Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - City of Brass

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

If you like djinn, magic, and the whole world teaming up to make one woman's life worse, then you'll enjoy Aurora and Trevor talking about City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty. Set far outside the Euro-centric confines of most fantasy, City of Brass mixes deep and interesting world building with characters we loved to hate. Also war crimes.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Reimagined the entire story, but Dara is played by Robin Williams Yeah, whoo, oh Dada Yabuhushi, I've sheen our hot steamy sexy war criminal our just undeniably charismatic and sexy. Who is extremely personally threatened by a volle cell Islamic fundamentalist child. Yeah, he's threatened that Nari is going to fall for Ali Zayed. Like who is so uptight. Not right now.

There's more books. Zaid, like who is so uptight. Not right now. That he's distraught. He helped me. He could grow up a little bit, but like not right fucking now. Yeah. At the point where we meet him, he's so uptight. He's nearly destroyed his father's entire kingdom because he feels bad for the Shafi. Which, you know. And mixed in with a powerful dose of racism. But we'll get to that. Hello everyone and welcome to Sword, Sorceryy and Socialism, a podcast about the politics

and themes hiding in our genre fiction. As always, I'm Arara and I'm joined this week by just Trevor. Hi, Trevor. Howdy. Even stealing lines. Hey, how are you doing? Our unofficial third bike, Trevor, is here. Trevor, of course, from the History of Persia podcast and America's Secret Wars is joining us to talk about a fantasy book called The City of Brass

by can you pronounce her name? I'm sorry, I don't want to say it wrong. S.A. Chakraborty. Thank you. Trevor is here in part because he's my friend, and in part because this book leans directly into his area of expertise as the host of the History of Persia podcast, as you will see. We're talking, the City of Brass is a fantasy novel. It is set in the 1800s, I suppose, and it takes place or what sets it apart,

I should say, from most of the fantasy read. And why I was particularly attracted to it is because it's not based on any Western myths. It's not based on Tolkien or elves or any of the other things we've come to expect from our fantasy books. It is based explicitly on Middle Eastern and sort of I want to call it sort of pan. What now would be sort of the pan Arabic worlds, mythos and stories, you know, from both from the Islamic world

and the pre Islamic world, particularly Persia, as we will see. And so it is a breath of fresh air from a lot of the other books we read. And this book, I want to say off the bat, really, really good. This book rules. I'm so glad you told me that this exists because I would have continued to see a fantasy book with a an X of Y title and ignored it on my audible app. Yeah. And but I I was I was specifically looking for stuff.

I was in a thread somewhere looking for books that were set, not in your general standard European fantasy setting. And someone recommended this one. And despite my mixed feelings on it, we had good luck with Poppy War, which was also not European based. And I was like, well, I'll just, I got some time. I'll start listening to this. And immediately I was like, Oh, this is good. And as soon as I started getting the lore, I messaged Trevor immediately and was like, Hey, you need to listen to this.

There's fire worshipers and a guy named Dada Yavahush. I think this is for you. And I was interested actually, she described it to me as the the magic Islamic conquest and I and that got my attention a little bit Uh, because that's what it is. We are in the world In which we are in the aftermath technically 1400 years after the magical fantasy of Muslim conquest of Zoroastrian

Persia. That is where we are. That is the world we exist in. But to be clear, we need to lay two things out off the bat. Despite this very clearly being the aftermath of the Muslim conquest of Zoroastrian Persia, we will never in the story say the words Zoroastrian or Muslim or Islam. No, things that are integral to more than one

of the main characters' personal lives and motivations, those words will never be spoken. That is probably my one main nitpick is that she never uses the words. I kind of understand why, but it is weird. Yeah, I do have some thoughts about that. To explain Islam to a T without ever saying the word Islam and to explain Zoroastrianism pretty well to a T

without ever saying it. But we'll get to that. This. Yeah. So this story follows two characters. Number one, Nahri. Nahri is begin with our first of our two sort of point of view characters, I guess, and call them both both protagonists. Nahri, who begins the story as a 20-year-old con artist and thief. She is a fake healer.

Sort of. Very sort of. And then she sort of heals poor people actually. And then with rich people, she gives them fake cures, and then send them off to spend a week in the oasis or something, during which time she robs their houses, which I gotta say, we stand, I do stand a queen who's robbing, who's robbing Ottoman nobles, please. Well, and she, you know, despite the fact that later in the book,

she talks a whole lot about how she feels unprepared to deal with politics. She knows exactly how to play off the political situation in Egypt because it's set during Napoleon's invasion. So it's like 1799, 1800, the Ottomans like don't control Egypt anymore because France is there. But like they left a bunch of their rich people behind. Yeah. And so she like we open with her essentially swindling some rich Turkish Pasha,

Ottoman Pasha out of his money by telling him that he he needs to go to a healing oasis or something. But we also learned an important fact, which is that despite being a fake healer, Nari is actually also a real healer because she can tell that the brother of the rich guy has cancer or something. Yeah, she can just sense that there's a tumor. So we learned that she has these healing powers. We can just sense that there's a tumor. So she we learned that she has med these healing powers. We can just like sense illness in people like in one of the next scenes. She can tell that some lady has like tumors like breast cancer. This will become very important.

And before very long we see her like she gets a cut on her hand and it just heals right away. She got that Wolverine healing like like that super speedy healing. We shortly, I don't know if we can breathe the plot of this one, but we can introduce the main characters after some magic gone wrong. She accidentally summons the aforementioned charismatic, sexy, powerful war criminal Dada Yavahush Iafavahush and Dada is something. Yeah, I think we do need to append zombie to our list of descriptors for Dada as well.

Sort of. I don't think he's a zombie. I don't think his body is actually a body. As the story develops, like for the first few chapters where we're following Nari and then Nari and Dara as they flee across the entire Middle East to escape the evil magic creatures called Ifrit that they've managed to piss off. Dara is our only exposure to magic. But as we get into the more magical part of the book, we quickly get the first hints that Dara is ludicrously powerful. Yeah. So like at base level, we'll get into like the magic and the different magical peoples, but it is a interesting bit of storytelling that the first magical being we meet is Dara. So you're like, oh, this is what Devas or Jin don't call him a Jin who kill you what the Devas are like.

You know what I mean? You're like, this is what they're about. And we meet the ifrit who are the evil Devas. And they're also very powerful. And so you're just sort of like, and then you meet like a peri and a ma red in the river. And you're like, oh, so all magical creatures are fucking insanely powerful all the time. This is just what the world is like. And then through the chapters of our other protagonist, and by the time these two get to Devabad, the capital city

where they're going, you guys know Dara is one of the most powerful beings just in existence when the time is right. Yeah. And he's weird as a proper application of wording and circumstance. Dara is the probably the most powerful of the fire elementals that he literally is the Jinn and Deva Literally is only defeated by someone wielding the mark of the prophet that has the ability to sap everyone's magic It is literally the old supercharged by the Ma Red. So it takes a bit Anyway, we learned I think in retrospect, we see that's why Nari I think has so much trouble healing him after he fights the rook

is because he doesn't actually have a body to heal. She's literally healing his like spirit somehow. Yeah, not his physical body, because he doesn't she like touches his body and notices nothing. It's not because you think it's because she's an experienced healer. No, you learn latest because he doesn't have a body. His body's not real. If it sounds to the audience like we're being cagey and like for some reason, trying to avoid spoilers with this, we are a little bit with the very end of the book,

but more importantly, it is not explained in this first entrance of the trilogy. By the end of this first book, you don't know why Dara is the way he is. You don't actually know you have you have a there's an incline, a supposition as to why he is the way he is. Also, I'm sorry, if you didn't read the book before listening to this episode, this episode will not make sense. This book is this book is complex enough that you need to have heard the terms in context.

If I'm talking about the Marids and the Nahids and the Al-Qahtanis, you kind of need to know the context to know to understand this discussion. So to our listeners who sometimes listen to episodes without having read the book, I'm sorry. This one will be a little harder. Yeah. We would have to take two hours just to summarize the plot of this book because it is a lore heavy book. It is well-written and well-told so that the lore comes out through storytelling.

But God damn did the author manage to write some world building into this novel. She really did. The important thing to remember is that you learn that there is a magical world filled with magical beings. They are as a whole known as devas, sometimes as jinn. We have the difference in name explained by a difference of politics. And difference of religion. Of religion and politics, essentially. You have between the Jinn and the Davis for these magical beings

who sort of have elemental powers, more or less the different clans or I guess you want to call them clans are associated with these different sort of elemental powers. The most important being the Davis who are associated with fire, the the Gezariah who are the Gezariah are gin slash Deva, the just for some real basic vocabulary. So anybody can follow along with what the hell we're talking about. Deva are were created by the creator, capitalized. Super religious book, can't say the word God, it's really funny.

The Deva were created by the creator as magical spirits of fire. The Marid were water, the Peri are the air, and humans are earth, because in the Bible and the Quran, Adam is fashioned out of mud. Correct. But even within the the Jin population, they manifest powers somewhat differently depending on their clan. You know, whether you're from Gezira or part of the Ayanlai or a Deva, which very good of the Deva to just keep the name Deva. Well, they're very smug about it. They're like, well, yeah, we were in charge. They're like, yeah, we were we were the makers.

We were we were Suleiman's chosen people. More or less. So we learned that long time ago, the Devas just did whatever they wanted, and they really started fucking with the humans. Like just ruining human lives all the time because they thought it was funny, which it probably was sometimes. But like the Perry went and they fucking narked on them to God. Yes, they were forbidden from interacting with humans,

but they did it anyway because they thought it was funny. And the Perry, the big skybird people who are obscenely powerful, went and narked to God that the devas were misbehaving. And so God sent a human prophet, Suleiman, known in Western histories as Solomon, I would have I think is who we determined Suleiman is supposed to be. It's just, if anybody knows their ancient Bible fan fiction, this is all based in the story of Solomon commanding the demons to build the temple, which happens here. And then in this case, the demons are the Deva and Solomon confines them to human esque bodies.

He confines them to human esque bodies, divides them into clans. So they can't all wield all of the power like they used to in their spirit forms and scatters them across the known world. There was just one thing he forgot when putting them in human bodies, which is now they can fuck. Exactly, he forgot that once he confined them to human bodies, Devas could now fuck. Fuck humans, particularly.

And he then made a big, he then made a law that said, yeah, but don't do that. It's against the rules. Which nearly all of the Deva clans immediately went and ignored. And to be fair to them, have you ever encountered in any version of history a society with rules about fucking that weren't being broken all the time? That's fair. So you had the clan scattered everywhere from Morocco to Ethiopia to Arabia to what do you want to call it? So you had the clan scattered everywhere from Morocco to Ethiopia to Arabia to

what do you want to call it? What what do they call it? Takara Stan, which is the Xinjiang province in China. Yeah, to Kazakhstan, which is Xinjiang, China. I think there's one more clan that might be from like India or something. There's yeah, there is one in India. They are the ones we hear the absolute least about. Yeah, no one cares. But maybe in a later book anyway.

