Fantasy Anthology Review: The River of Silver by S.A. Chakraborty

 

The River of Silver is a short story anthology by S.A. Chakraborty, featuring short stories taking place in the world of her Daevabad Trilogy (The City of Brass, The Kingdom of Copper, The Empire of Gold). It's the type of work I've read for other authors before: stories taking place before, after, during and around the main story of a work, taking place often from other perspectives not explored or only referenced in the major work. And I've enjoyed a bunch of these types of works, like Yoon Ha Lee's Hexarchate Stories, NK Jemisin's Shades in Shadow (from her Inheritance Trilogy) or Martha Wells' stories from her Ile-Rien world.

Such works can work in two ways: they can reward those who really enjoyed the main trilogy by giving them new pieces to treasure. Or they can do that AND work for newer readers by giving them tastes of that world that may lead them to enjoy the original work.

The River of Silver is the former and not the latter - you need to have read the trilogy first, even if some stories can be read after reading only book 1 or 2 without reading book 3. And while I enjoyed the Daevabad trilogy a lot, I also felt that a large percentage of the stories within here didn't do much for me in terms of adding anything I cared about. There is some pretty good stories in here, a few at least, but I would say this work really only will work for diehard fans of the original series.


The River of Silver is told in chronological order, with the stories at the beginning taking place prior to the start of the Daevabad trilogy and then moving into stories concurrent with the series until it finishes with a couple of stories that serve as alternate or additional epilogues to the trilogy. A number of these stories are seemingly deleted scenes from original drafts of the trilogy which were then edited into their own little bits for publication here. A different number of these stories, especially the early ones, attempt to answer some questions about the setting that readers might have like: How on earth would Nahri's parents have met to give birth to her? How did Ghassan get married to Hatset, Ali and Zaynab's mother? How did Muntadhir and Jamshid meet and fall for each other?

The result is uneven, not helped by the fact that there are no longer stories here (or even novelettes) - everything here is fairly short, with some stories being REALLY short. A lot of the stories just feel like "okay, that's how it happened" or "that's how that character reacted to things" but aren't really interesting on their own or even answers to questions I cared about (some trilogy fanatics might disagree I guess). There are few stories that really capture the magic of the original trilogy, with only one really standing out - a deleted scene showing Ali on an adventure in between books 1 and 2 that is really fun and had a very good vibe as to who he was and how he acts.

This is not to say that is the only story that really works for me - a couple of the Jamshid/Muntadhir stories are lovely and made me smile, since that couple is great, an alternate epilogue featuring Zaynab and Aqisa and Dara is terrific, particularly in how it deals with the former two characters (Shippers can rejoice!), and the final story is a nice way of putting a bow on the Ali/Nahri romance after the series is over. These are pretty great and I enjoyed reading them.

But even these stories only add a bit of value add and are so short that it's hard to recommend buying this book unless you're a huge fan of the series and absolutely need more. Worth perhaps a library borrow I guess if you're like me and merely someone who very much enjoyed the trilogy but has moved on.