This novel was an explosively satisfying end to a dense adventure with rich diverse characters in a hidden world of ancient charms. I was gripped from beginning to end and cried when it was over.

Dara is probably my favourite of all these characters; he is such a naive child in the soul of a millennia-old genie, captive by the humans and djinn who would manipulate and abuse him—until Nahri. Alizayd steals your heart, and Muntadhir too with all his twists and turns—and we don’t get enough of Zayneb! and all the while, you never stop hoping that Nahri will succeed in her fight for justice, equality, and democracy.

This is a layered and complicated socio-political tale, chock full of unexpected romance and mythological twists, an unpredictable plot that drives wildly out of control until careening to its unforeseeable end. And the novel has such good characterisation. Such stellar characterisation. I mean, even the fifth-level little foil characters were jumping off the page and crawling under your skin. Fantastic characterisation…

Once I started reading I couldn’t put it down, and after it was done, the characters still linger in the fog of my brain, pulling at my engaged emotions, whisking me in a memory back to Daevabad… and my heart begs for more.