So there's there's spread across the world sort of in human form and confined, limited in their powers and yada yada. What's important to the history is one clan essentially essentially like agrees first and foremost to the punishment. Suleiman is is putting forward and saying this is good and we will follow your word. This clan is led by a woman named Anahita. Hey, Trevor, you want to tell me about Anahita? Sure. So if you go to episode, what is it?

Like 97 of my podcast of the history of Persia podcast, you can learn all about Anahita. Yeah. Anahita is a Yazad, which is, I don't know, the weird class of being worthy of worship. That's sort of an angel, sort of a God in Zoroastrianism. And in Zoroastrianism, she is the kind of the mother earth purifier of waters. Really, if you take all of the big name Greek goddesses like Demeter and Athena and Aphrodite and you mash them all together, you kind of get a sense of Anahita.

Anahita in a couple of forums was pretty popular all across the ancient world. If I'm. Yeah. Yeah. Like from, you know, from our forums in, you know, Anatolia to Babylon to Persia. She was pretty popular. And her descendants in the David Bad series take the name Nahid as like their family name, which is literally just another name for Anahita. And I think like Bactria or something. So you have a ruling clan, essentially, who are put in charge by Suleiman

to rule over all the Davos. All the clans are all ruled from the city of Devabad, which we can we can geolocate to being sort of in Bactria, kind of very, very near where historically we know the prophet Zoroaster was from. Yeah, it is described as being basically the border of Iran and Afghanistan. Correct, which we know historically is where Zoroaster came from and where the Zoroastrian religion started. And so this clan, the Nahids and their immediate clan followers

become the rulers of all devas across the world. And they rule for God knows how long, long, long, long, long time. Maybe it's explained in the book. It's a long time. They rule until they they mention it. It lines up with the historical ish dates for Solomon. So. Like. about 2000 ish years. Yeah, they rule the problem is the Nahid according to everyone else are assholes.

We should point out that the Nahid main magical power is healing. They can heal other Davis from basically any injury in including and most importantly injuries and curses caused by magic, which nobody else can do. You know, other people, other people can learn like physical healing, like to set a bone or something. But now he's can heal you from magical problems, which like

if you start turning into a bird, which is a thing that happens later in the book, the Nahids can fix that for you. And they're the only ones who can do that part of their entire societies, their entire magical societies, medical system, like across the entire world of all the Davis of all the types, the only ones that can heal is the Nahid dynasty, the rulers of David and David culture, which they're also they're also assholes. Yeah, they're they're giant dicks and it is an interesting twist on the normal dynamic of you know, might makes right. And. Anaheed is like, oh, you've got might.

Okay, I'm going to have somebody turn your nose into a beak. What now, motherfucker? Yeah, I will not heal you anymore. But also we also learned that Nahid blood despite being healers, Nahid blood can like just kill a Deva. Can kill the Ifrit specifically. Okay. So maybe the Ifrit were the Davis who didn't accept Suleiman's punishment. So they're like, Dave has been evil.

Oh, they're there. They've got some backstory to develop in the future novels, I think, because about where they come from and why they are what they are. And they rejected Solomon's deal, which meant they didn't get stuck in human bodies, but they did lose all of their magical powers. But then they bounced for a few centuries and came back with different scarier, raising the dead into zombie monster sort of magical powers. And at least one of the rumors is that they went to hell and got their powers directly from the devil. Which is great. I can't wait for them to not name the devil despite talking about him for seven chapters.

To never say the word Shaitan. So, well, to be fair, actually, let's be honest. I'm sorry, the Ifrit wouldn't be dealing with Shaytan because it wouldn't be called Shaytan. It would be Agra Manu. Probably. Ariman. It would be Ariman, right? Anyway, so you've got this ruling council.

They are kind of assholes. They're also the only healers. They the one rule above all else that they seem to really be sticklers about is the not fucking humans rule And they really hate the people called Shafi, which are people with mixed human and deva ancestry. They really don't like Shafi Because they don't won't let Shafi into the human world because then they could cause a lot of havoc which breaks Suleiman's rules So anytime you find someone who's Shafi, they just get like rounded up and sent to David Bod to just live. Because that's the only place they'll allow them to be.

And even then, they kill a bunch of them all the time. Yeah, the the Shafi become the Nahid's slave servant cast. Yes. The mixed bloods become like the slave cast essentially. And and part of their reasoning for doing this as presented by like the most devout Nahid follower, Deva in the book is well, some Shah feed have magical powers, so they go out and do stuff with magic in the human world and they are they are Terrified the Deva are terrified that this counts enough as a breach of the Pact with Suleiman that God will send another prophet to take away all of their power

forever all of their power or to have them destroyed. So, uh, unaddressed are the, like several dozen prophets from Sulaimun to Muhammad that seem unrelated to any of this, but nevermind. We're not going to worry about them. So anyway, the Nahid's rule for a long time, along with their, as become important, they're like family of sworn warriors whose whole existence is to serve the Nahids and all things as their warlords and personal bodyguard, the Afshin. The Afshin will become important because there's one of them left somehow, our genocidal, our sexy genocidal friend, Dar-i-Yavahush. Anyway, eventually, one of the clans that did the most mixing with humans from Ghizaria, led by the Al-Qahtanis,

who live in Arabia, start a rebellion against the Nahids nominally with their Cassus Belli being the plight of the Shafi in Devabad and across the world saying that the Nahids are being too cruel and they must be overthrown in order to stop mass executions and genocide of the Shafi. This somewhere in here either faithfully or due to political expediency. It's up for debate by characters in the book.

I mean, it's up for debate the katanis and a number of other tribes convert to Islam somewhere along the way and they eventually fight a hundreds of years long Civil War in which a bunch of things happen and they overthrow the Nahid's and the katanis become the rulers of the of the Deva world. There are Nahids left, even though a bunch of them get killed. But then over a long time, for a long time, there are Nahids just around. I mean, the position of Banu Nahita, meaning Banu Nahita,

which I assume means like royal healer or something is like clearly a position that exists. So the Nahids were around, but over time, due to misfortune and a free the night's got hunted to extinction, except not really, because that's where our our heroine Nari comes in. Well, and it's interesting, too, our heroine Nari comes in. Well, and it's interesting too, because they're not hunted to extinction by the Katani.

They're the Katani, presumably in like the civil war phase and the rebellions that followed immediately after killed a shitload of them, but they recognized what we need to keep these guys around because they're the only ones who can actually fix some of our problems. I think it was I think it was for the healing and also because a vast swath of the day of the world, meaning the entire day of a clan worship the Nahid as divine rulers. And so killing all of them would have caused another civil war with the remaining Deva population, because at this point, at this point, the only people called Deva still are the people of the old religion who worship, who still serve the Nahids. Everyone else goes by the name Jin.

So that's how we tell them apart. But I think the Katanis were practical enough to know that we need Everyone else goes by the name Jin. So that's how we tell them apart. But I think the Katanis were practical enough to know that we need healers and we need to keep the Nahids around to make sure that the Deva population stays in line because they almost lost the last civil war. It's actually made pretty clear that if Dara had not been betrayed to the Afri, he would have won the rebellion and then re overthrown the Katanis. He was like on his way to the like what was supposed to be the decisive battle when he gets captured and drowned by the ifrit. Which is a trick that was played on him by,

done to him by the Katanis. Well, and presumably, you know, motivated and funded through the Katanis, but with some help within his own side, presumably to get him in place. You know, there's there's some lingering mysteries with Dara as we keep saying. Yeah, but any anyway, it's pretty clear that the Nahids, well, the rebellion led by Dara in the in the name of the Nahids would have actually won if Dara hadn't been turned into a slave. And the Nahids last until 20 years before our story starts, which is conveniently exactly Nari's age when the last two, a brother and sister, are killed in the desert under mysterious circumstances.

Yes. Which I think it's time because again, we can't do it plot by plot from now on. I think we just needed this background to talk about some of the politics and stuff going on here. I want to start with historicity, I guess. And like what I want to call accuracy to like accuracy to the peoples and places and things that the author is drawing on for this story, because I think she did a really good job of making it

feel authentic to the time frames and the religions and the areas she was working with, despite her refusal to name those things. Yeah, because the Nahids and their devout followers, the Devas, are very clearly Zoroastrian. They're they're fire worshipers. They have fire shrines. Like that is all of their like ritual practices are all Zoroastrian. We just can't ever actually call them that.

Yeah, they have fire shrines. They have smaller shrines dedicated to the spirit of their most important ancestors, which is in Zoroastrian the Farahara and they're characterized by a bunch of ritual purity laws, which is a huge chunk of historical Zoroastrian practice. Lots of purification rituals with ash and like not eating meat and stuff like that. Not that all Zoroastrians were vegetarian, but like it's an offshoot of sort of a purity thing. But what I want to go with is one of the places I think she does a good job of making things feel accurate to the sort of historicity of it is names. The first one being are the guy we keep mentioning, Dara Yavahush Yefshin. So at first you meet him, you're like, as like, I will say, as like a Westerner, right?

You just meet a guy named Dara and you're like, all right, that's a cool name. Well, first you meet a guy named Yefshin because he doesn't want to give away his real name because names have power. And then somebody else calls him Dara. And then somebody else calls him Dara Yavahoush. Yeah, so he's I think he says his name is Dara, but like the ifrit that they're fighting refers to him as an Afshin or something. And so you sort of get it in pieces.

But you're like as a white, like a white Western or not that familiar with, I don't know, say Middle Eastern history, you're like Dada Yavahoush. That's an interesting name. But then you talk to someone like Trevor, who does a lot of history of of the region and you would you realize is that in the era the story is set, like 1800, someone being named Dada Yavahoush is is like, what do I call it? Like it's out of place.

It's it's out of place to the point that like when this story is taking place, nobody had heard that name. Nobody had even been able to read that name in over 2000 years. Like this is like like, yeah, like us digging up or somebody you just like finding a guy that had a name that only the only existed in a came in in Persia and finding it in 1800. Yeah, the for the context of any book for listeners, Dara Yavahush is the actual, like, old ancient Persian name for the kings we call Darius.

So, you know, the Darius the Great who invaded Greece and did the Battle of Marathon, like, that is a Daryabu-Hush. Over time, the Persian language changed and dropped a lot of syllables and grammatical endings and stuff like that. And the version of that name by like 200 CE is Dara, which is the nickname that Dara Yavahush goes by. And it's obvious to see why you might choose that over saying the whole thing every time. But again, his name is an ancient name, but he goes by a nickname that would have been popular in like the Sasanian period, which is still fairly common now. Yeah, but it's accurate to his character, right?

Because he's from an ancient society and his was named at a time when the Zoroastrians and the Nahids are still in charge. Then come to the names of the two Nahids that died or big air quotes died. 20 years ago, the last two Nahids are named Menezia and Rustam, which are both very, very Persian. Yeah, like Rustam is the like one of the big heroes of the Shahnama, the Iranian national epic, which was written in Iran. In Iran around, I don't know, like a thousand ADCE. After the Muslim conquest. The.

