’d ever encountered. And though I’d never be able to bring to life the age of Shaherazad, no doubt born of the Bagadad universities centuries ago (thank god for them), I hope I’ve created something similar with my Curse of Crows manuscript and the Pre-Bronze-Age Collapse culture.
Coming across no other warrior character with such complex struggles (other than GOT), and for the historical research embedded into this book, this definitely lands as a comp title for my Curse of Crows manuscript.
