Age of Ash

I didn't dislike this book and I can see how plenty of people would like it, but after a certain point I was tortured by the question of whether I should bother to keep reading. The world is rich and full of characters despite being bleak. Just about everyone is a scumbag, even the somewhat sympathetic characters. I can see the attraction to that, but I think it makes it hard to read.

It's well written, but has two particular problems. First, the author makes some choices that are just hard to understand as far as construction goes. There is a character who is murdered early on, and this is supposedly the impetus for the protagonist's journey going forward. However, the guy who gets killed is a POV character early on...for what reason? This feels too much like a wink toward fans of Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, and A Song of Ice and Fire: “Hey, we killed someone you thought important! It's one of those books.” Except in terms of story, the character is useless as a character. Everything revealed through his point of view is repeated later through other points of view. The story could have started with his murder. That's just an example of this sort of winking at the reader, and I just don't get it.

Abraham also resorts to frequent flashbacks and perspective shifts, and the introduction of new POVs as if they're cheap. Again, I just don't get it. This doesn't help tell the story. It just confuses things. The plot is just not that interesting. Kind of pedestrian.

To sum up: engaging enough prose to keep me reading through a flight from Denver to New Orleans, but not an interesting enough plot or world to keep me reading when I have other books available. This feels like the grimdark version of midlist fantasy; kind of throwaway.

I get the impression that the city of Kithamar itself is the main character of this story. The story is entirely self contained within this city, only vague allusions to a larger fantasy world are made. The city itself is characterized by an extreme wealth stratification that makes for a nice gritty fantasy read. The characters range from the ruling family to poverty stricken thieves. The main plot interweaves the different levels of the society as a cult like group try to maintain their control on the city. The manipulations through calls for patriotism are a dark reminder of many events that are happening in the real world. Alys provides the central character - a thief who is drawn into the plot after her brother's death.

Being so focused on one place allows a real depth to the world building for the city, giving life to a very real feeling place. Daniel Abraham has a beautiful prose style that works well to bring this place to life. The characters are interesting, although maybe not as well developed as the place. I am intrigued where the story will go now though - it felt reasonably self contained so far so it will be interesting to see how it develops in the series

3 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Kithamar is an ancient city, embodied in its ruler. But its plans have gone astray, and its current incarnation is powerless. Caught up in the machinations of would-be leaders are a young street thief and her cohort.

Review
I first came across Daniel Abraham via his A Shadow in Summer, remaindered in a cut-price bookstore. I took a chance on it and loved it. I thought the idea was genius, the writing incredible – smooth, intriguing, evocative. The rest of that series, the Long Price Quartet, was almost as good, and I felt that thrill of having discovered a talented new author.

When I bought the first book of his next series, The Dragon's Path, though, I wasn't as taken with it. It was fine, but I never got around to getting the next book. I tried again, with Leviathan Wakes, the first book of the now-popular Expanse series. I didn't care for it, and liked the video series even less. Still, I'm relatively tenacious/loyal to authors I like, so I picked up Age of Ash with enthusiasm. Sadly, it was another letdown. I've reached the point, at last, where I'll likely look at Abraham's next offering with more skepticism than joy.

There's nothing technically wrong with Age of Ash. The overall theme – an embodied city – is only a step away from the embodied poems of the Long Price Quartet, but it's a step in a very familiar direction. The prose is sound, the plot carefully mapped, the character arcs graphed. But it's the characters where the book goes wrong for me. They're complete, but to my mind very clinical – almost devoid of true emotion. We hear about their emotions, and the effects of those emotions, but there are only a couple of cases when we see or feel anything ourselves. While the story is structured around Alys, her friend Sammish is the only character I ever much cared about, and she's almost aggressively shown as a supporting actor.

Without that engagement and investment in the key characters, I never really cared much about what was happening. It was interesting in a mechanical way, but the book left me largely unmoved. There's a slight pickup in the ending, which has some nice touches, but it wasn't enough to carry the book, and I won't be going on to the sequels.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

First, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In this book, we follow a cast of characters living in Kithamar, a city with an ancient, bloody history. To get by, our characters have become proficient thieves. However, after the death of her brother, Alys is set on revenge. She follows in his footsteps, trying to complete his work while looking for his murderer.

Ultimately, this book was fine. I just felt like everything was a little lackluster. None of the characters gripped me and made me feel invested. The plot wasn't interesting enough to lift up the characters. It ultimately felt like a fantasy story I've read countless times, but without characters that I loved to engage with.

I think this book would definitely work for some people, just not me.

TW: death/death of a child/death of a sibling, gore, violence, suicidal thoughts, self harm, body horror