Which is exactly when Rastam is living about 1400 years after the Muslim conquest. I do think also like with the names, the the titles that they use for the Nahids are really interesting because Banu Nahida is a title that means, you know, like princess or great lady of the Nahids. But we hear a lot more about Menizia than Rustam over the course of the book. So we don't hear his title very often, but the male version of that is Baganahid, which Baga is the old Persian word for God. He's the God Nahid.

But like that reflects like, you know, there's a level of antiquity and then a level of adaptation mixed into this very ancient part of society. Which is great world building because it is an ancient tradition. And to be fair, the devas still view the Nahids as semi-divine. As you see from the way the people, the devas treat Nari, they still see the Nahids as like semi-divine. So the fact that they have would have a name like, you know, Banu Nahid or Bagan Nahid like makes sense.

It is it's an ancient title that's somewhat been modernized over the years that it's existed. And I I appreciate that level of of world building. It's really good. What would it what would they have been called in the ancient times? Well, how might that change over time, particularly when they're no longer in charge and their sort of divinity is being upheld by a small cadre of worshippers, more or less? Yeah. Yeah. It's it's not nearly as in depth because nobody has as much time

to be in depth as a rich, early 20th century Oxford scholar. But it's very Tolkien in the sense of like, you dug into the language and the history of a specific region and pulled your elements from that into a cohesive single universe. And then, as you can see, when you meet characters that are existing, like now, they have names that would have been more modern for the setting of the story, like 1800s. You know, you have the ruling dynasty, all Qatani.

Now, weren't you telling me that doesn't that name doesn't that name mean something? Qatani. Yeah, it's just like is it just an Arab name? There's a footballer in Saudi Arabia, like on their national team right now named Mohammed Al-Khattani. So she just took a look, just an actually existing Saudi name for this tribe, and they have again more names accurate to being from Arabia, the ruling dynasty. You have King Ghassan al-Qahtani

and his two sons, Muntadir. Great name, by the way. Love that name. And Ali Zaid al-Qahtani. Ali's also a good name, I think. Ali Zaid. I will admit it might sound very basic, but ever spending so many years reading like Western fiction, it is nice to have a change of pace with names.

Yeah, well, and names and titles and terminology, the only problem when trying to reference things to figure out what the historical parallels were, was that you and I were both listening to this as an audiobook at work. So I got the physical copy a couple days ago just to look up the spellings of some of the titles and names so that I could figure out what they actually were. Because there was no way I knew how to spell Ka'ed. were because like there was no way I knew how to spell Ka'ed. Right. Q A I D. Super simple, very Arabic. But I was never going to guess which pair of vowels were used

to form that sound in the text without just finding a way to look it up. Again, fun historicity there. The title Ka'ed, which is like the king's like right hand man, the leader of the the leader of the military in Dehwabad held by again in Wajed. And then I supposedly, as the story goes, meant to be held in the future by our protagonist or one of our protagonist Ali Zaid or Ali.

Who is acting Ka'ed for most of the book. Acting Kaed for most of the book, younger brother of Muntadir, who is the crown prince. Kaed is a in some places as a name, but in some places, particularly, I think you said like like Spain, it's like Alondalus. And and Sicily in when Sicily was ruled by Muslim rulers, met like commander. So it was like it actually was a middle military title. And that to me, that's great.

Like you said, she dug into the history and looked at the cultures available and said, you know what? This is a title that they could actually have and would make sense for the role that I'm giving this character. Yeah. The the one that least fit that is actually Montadier's title, because he is the emir. And a mirror does most accurately translate as Prince. But that's Prince like Principality. English is weird in that we took a completely

unrelated noble title that usually means some kind of independent ruler. And we're like, it actually means the son of the king. Yeah, we're like, but she did that. So she just translated Prince directly, which works and is very easy for, you know, English speaking audiences to understand But it's the only title where I'm like, well, that's not usually what that meant Yeah, like they wouldn't have called the Crown Prince Amir yeah, I most languages don't have a word like that. There's a reason that the the French title for

Delphine. Yeah it's literally the French word for dolphin because some guy is like some noble man was on the bad end of a deal with the king and sold the and like Made it exchange and sold his family crest of a dolphin as the title for the crown prince Yeah, so like that's why that's the word family crest of a dolphin as the title for the crown prince. Yeah. So like that's why that's the word. Yeah. The French it's because of some weird, weird tick of history that the French even have a word for the heir to the throne. Again, in English, we just now we would just call someone the crown prince. But you're right. Throughout history, most cultures didn't really have a name for that.

I mean, the Romans and the Byzantines made it like they they kind of used Caesar as that title for a while, because that's not what you called the emperor. The emperor was the emperor. But like the crown prince would be named Caesar as like a way to show that they were next in line. Yeah. And that was partly because the Romans only passed it to their actual kids, like 30 percent of the time.

Yeah. So sometimes you just had to be like your nephew or like whatever. And you're like, oh, I'm naming him Caesar, meaning I'm naming him next in line. But like most cultures never named for it. But I get I like you said, I understand why she did it because we needed to sort of make a clear delineation between Muntadir and Ali Alizade. So I wanted to talk about that first. And also, I think she just did a really good job blending in like

what do we call the mythos of the areas which is taking place, like of Jinn and Devas and Rooks and Ma Reds and all these other things, which are not fantasy creatures or stories that Western audiences are particularly familiar with, aside from the genie in a lamp type shit, which does get addressed by the story. And you find out it fucking sucks worse than you thought. If you're an American and your idea of genies in lamps is Robin Williams.

And even then, Disney's Aladdin doesn't make it sound like it's particularly fun to be a genie. No, but this story makes it clear that it's even way, way worse than that. That you are a day of your gin or a day. Who's like been captured by the free been killed, but not completely killed because they get the thing that holds your soul. They trap your soul into an object and then give that object to humans.

And you are forced to obey those humans wishes. And because humans are naturally greedy and predisposed to doing evil shit, the the the jinn that is trapped this way is forced from master to master to commit heinous crimes and eventually loses their mind. Yeah, the the interesting twist on the normal like genie mythos that she employs here is that they're given off these gin containing relics are given over to humans to spread misery and mischief because the first time and probably you know the second through fifth times that the slave is summoned out of the ring or the lamp or whatever. He comes out pissed because he's just been murdered

and enslaved and then maybe you fall into a rhythm and you don't intentionally fuck up every wish. But then you get tired of this asshole telling you what to do so you start fucking with them until your fucking with them is like, oh, you wish to have all of this land. Well, all of that land is going to fall on top of you like. Yeah. And then they end up like tracking how many masters they've killed via tattoos.

Yeah. The the enslaved Dave and gin in this universe are a lot like it. DM, who is tired of people casting wish. Yeah, they literally followed the like the monkey's paw DM who hates that you can cast wish, which is like, oh, how did you word that specifically? OK, if you say so. And then ruining your life. Another ring on their arm or in Dara's case, up his arm, down his back,

down across the other arm. Yeah, they're little like black bars and they go like up his arm across the back and then all the way down his back because Dara survived as Dara is so powerful. He survived as a slave longer than any other Jinn ever. And no one's exactly sure why he's still alive. And surprise, we aren't either by the end of the story. No one's exactly sure why he's still alive and surprise, we aren't either by the end of the story. Because whatever happened to make him not actively enslaved wiped his memory. Yes, whatever broke him out of slavery wiped his memory of his time as a slave,

which is implied the only reason he's not completely insane. And I do need to point out he is also not completely sane. No, but I get the sense that he was like that before. I think he yeah, yeah, he's always been kind of like that. He's got like a little bit of PTSD and some flashbacks every now and then. But when he's just like violently racist in threading Ali,

that's just who he is as a person. Again, from history, that's just who he is as a person. Again, from history, that's just who he is. So, yeah, the historicity and like the way she weaves in these different races and like the cultures and the way they interact with each other is really good. But I think it's time we get to the meat of this. Let's get to the politics of this book. And I actually be clear, unlike some other books, I actually don't know how much of her politics, the author's politics we can pull out. But she definitely put some interesting politics in this book.

And I earlier I said I was going to start the podcast this way, but I didn't. But let's do it now. Trevor, is anyone in this book a good person? Uh, like I said before we started recording, Nari mostly, because her biggest crimes are like stealing from rich fucks and her Jewish friend, Jacob, who's desperately tried to give this young woman advice that she won't take. Jacob, who despite the sexism of it is honestly trying to save her life. And quite frankly, we don't know about Jacob because he's there for about like 10 pages.

But it is implied that he has traveled the world and been around long enough. Like he could have done some real fucked up shit too. We don't know what Jacob the not explicitly named Jewish man who owns the apothecary. Look, he is a Jewish. She does call him Jewish, doesn't she? I think. Yeah. That is the only religion explicitly named

in this fucking book. Look, all I'm saying is that he is a Jew who has been to France and is currently residing in Egypt. And it is the year 1800. That man has seen some shit. And he's just like, girl, I like you. Do something to protect yourself. The world is cruel. And she's just like, girl, I like you do something to protect yourself. The world is cruel. And she's like, I'll be fine.

And then like two days later, she's being eaten by mummies, eaten by zombies being pursued by it a free, essentially kidnapped slash saved by an ancient war criminal who was just really hot. That is the hilarious thing about their flight across, again, literally the whole Middle East. They go from Cairo to Afghanistan. On a flying carpet, and then on the ghost of a flying carpet

after Nari throws a fit and lights it on fire. And then by horseback. But after she gets over the initial distress of like, I've just been attacked by zombies and kidnapped and taken to apparently Turkey, that she spends the rest of the trip being extremely distracted by how hot Nara is. The rest of her, the rest of the book, extremely distracted by how hot Nara is.

The rest of her, the rest of the book until like the last four chapters. And at which point the war crimes finally overwhelmed how hot he is. And even then only barely. Cause I mean, let's be honest to her her the war crimes were a long time ago. I can fix him. There isn't a more I can fix this man than Nari I Nahid and Dara Yavahush and it almost ruins her life. To be fair, Dara almost ruins her life all on his own. Which brings me to the main plot

of this book, which is there's a bunch of men who have a bunch of secrets who refuse to speak to each other for any reason, even when it would be helpful for everyone involved. And they are all conspiring, along with a few women, to ruin Nari's life. And that is the plot of this book. to ruin Nari's life. And that is the plot of this book. Aurora, you did it again. I dragged you into this episode where it's a book about a bunch of people trying to figure out which one of them

gets to fuck a very young woman. Ah, it's the witcher all over again. But that is a lot of the plot of this book. It is. There's one special magical girl who is Nari. The final Nahid in this case, not the blood of the elders or whatever. Which when you put it like that, that's kind of exactly what she is. Okay, so we've got Nari Siri and and King Ghassan wants to have an arranged political marriage with Prince Muntadir and you

mean Amir Muntadir, please. Yes. Amir Muntadir who is a flandering, drunken asshole, who's secretly gay. Secretly bisexual. Secretly, I think the type of person who is pan in that they will fuck anything that walks. Yes, I think Moutadir would have sex

with anyone who is hot enough. Meanwhile, the Grand Vizier Cave wants her to marry his son Jamshid, who is gay as fuck for Muntadir. They have an ongoing relationship. This isn't pining. They have an ongoing relationship. But we also learn that Cave is also also mad about it not because it's gay But because Muntadir keeps breaking Jamsheed's heart by falling for women, right? Yeah, there's the implication of like he's the type of dad who was initially like I can't believe you're fucking dudes And then he was like, well, this is probably fine, but you gotta have better taste son I think he was more scandalized that he was fucking a katani than he was he was fucking men.

