Chakraborty's debut novel, The City of Brass, debuted to high acclaim, and was a finalist for several science fiction and fantasy awards, including the the Locus Award, British Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award. Good and evil is pretty black and white here, but we understand how the evil queen falls further and further into evil based on her beliefs, her reactions to outside forces, and her prior mistreatment. Okay, so it sounds a bit like our big Western moment after all, but this makes it more relatable. Chakraborty draws you into an intricately crafted fictional world replete with layers of palace intrigue, surprise reveals of progenitors and their secret powers ( of course), gruesome, godless murders, genocidal wars, and a cast of self-serving political characters crafted so complexly and with so much background, we understand why they go over the line. We all need some escapism right now, and Fiction Unbound continues to celebrate non-Western fantasies-that is, stories whose settings and magical systems are rooted in traditions other than the well-worn, Anglo-European histories and mythologies-that are providing welcome relief from the problems of a very Western moment.
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