Too many people got Wyoming - more than actually lived in Wyoming - and this turn of events was so exciting that people stomped over to Facebook to protest. These quizzes were plenty diverting, and in the early days people shared them like joints or sparklers.īut this particular quiz had a bug. Select a party anthem (“YMCA”), a quality in a dream partner (“ravenous”) and presto: your spiritual home. The “actually” seemed to promise a solid, data-driven answer. 13, 2014, a bored-at-work BuzzFeed quiz ricocheted around the web: “ What State Do You Actually Belong In?” I prefer to think of myself as a merchant of delicate tasks.TRAFFIC: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral, by Ben Smith ‘That’s a very narrow-minded way of looking at it.

If you want to get lost in a fantastical world along with a charming, trouble-making heroine, this is the adventure for you. This is the author’s debut novel and the first in a trilogy that continues with The Kingdom of Copper and The Empire of Gold. There are oppressed half-djinns, the pureblood nobility who detest them, a prince yearning for equality for all, and the damage that tribalism does, especially to the most vulnerable. It’s an enthralling adventure with high stakes and surprisingly relevant political underpinnings. There are shape-shifters, black and white magic, giant flying monsters, djinns who are sometimes loyal and sometimes not flying carpets and a magical city with brass walls, hidden from human eyes.

Chakraborty does a nice job weaving the need-to-know details into the narrative.įrom the ghoul attack, it’s nonstop action as Nahri navigates a world of enchantment, djinn tribes, and long, long history. Then he bellows, ‘Suleiman’s eye! I will kill whoever called me here!’įear not if you’re not up on your monsters because 1) ghouls are humanoid creatures that hang out in graveyards and eat human flesh, and 2) author S.A. Or, more accurately, Dara - a djinn with green eyes and perfumed with smoke - suddenly appears in a flash of light. One day, while walking past the necropolis, a.k.a., the City of the Dead, in Cairo after performing a healing ritual, Nahri meets Dara. And oh, yeah, the fate of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom might rest in her tricky hands.

In this rich fantasy world, the streets of 18th-century Cairo are populated by djinn - shape-shifting creatures made of fire and air - nobles of all stripes, and our heroine Nahri, an orphan rogue with a remarkable gift for healing.

The city of brass a novel