That is true because Kaveh is a deva nationalist. Yeah, Kaveh is like- He somehow become the Grand Vizier of the al-katani court. Because he is secretly very good at politics. Yeah. Which and his son is part Nahid, which means that Kaveh either adopted this boy or Kaveh. It does say that it says that Jamshid's mother at his birth carved put this tattoo on him to suppress his Nahid powers. Which means his mother is Menesia who coincidentally spent a couple weeks at or spent a couple months at Kaveh's house

approximately 28 years ago. Yep, approximately 28 years ago, which yeah, so you're right, Kaveh wants Nari to marry Jamshid, which you understand is for Nahid and David nationalist reasons, which I think, I don't know if this was before recording or during, I think it must have been before. We have to, we are forced to point out that the only three possibilities of relationship between Nari and Jamshid is full siblings, half siblings or cousins, first cousins. And well, no, they can't be, uh, full siblings because by the end of the book, it is made clear that Nari really is a Nahid Shafi'it, which is sacrilegious in and of itself because the Nahids hated the Shafi'it. Yeah.

But I think they keep saying she's Menezia's daughter, but it's possible that she's not. I think, I think it's possible. That she's Rustam's daughter. I think that makes just as much sense. I think that nobody assume. I think that they all assume because she looks like Menezia that and because the Nahids, I think, did have some like matriarchal stuff going on because they were founded by Anahita that they assume They assume they all kind of go for it They assume that she's the daughter of Minesia because that seems they for some reason they all just assume that it's more likely that Minesia

Would have a daughter than it is that John she or that Rastam would have a kid well, I think they all just want it because Menezia was the better healer of the siblings. Again, I also get they really just need this healing thing to get back on track. I also, I do get the feeling that the Nahids did have that sort of matriarchal thing going on where like the best healer was like always one of the Nahid women. I think, I think that makes sense. Like, sure.

Healing is a vaguely sex linked characteristic. Why the fuck not? I mean, but to be fair, then all the nights can do it because clearly John Sheen can do it. But also they point out that the Nides didn't actually have like one monarch. They ruled by council. True. Until they were, you know, single digit numbers of them. Yes. But anyway, so yeah, we have this another person that wants Nari to marry and have kids. She she wants to marry.

She offers to marry and wants to marry Donna, but Donna turns her down because number one, he doesn't have a real body and can't give her children. So he thinks she should also marry Johnshid because because if she can't have kids, the Nahid line dies with her. He thinks yeah. Well, as far as he knows, because nobody's told him about Jamshid yet, and it does present this kind of trolley problem moral quandary of like, yeah, it's her body her choice and she can decide if she wants kids or not.

And like she can love who she wants to love, but also like this society will collapse if there is not another generation of this family. Because they've literally gone 20 years without a healer that can heal their sicknesses. So like they, as a society, as a, as a race of peoples they need healers They need Naheed's if they want to continue to have health care. She needs to have kids Which is a kind of fucked position to be in if you're if you're Nari So you have all that and of course she does get very mad at Donna for saying this especially after they very nearly have sex before entering the city only to be rudely

interrupted by the Ifrit. Yeah, they are very nearly fucking like her hands are inside his his clothes. He's like undoing her like fucking gown. Like her shirt is like basically off according to that scene and Then they are running for their lives and it is not addressed How she gets clothes back on at any point though, but she in that time we do learn She does murder and a free which probably just rubbing her blood all over that motherfucker She will she accidentally it gets blood on a knife because she draws it too quickly

and then stands and she's like, all right, my blood is dangerous to the free. I'm just going to bleed on this guy and kill him, which you know what? Cool. And then you have tricks rock. Check girls rule women can do anything. So you've got so you've got. Oh, there's some weird symbolism in that now that I think about it. Yeah. But so you've got, yeah. So you've got Laja. You've got like, you know, the Vizier and Dada and Ghassan and all these people that want Nari to marry

the right person. And all Nari wants to do is marry Dada. And in the background of this, what nobody realizes, including Ali's aid himself, is that by the end of the book, Ali's aid clearly has a huge crush on this girl. I think he, I think he realizes it, but won't admit it by the end of the book that Ali's aid has a massive crush on Nari cause they're both fucking nerds. Yeah. They're giant.

They're giant human world nerds. Like, well, he is a human world nerd and she's a human who is just like, who just likes books and knowing stuff. She's like knowing stuff. And so they become like besties, which makes everyone mad, despite the fact that it only happens because King Ghassan ordered it to happen. Right. And he's like, I didn't mean for you to actually be friends. That Ghassan is like go befriend this woman so she feels comfortable. So she'll marry

Muntadir. And then they actually become friends and that makes Ghassan even madder for some reason. And it makes it makes Muntadir mad. It makes Dada very mad. Well, it makes Ghassan mad because he knows that Ali's aid can't control his, re his own political reactions and that that him being too close to Anahid will cause problems because Ali also not all that low key wants to kill everybody in the Deva quarter. Yeah. Ali's aid is low key wants to kill everybody in the Deva quarter. Yeah. Ali's aid is low key. One of the most racist people in the book against Davis specifically,

because the Davis are extremely racist against the Shafi. It's this weird racism cycle. What I asked earlier, is there a good person in this book? The answer is Nari and that's it. Because Ali's aid is number two, I think, in trying to be a good person, but he's also a religious zealot, which leads him to the correct conclusion 90% of the time, which is that the Shafi'i are being mistreated by the Deva, true. That they do deserve better representation within Deva-Bhad, true, that everyone should be subject to the law, to Suleiman's laws equally, true, and as such, we must massacre the barbaric pagan fire worshipers.

Wrong! Well, so to play a little bit of Devil's Advocate, I was going to say Dave is advocate, but it's completely the opposite of that. At the beginning of the book, Ali is linked up with this underground Shafiite kind of mutual aid society led by a guy named Sheikh Anas, who is a Shafiite religious leader. who is a Shafi religious leader and his, his Ali's shake specifically. Yeah. He is like the, the religious teacher that Ali follows. And because it is written by an American for an American audience, primarily there are, and it is about Muslims with strong political religious beliefs. There are elements of it that are inevitably like modern Islamic fundamentalist coded because that's the vocabulary we use to describe this sort of thing.

But if you reframe Sheikh Anas into a Christian context, he is John Brown. Kind of, yeah. He is a like religious fundamentalist who is willing, who is running orphanages and helping the sick and freeing slaves and also preparing for an armed rebellion against the ruling class. And I think you and I both would. Yeah, we read about John Brown and we're like unconditional critical support like. both would, yeah, we read about John Brown and we're like, unconditional critical support. Like,

Yeah, unconditional yet critical support for John Brown. Same thing for Shayk and us. Yeah, your, your weird religious constitution, maybe a step too far, but like, other than that, absolutely on board. Give the, give the slaves and the Shafi'i, whatever improvised weapons and smuggled arms you have available and do your fucking thing. And so Ali has been funding the Tanzine because he thought they were like, which

they were, running orphanages and helping heal the sick and all these sorts of charitable works, which is true. They just were also buying weapons. It speaks to Ali's privilege. It's a great example of like a rich kid getting involved in radical politics and like not understanding money because he's an amazing accountant. Like that is Ali's primary character trait in public is that he is good with money. He is embezzling. But he doesn't know how much anything costs because he never stops to say, huh, isn't this a lot of money for orphanages? He's he's a he's a fantastic accountant who is doing a whole lot of embezzling

and account hiding to hide the fact of where the Tanzi are getting their money, but never stops to think, man, this is yeah. Like you said, this is a lot. And maybe they're doing something untoward with it because Shaken Oss is like, oh, no, no, don't don't even worry about it, man. We're totally not buying guns. Well, not his first like field trip with them. Uh, one of the guys there with pulls out this giant iron ax and murders and murders

three people, three slavers, to be fair, but just out of nowhere, just butchers three men in a bar. Butchers three men in a bar who were doing child slavery, to be clear. Because let us not paint the Deva as completely innocent. The Deva are racist against the Shafi because according to following, you know Nahid principle Shafi shouldn't exist and they're like a whole like like the Shafi according to like the Nahid and the Davis Shafi are like Walking examples of like original sin. Yeah, basically like like the fact that the Shafi it exists is like constant The fact that the Shafi'it exist is like constant proof that no one is following Suleiman's laws.

And so they're hella racist and do like slavery and a bunch of other evil shit. But this leads a religious zealot like Ali to be like, we should purge them. My, my great great whatever grandfather didn't go far enough in conquering their city, dethroning them and quartering them away in their own section of the city. We need to kill all of them. So yeah, again, our second best intentioned character in this story is a guy who wants to do his own kind of genocide. Is genocide right up until the moment where he's like, huh, I kind of want to make out with this girl who I should be racist against.

What do I do? I kind of want to kiss this girl. She's entrapped by heart, but she is like of the royal family of these people. But she's a lesser class of being who don't deserve the love of God. Well, I think he thinks Shafiq deserves the love of God. Right. To be fair, they've been told. Yeah, the David don't.

But to be fair, they've also been told that she's not Shafiq, that she's pure blood, which is not true, which Ghassan admits in like the last chapter. Well, and Ali in particular, because none of his other family get it. They all think he's a religious nut, which he is, and they don't understand why he cares so much about the Shafi' because they all are very happy to wallow in their privilege and violate shitloads of Islamic customs If it means they can be more comfortable But also they're from Qatar. Yeah, like I there their Arab Royals, but It's on brand it's just

Sorry not guitar Bahrain where all of the like Gulf State royalty go to like drink and gamble in Bahrain, where it's legal. But Ali, unlike his siblings, who are mostly half siblings. Well, I think his sister is a full sibling. Yeah, he has one sister who is a full sibling. And Muntadir is a half sibling. Muntadir is a half sibling. And I think it's implied that there are other sisters. But Ali looks very much like his mother's people

who are which one were they? Ionley, they're like the Ethiopian ones, the water. Yeah, the Ionley who live in Ethiopia and are called crocodile people. We assume they're from Lake Victoria. Yeah. So they're on the night like the blue Nile somewhere and I think there's some interesting implications to crocodiles and the Maori to be who they have some sort of relationship with we find out in the final chapters and the Nile River being

represented by crocodile people, ala the Egyptian gods. There's some implications there. Again, good and interesting world building implications built into that, but yeah, but continue. But the, so the Ayanlei are seen as weird by all of the other Jinn and Deva clans. like they are in some way kind of a world apart even from all of the other squabbles, but they're rich as hell and

have this deal with the maried that only some people know about where they Have the power to threaten everybody else so they get away with. So Ali has been the victim of like discrimination and slurs from his peers his entire life. All his his gazerilla peers, because he doesn't look like a peer like like, you know, Katani. So like that is part of his motivation. Like why he has so much sympathy, because unlike his sister, he spent some time in public at all.

