![]() ![]() ![]() The warrior is a type of spirit called a daeva, his name is Dara and, as luck would have it, he’s “frighteningly beautiful,” with the “type of allure Nahri imagined a tiger held right before it ripped out your throat.” As kidnapper-rescuers go, he’s hot as hell. Next come ghoulish zombies: “The tattered remains of burial shrouds hung from their desiccated frames, the scent of rot filling the air.” Nahri and the warrior must escape, but how? A flying carpet, of course, and when Nahri responds, “A rug? How is a rug going to help us?” it’s clear we’re in the hands of a playful writer. ![]() Puff! A warrior in robes emerges from among the gravestones, flashing his scimitar, bows and arrows aquiver. It seems we are about to be plunged into a cultural mash-up of “The Thousand and One Nights” and any number of young adult novels with plucky female protagonists, but when Nahri walks through Cairo’s spooky cemetery things take a speculative turn. ![]() We quickly learn that Nahri earns her money as a thief and a leader of zars (rituals for the exorcism of bad spirits), and speaks a language, inherited from her long-dead parents, whose name she doesn’t know. Chakraborty’s novel, the first of a projected trilogy, opens with a veiled woman fortunetelling in what appears to be 18th-century Cairo. ![]()
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