And unlike his brother and father, he doesn't immediately command respect from the rest of their people. Interestingly, you learn it again, one of the last chapters that his sister actually was subject to a lot of slurs and harassment or like racism. But her response to it was to simply retreat from public life altogether and just be rich and spoiled because she did. Yeah. In the conversation they have, she says she's like, you think you're the only one that had to deal with this? Yeah, because she can't even speak.

Gizaria. That's true. Yeah. The the Gizaria people have a magical. Their magical superpower is a secret language that only they can understand. And no one else can learn it. Even the Nides, who could speak every language, could not speak Gizaria. And so, yeah, his sister experienced some of this and was like, well, I can just insulate myself. And Ali was like, well, I now feel I now empathize with the plight of the oppressed and am going to fund a terrorist organization. I have I have felt racism.

I understand the others, the Shafi experience racism. I will fund their freedom movement without sort of without knowing it. Weirdly, it's like if Malia Obama was suddenly funding like like an anarchist organization, like an underground, like black like liberation anarchist organization or something. Yeah. Weirdly, I think it's interesting that weirdly Ali's aid was doing more for the tanzeem that Ghassan or Muntadir thought, but then subsequently also not doing nearly as much as Ghassan thought later,

because later on, Ghassan seems to think that wittingly or unwittingly Ali was looking to murder and usurp his brother's place as king which from our his own internal monologue we know Ali's aid never considered never once never once did he think he was earnestly being a traitor. No, and it does it does foreshadow one of my pet peeves in literature of Muntadir is an asshole and a dilettante and is it even if he stays on the throne won't do any ruling. So it's clearly setting up the I never wanted it. I didn't want it, but I'm going to be king now angle for Ali,

which you think so you don't want to be in charge should not be in charge. They're not good at it. But to be fair, the people that want to be in charge are often power hungry assholes. Gassan. Yeah. I guess Ali is the is the balance of those two things, really, because he wants to have power and importance in his brother's service. He just doesn't want to be the face. Yeah, he doesn't want to be king. Like he it's not what he wants. He he wants to have a position of authority under his brother,

with which he can use his authority to better the plight of the Shafi. But so like by the end, Ghassan is like you were plotting to murder your brother and take the throne on a wave of tanzeem support and violence. And Ali is like, the fuck are you talking about? And I think it's because Ghassan thinks that's what he would do if he were in Ali's place. Absolutely. And we don't hear very much about uncles or anything. So like there aren't any and Dara talks about it and Ghassan talks about it. How like when you're in the palace and when you're the king, like people people are start coming for you

and there's people start trying to usurp you second sons are dangerous. Like people keep bringing this up. So it is a thing that happens in this. Reminds me of court. This reminds me very much of the the Ottoman system of inheritance, which was the king gave his favorite son sort of the best parts of the empire to rule. And then the sons all just murdered each other until only one of them was left.

Which that is the Ottomans, the Ottomans at least formalized that. The Ottomans formalized this in an inheritance system where however many sons you had, you would give the sons you hated like shit territories to rule over and your favorite son would get the territories closest to Istanbul and the best army is that way when they all started fighting, your favorite son had the best chance to survive. And the thing is, like I said, the Ottomans formalized that, but that's how a lot of monarchies

work historically. Like, I mean, even in your series, it happened a couple different times in the Achaemenid court. Aurora, in my series up to this point, I recorded episode 133 today. I have covered like 300 years of history. There has been one peaceful transfer of power and that guy was promptly usurped by his brother a few years later.

Oh, yeah, that was that that would have been Kambises was the only person to get the throne undisputed for any amount of time. And he was sort of like the founder of the empire. And he's the second king. And he didn't last very long. No, he made it like five years, seven years. He makes it seven years before there's a coup.

But that's the only peaceful transfer of power in my show in a hundred and thirty-three episodes. This is how monarchies worked. Ghassan is right to think this is plausible. Yeah, like it's it's it's I guess it's less believable that his second son is earnestly devoted to his older brother. I mean, he tells us, Ghassan tells us himself that when he had a final child and it was a boy, a lot of people were like, yeah, you're just going to kill that kid, right? Like right now. And then you find out that Ghassan is secretly soft for his son. He, he had a second son and like assassins came to his office in the palace

and were like, Hey, we can get rid of that baby for you. He beat them to death with his bare hands. I think they were implying they could get rid of the baby and his wife more or less, because his wife was protecting the baby. Yeah. Meanwhile, his wife is with the Ayan-ley and Ghassan would rightly have been like, oh no, we don't fuck with them. Yeah, because Ghassan knows why you don't fuck with the Ayan-ley. Because the Marids, yeah, when these assassins are like, we can take care of

that second son problem for you, he beats them to death himself. So you have the first king in history to love his second son, the first second son in history to love his brother. And because none of them could speak to each other or tell the truth ever for any reason, you have problems. Well, and it's partly due to the fact that by law Ali isn't allowed to have children because that cuts down on the likelihood that he'll try to usurp the throne. Yeah, because he can't marry or have kids, because then you have like nephews that might try even if he doesn't usurp the throne. You have nephews that could.

Yeah. Sensible legal policy for a monarchy, really. But anyone who plays anyone, anyone who plays Crusader King three will know about like forcing second or third sons to become celibate priests or whatever. Which is exactly what Ali chose to do. He chose to become a sheikh, more or less. Well, but he like but his prescribed role is to become Muntadir's future commander. So he also has to go to the military academy

and learn how to do that. So he hasn't seen his dad for more than like a day or two at a time in years. So to him, Ghassan is this cold, distant autocrat. And Muntadir is the brother that he loves, but also an idiot. Let's be clear, Muntadir is an idiot. Which is correct. Muntadir does have a couple redeeming qualities,

but he is also a massive moron. Like he is palace street smart. He knows how to play the game in the palace, but anything beyond that, he's just a fucking moron. He's just really fucking stupid. He's going to be so bad as king. Yeah, I foresee that being a short reign. Yeah, Mutadir is going to be a terrible king.

In part because I assume in the next book,'re going to bring Dara back and Dara... For context listeners, at the end of the book, everything goes haywire. Dara tries to escape slash kidnap Nari to get her... To stop her from marrying Muntadir. Meanwhile, Nari has negotiated like an amazing marriage contract that gives her everything she could ever want to end like, yeah, sure. I'll have a kid for this guy. And makes Moontadir miserable in the process.

Yeah. Like Nari is the only one coming out on top. Dara tries to run away with her so that she can marry Jamshid instead, who is gay. And everything goes to shit. For Moontadir, for her betrothed husband. Everything goes to shit. They inadvertently discover through implication that at some point Nari claimed Dara's slavery because I think it happened.

I think I think it happened when she touched it. Yeah, she touches his emerald ring and that they don't quite realize it at first, but she has bound him to her as a servant. She just doesn't know it. So when she says the phrase, I wish she doesn't know what she's invoking. And Dara goes on a horrifying magical rampage that very nearly kills Ali and Jumshid and does kill basically everyone else. He's only stopped when Ali falls in the cursed lake, gives his true name

to the Marad, which I don't think would have worked if he wasn't part Ayanle. Which I don't think would have worked if he wasn't part Ayanle. No, he becomes whatever the Ifrit do to their slaves that become like the genies. Ali gets that but the water monster version. Yeah, the Marred version. And you find out that the Marred are still mad. The Marred have like a very, you get the implication from the beginning of the book have like a blood feud with Dara specifically, like the, the fucking Maured of the Euphrates or whatever river they're at,

not the Euphrates. It's a later one, the one near Devabad, um, tries to murder them. So the Ma Red have it out for Dara. And so they have it out for Nari and they know Dara is in the way. Or I think actually, I think they probably have it out for like, Menusia. But yeah, it's also implied that when the rook attacks them, it was sent by like the Perry or someone, but it was sent after Dara, not Nari. That's true. Yeah. Dar Dar is perceived as a war criminal by the Jinn

and as like a crime against God by the other supernatural being because he's he shouldn't be alive. So anyway, Ali falls in the lake, becomes a super powered maraud vessel, becomes like body horror Aquaman. Yeah, body horror Aquaman. Yeah, body horror Aquaman cuts off Dara's hands. We lose his contact with his slavery and Dara disappears into ash. But I I get a strong sense that like they're going to bring Dara back.

And the first thing he's going to do, because at the end, very depressed Nari still has to marry Muntadir and tow the party line about what happened on the lake so that none of this stuff gets out to the public. But you can tell also that none of the Davos believe what she has believe the lie that she is forced to say. It's made very clear that she's she's does she says what she's supposed to say to make Ghassan happy.

But it's very clear that the the Deva that are gathered to hear her account of the story, all of them understand she's saying what she's been forced to say. And they all just sort of do the definitely you got it. Whatever you say. We're definitely not planning to go into rebellion anytime soon. And and I get the sense that like Dara is going to come back and just immediately start trying to murder Moontadir. Oh my god, yeah. He's going to murder Moontadir as soon as he gets a chance.

He only didn't because Nari stopped him. Yeah, the... I mean, Moontadir did insult his dead sister, so... Yes. Again, Moontadir is a dumbass. His dead violently brutalized sister. Violently brutalized sister. Muntadir is like, ha ha, it happened and we would do it again.

Because Muntadir is a dumbass and is facing like a literal warrior god and thinks it's good to taunt him. To be fair, Muntadir is also in crisis because he just watched his, his like, boyfriend. On again, off again lover. On again, off again, I think actual favorite love partner boyfriend get shot full of arrows. And his brother got shoved into the lake that murders you. The lake that murders you for extremely unclear reasons.

Because the Marat are pissy all the time. And now we know why. But so yeah, like at the end you have this like, Dara is coming back. They have his slave ring and we know where his like soul piece is in the crypts under the castle. Yeah, every every jinn and Deva has like a bit of their own hair, like baby teeth and fingernails in a locket. So that if they get enslaved, they can be rescued by a Nahid. Yeah, it's like a way to protect yourself. If you ever get enslaved, if you get the slave vessel

and your little piece of you back, a Nahid healer can free you. Which can regrow you a whole ass body. Yeah, from your spirit. Yeah. Which seems like maybe it would be important to Nari and Dara given that's the whole issue in their relationship. Yeah, which I feel like once Nari, if Nari figures out that's a thing that can be done is like going to cause problems, I think for Muntadir. I also have the

feeling that even if this marriage goes through, I don't think they ever like exist in the same room. I don't think, I don't think Nari, well first off, they there's a time limit built in because she's not 25 yet and they don't have to get married until she's 25. And I think at the end of this book, she's like 20 still or 21. Yeah, she can't be more than 21. It doesn't take that long. Yeah, she's 20 at the start of the novel. So she's like 21 maybe

and she says you got four years before she actually has to be married because they say at the beginning of her 20th, her first quarter century. So she's got four years of not actually having to like touch Moutadir. Yeah. I think she's going to she's going to take full advantage of it. Moutadir will take full advantage of because he would rather have her murdered. Which is going to be four years of her and because Ali is exiled for his various embarrassments, fuckups and turning into a fish person at the end of the book.

Crimes, crimes and powers and giving his soul over to the Maraad. Yeah, it's also revealed that he and his sister are like vaguely water benders, maybe like even before all of this happens. I think it's I think it's a secret. I'm a thing. Yeah, I mean, I get the sense that like that's their special thing. Like like speaking is a Ria or healing or using a Zulfikir or whatever. Yeah, the but so he's exiled, which means the royal court is down one money guy.

But Nari is great with money. So I think she and Ghassan are going to become very good friends. Yeah, I feel like Ghassan for how much of a bloodthirsty asshole he is. I will give him that she did craft the character in Ghassan, who is a bloodthirsty asshole he is. I will give him that she did craft the character in Ghassan, who is a bloodthirsty asshole, but also a loving father and also, I think above all things, cutthroatly practical. And that is his whole deal. He's like, I would love to do more for the Shafi'it. But if I did anything more for the Shafi'it than I am currently doing,

the Deva would go into armed revolt the next morning. Yeah, he's like, I can't do anything for the Shafiq because the Deva were revolt. I already give the Deva somewhat preferential treatment in some things, but I can't do this and I can't do that. I need to be as practical as possible. I'll give that at least he has a loving father. I'll give him credit for that, because I mean, as Muntadir points out, if anyone besides Ali had did anything Ali did, they would have been murdered a long time ago. Executed a long time ago.

Yeah. So yeah, I think it's gonna be deeply, it's gonna be Ghassan and Nari, like keeping Devabad from falling apart. Yeah, by the skin of their teeth. And Muntadir is going to be pissy and Kava is going to be pissy. And they're both going to be doing inadvertently their absolute best to make everything much, much worse. Yeah, I think because she is an Nahid and respected by the Davis, because she's good with money, like she's going to be so practical And I think the two of them will keep the city running for a little while until until Dara gets brought back to life somehow. And apparently Manezia is alive and I feel like she's going to show up.

And that's the thing about the city. I think the city is going to be a little bit more more of a place for the devas to live. And I think that's the thing about the city is that until Dara gets brought back to life somehow. And apparently Manezia is alive and I feel like she's gonna show up and that's not gonna be good. No, this is revealed in literally the last sentence of the epilogue that Manezia,

who is believed to be Nari's mother and is definitely Jamshid's mother and who was thought dead after some sort of ifrit attack 20 years ago is still alive, is still in contact with like. Kaveh and Nisreen. Yeah, Kaveh and Nisreen and, you know, presumably other Deva nationalist rebels. Probably the probably the top priest at the temple

or some of the priest or something. And very clearly was somehow involved in semi freeing Dara because I think they said they're going to have. They're going to try to get Minesia to resurrect Dara. Yes, because because she knows how to do it. The the grand priest of the Fire Temple makes that explicit to Nari when she visits that they haven't been able to resurrect any slaves since Menezia's death, so she does know how to do it and

she is out there. She did something where Dara was partially freed, everyone around her ended up dead, and Dara was found covered in blood, wandering the desert naked. By the parry that became his friend that saved them from the Marit at the river. Yeah. And so some sort of shit happened 20 years ago and Minesia is very clearly involved in some kind of plan for extremely violent revolt in the immediate future. Question.

We're projecting a little bit. Is Minesia going to be a good person? No, absolutely not. Because every description we get of her throughout the entire book is that she was an asshole Everyone is terrified of Manezia People are terrified of her Nisreen even Nisreen who was her assistant is fucking terrified of her memory Even the people that worship her as like again like a deified king like Manezia

like again, like a deified king like Minesia or like, like Nisreen are fucking terrified of her. The like everybody who meets Nari is initially terrified because they remember the last person who looked like that would like just suddenly curse you with plague. If you looked at her wrong, even Ghassan is who. I think it's implied and I think it's implied had the hots for her, right? What wanted to marry her? I think he also was smart enough not to open his fucking mouth and have it sewn shut

I think he had the hots for a number one and number two I think he was trying to do back with her what he's trying to get Muntadir and Nari to do now Which is make peace between the tribes through an intermarriage. Absolutely. Well, it's it's kind of implied that like he was going to propose when she came back from the trip, when she vanished. Correct. And so instead, he ends up marrying an Iodlai woman to make a different political marriage. Yeah. And an equally disastrous and violent woman, frankly, is what we have learned.

She is none of the memories of Ali's aid and Zainab's mother are good either. But yeah, there's so like Menezes going to come back. She's going to be evil. Yeah, absolutely. Or at the very least, like chaotic neutral. Yeah, like, yeah, she's not going to be great. I feel like she's going to come back and do genocide is my expectation. She's going to come back and attempt to do genocide to Dave Abad, probably

with Dara's help. Yeah, probably. Mootadir is going to continue to be useless. I don't think Ali's aid is going to get murdered. No, because he's being sent to Gizaria. Where they assume he will be assassinated because he no longer has royal protection. Right. But the Arabian Peninsula is real close to Ethiopia where his mom's family lives, and he needs some answers about these fish powers

About his aquaman powers So I think I think he's gonna go home and be like mom. What the fuck is this? And the ion may will have a better answer because of their their their relationship with the mara. I think yeah I I think that's pretty clear So I think I don't know because there's two I don't know, cause there's two more books. I know that there's two more books and somewhere Ali is going to end up back in devabad. Manezi is going to end up back in devabad. Dada Yavahush is going to come back and end up in devabad.

And the question is which one of these assholes is going to come out on top, which one of them is going to ruin Nari's life in a new and more interesting way. Because all Nari has tried to do is survive. And all the people around her keep making her life objectively worse. Every time she's about to get a leg up, like negotiate her own marriage contract, something even worse and stupider happens to make her life just objectively more horrible. Yeah. Well, I know just from like the plot. Like the cover synopsis for the second book,

which is country of country of some nation of fire. Copper because it's city of brass, something of copper, something of fire, I think. And it's city of brass, kingdom of copper or something of fire, I think. And it's the city of brass kingdom of copper, which sounds very Ethiopia coded, frankly, and the empire of gold. So it keeps getting bigger, too. Yeah. And gold to me sounds like a not like it's like a not like it's not. He'd coded to me. Yeah.

Well, like city of city ofass is very like Dave Abbott specifically. I think that also means that the scope of each book is going to get bigger as well. I don't know. Well, because we're going to have to continue following Ali Ali. And he's far away. I mean, like from the the doilus perspective, like Nari is going to come out on top because she's the heroine. I mean, they don't always, but I feel like she will. Hopefully. Yeah. She's the only one who even from like the meta perspective, I can say that about though.

Like, I don't know what's going to happen to Ali. I feel like he'll survive because it doesn't seem like that dark a book, but it's not. It could be like a second act could get real fucking dark with this. Like it's already borderline. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like, I think it's like, I think it's like, I think it's like, I think it's like, I but it's not it could be like a second act could get real fucking dark with this. Like it's already borderline. Yeah. I think Dara has to die because he represents he's going to

come back, get a come back and then be killed again. Like for real this time. Yeah. I think Ali at least temporarily has to end up on the throne because there's going to be a coup. So that means Ghassan has to die for anything to work. And Muntadir is fucking useless. That's not going to last for very long. Muntadir is one of those characters like the longer you know him and the more you interact with him, you see why some people like him. We also see how more shit he is.

Muntadir is a fantastic brother. An amazing brother. If they were just a normal, even noble family. And a good son. Yeah. If they were just like a noble family, not even like regular people, they would all have great relationships with one another. But because they have to run this shit, Muntadir buries himself in wine and hookers. Wine and flesh.

What, what is it? Uh, Zeynep, their sister. Yeah. Buries herself in wine and. Handmaids. I get the feeling that it's like, she just does, you know, she just like drinks wine, appreciates like art, hangs out with, hangs out with the girl squad. And Ali, which leaves Ali and Ghassan as the only two people we know in the family

who are both invested in getting anything done because mom's fucked off back to her home. Yeah, I do think, I do think everyone does have a good point where they keep when they keep trying to Moutadir and Ghassan keep trying to accuse Ali of plotting a coup, even though he wasn't, they all do. All of them do accurately identify that Ali is the only one who would be good at running the kingdom. Yeah. Even though he might even though he might cause a civil war.

Aside from the fact that like something horrible would have to happen to Muntadir and Ghassan doesn't want that either. Like if Ali was the older brother and Nari came along it would be Ghassan's fucking dream because you'd have this extremely competent, but like out of the loop Nahid and his extremely competent son. Like they're actually a perfect political match because they could like prevent the city from destroying itself. And Ali's penchant for helping the Shafi could be politically mediated and made better through

the fact that she's a Nahid and respected by the Davis. Right. Like there's they have literally anything in common. Neither of them are horrible people. And that's that's the high bar that Ghassan has set and cannot reach because of Muntadir. Because Muntadir's- Ghassan, I can see a version of things where shit gets really bad and Ghassan is like, I'm sorry Moontadir, but you either have to run away or I'm gonna have you killed. I think, yeah, I think if Ali just hadn't gotten himself exiled and stripped of power, I think there was a chance in the future if things got bad, that like Ghassan might have disowned, you know, disowned

with a knife, Moutadir, except that as we pointed out, Ghassan loves his kids. Yeah, it's really a flaw for a king. Being a good dad. You can't be you can't be a good dad and a good king. You can't. Yeah. Think of it. Look at it from a historical perspective. You can't be you can't be a good dad and a good king You can't yeah But think of it look at it from a historical perspective a lot of the Roman emperors that were the best at being emperors

Their kids turned out to be shit Absolute shit. Yeah, like the like the first or second time a Roman emperor actually managed to pass the throne to his actual kid It was horrible Caligulaula who's Caligula the or was it common? It was one of it was one of those two, one of the two that started with the CIA was fucking insane. Yeah. And they're like and then one of them was fucking Marcus Aurelius kid. That's common.

This is common. Who was shit? Yeah. Like this is a thing that happens in monarchies. And you can look at this to like any other country to like. But like so you've again, we keep talking about explaining it, but I want to give her the author credit for this political situation she set up. You have the city with this monarchy where you've got the useless son and the good son,

but the good son is politically liable because he has good instincts about the poorest of the population. But that upsets a different minority population. The Davos, who do have a somewhat justified claim as being an oppressed religious minority, who are also still incredibly racist to the Shafi for religious reasons, but like don't deserve the racism and oppression that they get at the hands of the ruling class are looking to foment rebellion. You've got all these different actors in places who all of them are mostly trying to do their best, but just most of them suck ass as people.

The only person who has like a decently good heart is Nari and all she can the best she can do because she's so out of her depth is try to keep herself alive And all the people around her keep making that harder like While simultaneously thinking they are providing the best option. No, there's one other good person in the book I just I figured this out or like mostly good other good person in the book. I just I figured this out or like mostly mostly good person is I don't remember his name.

I think it's I think it might be Cosro of the high priest. Oh, no. Shit, this is an important cartier. The high priest, the high priest of the fire temple. He is like I assume because he is an old, old David man who has been around for at least a couple of minor rebellions. Like he has some prejudices, but he is overall very understanding of the situation in the world at this point.

Yeah, because he's also the one like that leads the like the devas and like just accepting what Nari says that the king's at the there at the end of the book. He's like actually nice to Nari when she visits the temple. He is the only Deva person she meets who isn't trying to take advantage of her for political gain. Like he's the only one that understands that she doesn't understand. Yeah. Like he's the only one that that like recognizes that Nari doesn't know

what she represents to the Davis and isn't ready to fill that role. To the degree that I like it would not surprise me if he knows her actual background. I wonder if he knows Menezes actually alive. I can't imagine you could be that highly placed in the community and not. And not know. Yeah, like he's he is the religious leader of all of them. You hear things when you're in a position like that.

Yeah. But yeah, he seems to be the only one that recognizes that like Nari can't be the leader they all want her to be right now. He's the one that he's the one that says that greatness takes time. Yeah, there we go. I found so we have Nari and two very old men with worldly experience who have seen enough shit go down to take a step back. He and Yakub would get along, I think. Yeah. The everyone else sucks.

Dara sucks for like, he's nice and clearly cares for Nari. He also never tells her anything like Dara keeps secrets to the point where like as the reader you want to strangle him because aside from the one giant exposition dump, he's like, oh, I don't want to talk about that. Like, like, yeah, to the point where like when, when he's trying to escape Dave about with her, he's like, I'll tell you when we, when we get out of here. I'm like, no, you won't. This is like the third time you've promised that and you haven't done it any other time. Right. You'll just, you'll spend five more pages doing a history lesson and I'll be left with more questions.

Yeah. So like I don't believe you'll explain it any more this time than you did any of the other times. Nisreen, even though she is doing her best, also like wants Nari to be the Nahid, like the Banu Nahida, you know? Like they need her to be the leader of the Devas. Clearly that's what Kaveh wants. Like he's just a Deva nationalist.

Right, he is actively organizing a coup. Yeah, like he's the political leader of this in that like he has ingratiated himself into the royal palace to better facilitate overthrowing the royal family Like he is the perfect scheming vizier. Yeah, he is they portray him She chakra Borty does a really good job of like portraying him is like he's the compromise candidate who is loyal to Ghassan And Ghassan held the first three quarters of the book and Ghassan has him there you get it makes sense because it's like

three quarters of the book and Ghassan has him there you get it makes sense because it's like Throwing a bone to the Devo community, right? and then in like the final few chapters as as Nari starts to pull it more strings and Unrelated accidents start biting people in the ass you come to realize. Oh, no Kava is It's one of the worst people in the story but like it's weird because for come to realize, oh no, Kava is one of the worst people in the story. But like, it's weird because for again, for a lot of the reasons, I don't think he's not always evil. No, he's just bad. Yeah, like trying to like end the religious persecution of his people.

Sure. And like you could even to some degree understand wanting to restore the family to monarchy that you believe are divinely appointed. But the restoration of the Nahid's is something that you can, to some degree, understand from someone like Kavei, because he also wasn't around when the Nahid's actually ruled. So he doesn't know really, really at a personal level, know the evil shit they got up to. Right. Like the burning of the Shafi'ites because he wasn't there.

Well, that that is something I did want to talk about is one of the consistent themes through the book is that different sides have their own history and the history that's written by the victors is often not the history, even as the victors themselves actually remember it. That is, yeah, this is I've talked about this in a different book we cover and I can't remember which one, but it was like a story telling you about the power of storytelling because the history that Dara remembers because he lived through it is different than the

story that the Katanis wrote down. But that's even different than the story that the Katani kings remember themselves and have told themselves. And it's different than the story that the Davis and the Deva quarter remember. Right. And, and obviously this is something that applies to many, many, many things historically all over the world. But like, especially because I've already made the John Brown connection with

a NOS in my head. Like it's hard not to see Ali's sudden realization that everything isn't what he was taught in school as like a very American tale of, Oh no, like we also did war crimes. Are we the baddies moment? Yeah. Like this whole book is Ali slowly learning that his hero, his name, who he, who he's the namesake of, Zaid Al Qatani,

may have also been a war criminal and an asshole. And it runs parallel to Nari discovering that Dara, her savior, who she desperately loves, thinks she wants to love and like literally proposed marriage to. Right. Like, and is one of the only people who has murdered or been complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people over the last couple of centuries. Possibly millions when you count in all the people that have died under the command of all of his masters that he murdered. Right. Like we watch him in the one memory we see. He like reduces a city to fire and blood, a whole city.

Yeah, the it's it's what is it? It's a here, opolis or something. I don't think she they're in her opolis when she sees the memory. I don't know if the memory happened in her opolis. Mm hmm. I think those just the memory that she happened to see. At least that's OK. That's the way I read it, because he seems confused that it's gone, but maybe he's the one that did it. It's possible.

He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember his time, but the. But you know, it's so both of them are discovering that like these these ancient figures that they look up to were actually monsters. Yeah. And hey, look, it's that thing that I like to point out in my podcast of like, and yeah, and then they took everybody as slaves. Like you don't get to be a world leader or a military leader and be a good person period. Really?

I mean, like if I may, the anarchist critique always, you can't be a good person and be president. It's impossible because the number one, what it takes to become the kind of person that gets elected president, you're going to have done horrible things somewhere along the way. And then once you become president, there's no way for you to stay a good person and to keep that role, which is something Gassan is trying to impart to Ali like the whole time.

And yeah, the like, so you can't be in charge and be a good person, period. And that is one of the morals of the story. And also, like you extra can't do that when you are when the tools available to you are the magical power to burn everything and spears. Like that just adds a level of brutality. We don't have in the modern world flaming swords that can't be healed by the only people that can do healing. Because that's one of the things about the gizaria is that like their swords with fire and poison besides a language that no one else can learn, they have weapons that no heat that do wounds that no healer can heal. Oh, what was the name of the swords?

The Zulfikar? The Zulfikar. Yes, is that was another one of those fun historical things that I realized. That is the name of the in Islamic legend, the magical sword given to Ali, the founder of the Shia branch by Allah. Oh, really? It's Zulfiqar in like Islamic legend is kind of the Muslim Excalibur. That that makes a lot of sense.

Honestly, that that makes a lot of sense, honestly, that that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And the description in legend is very similar to the description in the book of like a forked tipped scimitar sort of thing. But yeah, it's this very like realizing that history's heroes are also history's greatest monsters kind of arc for both of the main characters. Yeah. Do you? Yeah, it's very much.

Yeah, them learning that like the people they've been looking up to are fucking terrible people are now having to like being forced into a situation where they have to essentially find a new path for both of them. Do you do you think some final postulations here? First off, we've already discussed a lot of the characters think Minesia is going to come back. We think she's going to be shit. We think Dada is going to come back and he's going to be more shit that he already was.

Or he's going to like have like learned a lesson. Wouldn't that be a twist? He comes back and Minesia is like conquer the city for me. He's like, no, no, I've learned the power of love. I can't know if you excuse me. I'm going to go fuck your daughter now that I can. It's a good question. That's a good question, because obviously I don't think we're ever going to actually I don't know if she and Muntadir

are ever going to actually get married. I think some shit's going to go down before they can actually be married. No, that would make sense. Or like maybe they do. And then but like. And then shit immediately goes down. It should be like that is not going to last. Yeah, there's no way that they stay married.

I also don't think that even in their marriage, they don't even do the marriage night consummation. I don't think. No, I know it's a five year time skip to the next book. So it's about to the time when the marriage should be happening. Right to when it should be happening or right after it happened. And presumably, Jamsheed will be up and working again. So I don't see why they would ever need to go through that. Presumably at this point, like they'll have let Nari actually heal Jamsheed.

But like even though they have to produce errors or whatever, I don't think they'll have even pretended to try to do that yet. This isn't this isn't that kind of book or this kind of story. I don't think I don't think she's going to like make Nari actually have sex with Muntadir. Yeah. And even if she did, just like to emphasize both of them accepting the politics of it. It's not a story that makes sense for there to be a pregnancy or a child

introduced to at this stage of the plot. No. So I don't think they do. I think that like even if they have to have a wedding ceremony, they have the ceremony and then just never go back to never seeing each other. Close the curtains and then they just like sit and drink silently on their own corners of the bed. Yeah, there's no way Moutadir like Moutadir likes to fuck, but I don't think he would ever actually willingly fuck Nari.

He and Jamshed will kick Nari out of the marriage bed. We're going to have like a fucking was it from Game of Thrones? Was it Marjorie Terrell talking to the to Renly where it's like, do I need to get my brother to come in, do my brother to come in to get you started? Or I can flip turn on my stomach and you pretend I'm him. I can turn over, pretend I'm Jamshed. Again, the only person who seems really mad that that Muntadier is like Pam is

Ghassan just because it is It's like unbecoming and it I don't it's it would be because it's politically inconvenient for him to Want a male lover, but he's just like do you have to go to every brothel you find? Like, it's rude. Yeah, but it's funny. Cave is like the father who's just mad that his son is fucking the royals as opposed to his son being gay. Like, I think he'd be mad if John Sheen was having sex with Zainab too. Like, yeah, absolutely.

Because he secretly he has the exact same politics that Donna does, which is that you shouldn't be mixing with the Katanis. I think Ali is going to and flies and flies. I do think Ali is going to make a return to Dave about somehow. Oh, yeah, he's gonna come back with weird, not he'd power. Sorry, we have weird Maher powers. weird Mahid power. Sorry, weird, weird Ma'red powers. Having learned a little bit more about how to, to weaponize the

giant poison lake that they're surrounded by. Actually, here's the thing. I don't think the lake is poisoned. I think that there's just Ma'red in the lake. Yeah. Murder anyone that falls into it. It's not that the water is poison. It's that it's full of angry Ma'red. Yeah, no, he's gonna, he'll come back after a sojourn in Ethiopia and then That and they'll all go back to trying to fuck with Nari Everyone's gonna show back up and Rue Nari is going to be doing her best to keep this city going because it's the only place She has well and everyone's going to show up and fucking ruin it.

My guess is that like it's it's only been 20 years, which for a Nahid, like a pure blooded Nahid like Minesia is meaningless, like it's no time at all. They can easily live to like 300. Yeah, like three and three hundreds for gin that don't magically heal themselves. Like, I guess the night he lived for a long fucking time. Yeah. Yeah. The but I think shit's going to go down.

And I suspect because she took time to set up a bunch of characters back in Cairo and the fact that Ali has a vested interest in the human world. Yeah. I think both of them are going to like run off to the human world and hide out when shit hits the fan of the second book, because we have that setting ready for us. You think you think that Ali is like propensity to be interested in humans was more than just the

setup for him to become friends with Nara? You think that they might actually end up in the human world together? I think like, I think something's going to go terribly wrong for him, because that's been very clearly set up. Ali's gonna have to go pretend to be human and he's he is going to go to the only part of the human world He knows jack shit about which is Cairo Where he's not the only thing that Nari knows anything about when shit hits the fan and to be fair He has been taught to speak Arabic with a better Cairo accent Specifically. Yeah. Yeah that that is the you know for anybody who knows things about the Arab language the the fun linguistic Easter egg is that Ali Zayd speaks flawless like

classical Quranic Arabic and And Nari thinks that's hilarious because like he doesn't talk like a person He talks he talks like a priest reciting like biblical Latin or some shit, right? Like, yeah, it's like she's like, you sound like an old professor. Like nobody speaks Arabic like that. So yeah, I think they will. I think we will revisit Cairo in the next one. We should because that's where she's setting is there.

You just want to read the next book. Should we just read the next book? Probably. We're going to do what I did with feed and just end up reading the next books anyway. Oh, I'm definitely going to end up reading the next books anyway. Because again, I love the politics of this world. It's it's a book. It is, I think, above all things, despite the magic, despite the nonsense,

it is a believable political situation that she has constructed. The Shafi have legitimate complaints about their treatment. The clearly the Davis have some legitimate complaints about their treatment. You understand why there are David nationalists, right? Like you understand why they exist. You understand where Ghassan's coming from. You understand where the Qatani's are coming from. You also understand why they might have done some of the shitty things they've done. I'm not justifying any actions of any of them. You can understand why Dari Alvahush did the things he did back during his rebellion.

No, it's all very realistic politics. And realistic behaviors from a lot of terrible people. Yeah. And there's frankly. No, it's all very realistic politics and realistic behaviors from a lot of terrible people. Yeah. And there's frankly very. Well, the least realistic part is that nobody ever tells anyone anything. And even that she constructs into the plot really well of like, aside from the fact that Nari should be talking as much as she needs to,

to get what she wants. Like everybody else is so tied up in palace etiquette that it's not surprising that they aren't good at sharing important information. And Dara's just an asshole. He's just a secretive asshole. And Dara's a dick, yeah. And Dara's just a secretive dick.

I do think he genuinely cares for Nari. But also if you look at it from Dara's perspective, the last time he shared important information, he got murdered and enslaved. Why would he share anything ever? like is stuff that you see in the politics of, you know, the late Persian Empire and like, the Islamic Middle Ages of, you know, like Zoroastrians as a religious minority who also, like, have their own grudges and hatreds against different groups in Iran under Arab rule, like Like it's all very realistic to the mythology

and the part of the world that she's describing too. Yeah, like they're all it's what I love is that it's all very believable. Like, yeah, despite being magical and full of like all of these mythical creatures and all this other stuff, it still to me feels grounded. You know? Yeah, it's it's very grounded for a book that features immensely powerful bird fairies and, you know, Matt and Wolverine as healing powers.

Yeah. Wait, wait. Maybe I'm pulling it wrong. But wait, wait, wait. Is is that as rebellion? The one he's leading? Is he like fucking Bobbock? I know he's he is like a million people in that. The he's like Bobbock Corrupted.

He's you know, like he's like Babak Karabd and he's you know like he's Babak there the in Abu Bakr or ever after the the Muslim conquest like when historical maps start to show all of modern Iran as like this is the caliphate now the north western quarter as their most of like Azerbaijan. Yeah, the Azerbaijan. Were still their own independent kingdoms that had still had Zoroastrian nobility for like 300 years. Yeah. Like, so that that is a part of that history, too.

Oh, that he ever who's the current night. He's not he's actually not. He's not he's not cool enough to be a current night. The thought crossed my mind. I was like, well, no, like, Bob, I would be like, Yeah, sure. Free the slaves. Just leave me the fuck alone. Bob, I could say leave to leave. Yeah, do whatever the fuck you want. But leave me alone. Dada is very much like we need to retake the capital from the heretics. Yeah. No, he's he is more like the sons of Yazdegerd the third who ran off. Actually, he's a lot like this who ran off to China. Yeah.

At the peak of the conquest and then came back to fight a rebellion that didn't go anywhere. The difference is that almost went somewhere until he got enslaved. Yeah. The. It's OK. We don't need to think about the war crimes that would have happened. Should Dada have succeeded in his rebellion? Because they can't imagine the retaking of David Badd and what and then the probably the war that would eventually

push its way into Arabia. Oh, yeah. It would have gone. It's a oh, yeah. Would have gone well. Would have not had war crimes. Yeah. Had had Darrell won that fight, it was going to be really bad for everybody. Don't worry. He's our love interest, everyone. He is. I need you to know he is really sexy. Yeah. Apparently, apparently being the slave slave though, makes you look sexier

because it makes you more appealing to humans and they're more likely to abuse the power of you if you look appealing to humans. So like the fact that he was a slave makes him even sexier and more charismatic than he was to start with. Yeah, I want listeners to know on this topic in particular that I had Aurora and Roberto on my podcast

like a week ago, and we basically recorded a whole podcast episode about how surprised and impressed Aurora and I were about the almost sex scene, despite the fact that neither of us particularly related to the scenario. Neither one of us would be, yeah, are particularly relate to this scenario.

However, we were both impressed at the intimacy and the emotions of it that it conveyed. I thought it was really well written. Yeah. Like they don't actually have sex as we. Like they don't actually have sex. As we said, they actually have sex, but like the way that they both feel and the way it's written is actually really well done. Yeah, it is.

It is one of the better steamy, almost smutty scenes that I have read that it's it does a good job of not targeting a specific audience. Yeah, I will. I will say I think maybe I'm wrong, but part of it comes down to the fact that they are set in a in a society that is very like like no contact. Just ask Ali like less contact between the men and the women and the women are veiled and stuff like that. They're like not really does a lot of longing.

She gets lots of butterflies in the pit of her stomach every time she sees Dada, you know, there's a lot of like longing for a person that's two feet away that you can't touch. So when they do touch for a little bit, it's like, oh, oh, then they get attacked. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then they are fighting skeleton monsters and at a living river and demons and a living river. Yeah. Yeah while wild book within and if you're feeling like there's not a Resolution that we're coming to it's because the book doesn't have one it is so we're not reaching a final point because the book ends

directly on a cliffhanger it Which is crazy. This is a debut novel from just like a woman who converted to Islam and started writing in her spare time. And it was picked up and with the biggest cliffhanger I have ever seen from a debut first book. She did. She by all by no means did she do the if this goes well, I'll work away for there to be a second novel.

There was a second novel coming from the moment this novel started. She never she never meant to resolve anything in this first book. Yeah, it it is the kind of thing that makes me feel like by the time this was submitted to publication, she had like the first 12 chapters of the next book already written down because this book ends with this book ends in the dark. Second act as like the beginning of the second act. Yeah. Yeah.

With like with with Nari having accepted that she's going to be a a political wife with Donna dead, Ali banished. This is like. And then it's like if it's like if Star Wars, a new hope left off on Luke, I am your father. Like that is the last line of this book is revealing that the secret parent is still alive. The secret parents alive and that like only a few people know about it and like what the fuck is going to happen.

It's if you haven't gotten this across, I really love this book. And I think Trevor, I think you said you did, too. Like, yeah, absolutely. It's it's well written. It's enthralling. It and audio book, I thought really well narrated. Oh, the audio book was great. I'll be tight right now.

If it weren't for the audio book, I wouldn't have known how to pronounce anything. Absolutely. Like even as someone who studies some of this stuff, listening to this book has made it so much easier for me to pronounce Dara Yavahush. Yeah, like her saying Dara Yavahush, like and me just saying Dara a lot. Like as an American, I would look at it and say Dara, which is not correct. The R is not that hard. It's almost like a D, you know. Yeah. The Dara. It's not that hard. It's almost like a D, you know? Yeah, the data.

And I would have looked up the word Caed and found like the Spanish pronunciation of it. Like, right. This book, Caed, the audio book was great. Chik Nace and Muntadir and you know, Alzaidi Alcatani.

Like, having it pronounced for you is wonderful. The narrator does a really great job with her like voices and separating the way she like says things. I love when she does the deep male voices. It amuses me like what she's never heard her. Her voice. Her Ghassan and her Dara are you get used to them because they both talk a lot, but

they are funny initially. Yeah, because I mean, it's you know, it's a female narrator doing like male voices. It's pretty great. Like this narrator way better than the one who did Left Hand of Darkness. I can tell you that. Oh, the narrator for Left Hand of Darkness sucked. It's so bad. If we both didn't have jobs that were just walking a shitload, I would not have been listening to that as an audiobook. No way.

Yeah, no. Thankfully, we both have jobs where we just walk around a whole bunch. So thanks for the audiobooks. I will say that, you know, just as a wrapping up away from the talking more about this one, that this podcast has knocked it out of the park for like series for me to binge lately because I listened to feed after your episode came out and then I did all four novels. And despite your warnings, I did start listening to the short stories and they're anything where anything with the from the perspective of a dying dog should come with a fucking trigger warning. Oh, yeah. For anyone to listen back to your episode about feed, we didn't really know it.

Then we I think we kind of got a warning from from from not strong enough. Good. Brie and Frye, the short stories connected to feed. Oh, God. You're not you think you're sad. You're not sad enough. You're not how sad you. You think you're sad. You're not sad enough. You're not how sad you think you're going to be. You're not sad enough. Listeners, I had just I sat and cried in my car

for like five minutes after getting through one of those short fiction pieces. It was rough. Shout out, Sean and Seanan for writing such a heartbreaking stuff. Man, look at me. Look at me. I've read two series now that had heterosexual romances that I cared about. Way to go, authors. Hey, and and both of them still contain sibling fucking.

both of them might still contain sibling fucking. Oh, man, I feel even worse now. Anyway, that's all we have. That's it. That's the end of the episode. On that note, we're done. Thank you all for listening. Thank you, Trevor, for being here. As always, everyone, please, particularly related to this episode, go check out the history of Persia.

You can learn all about the fire worshipers and what they, you know, what they believe. Listen to the specific episode about Anahita so you can learn about the founder of the Nahid dynasty and the people that can do healing. Listen to America's Secret Wars, Trevor's other show about America and its secret wars. And we can talk a little about the time we invaded Croatia, sort of. And there was a sexy fascist there nearby.

I'm not explaining it. Don't worry. Go listen to the episode. Anyway, thank you all for listening. Trevor. Thanks for being here. Goodbye. Bro. Are you fucking real man? Come on. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. Bye!