Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - First, Become Ashes

Magic (or maybe not?), cults, fandom culture, queer folks who get to exist and go on quests, this book hit so many marks for me. The themes of friendship and support and trust were really compelling. Though the darker parts of this book were incredibly hard for me to stomach (so please refer to the Trigger Warnings). I also felt that the author didn’t even need to include Deryn’s perspective to the split narrative. It wasn’t as present or fleshed out as the others, nor did it have much to offer to the story or plot. Overall, Deryn felt further neglected (which whether that irony because of Deryn’s story was intentional or not, tough to say). I think the text would have been stronger had that been scrapped. The rest of the then/now split worked for me, and it made sense to see Lark, Kane, & Calvin on this journey. This is a really heavy read about navigating trauma, life outside of a cult, and the possibility of magic. Moving, but tough tough tough.

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arithegnome's review

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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kelseyland's review

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I think that readers who have extensive familiarity with or participation in fandom culture are the ideal audience for this book, which deals extensively in tropes/topics that are popular in fanfiction but might be jarring for other readers. It's an intense book and deals extensively with trauma, so I would definitely recommend reading and heeding the content warning printed in the book.

Content warning, per book flap: First, Become Ashes contains explicit sadomasochism and sexual content, as well as abuse and consent violations, including rape.

Content Warnings

bookshelfsos's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

Why do I do this to myself? Why? I knew I probably wouldn't like First, Become Ashes because I didn't like Docile. But damn if the premise and the marketing didn't get me again.

The blurb on the front of this book promises that it will "tackle trauma and healing without flinching" which was incredibly misleading to the point of being irresponsible. Because while there is trauma - heaps of self-harm, abuse, and rape - there is no healing. At least not on the page. The journey from Lark being brainwashed by the cult he grew up in to "healed" is akin to teleportation: we were there one minute and now we're here. Tada! This is not a story about cult deprogramming. It is not a story about someone coming to terms with abuse. This is a story about tropes that Szpara thinks are fun and cutesy pop culture references, off-puttingly intertwined with graphic and intensely unsexy sex scenes.

Speaking of which, it feels irresponsible not to mention a warning about the sex scenes. Particularly if you are coming to this book looking for sensitivity around the subject of sexual assault or healing from sexual abuse, please know that you’re not going to get that here. The book warns you about the content at the beginning, but a content warning doesn’t have the context to inform the reader that this book doesn’t just contain scenes of sexual assault. It revels in them with voyeuristic pleasure (literally). If it seems like it might be more that just a bit irresponsible to lure readers in with a story of “healing from abuse” and then offer instead rape erotica, then I’m going to go ahead and call this book irresponsible. If you want to write rape erotica, do that. If you enjoy dark tropes, have the self-respect to own that. Just don’t dress up your darker fantasies in the politically correct language of the day and try to pass it off as “healing”.

Ok, with that out of the way I guess I’ll touch on some positives. I will say that I actually enjoyed the experience of reading First, Become Ashes more than Docile, mainly because I think Szpara has improved as a writer. So props to growth and development, I guess. I thought that the pacing and the technical aspects of the writing here were both good. Despite being very uninvested in the story (I can't really enjoy a story when I dislike every character), I managed to get through the book quickly and was actually curious about some of the more mysterious plot threads that were set up.

Who was Nova and where did she come from? Why would the city of Baltimore, in an otherwise entirely normal reality where they're hosting major conventions and have cool hipster neighborhoods, sell off hundreds of acres of a public park to a private individual and let them close it off and start a cult in the middle of the city? What did Deryn do to lose their position as an Anointed? Is magic real?

Sadly, the payoff for all of these questions is exactly nil. Not one of them will be answered, or at least not to my satisfaction.

The biggest frustration for me with First, Become Ashes is the wasted potential. In the right author's hands the story of two young men growing up in an abusive cult and then having one of them stop believing and "betray" the cult to the FBI is such a good hook. There is love and betrayal. There is confusion of what is real and what isn't. There are questions of loyalty and how far you should go to appease someone you love when they are doing harm to themselves. All of these questions make for compelling character motivations and arcs. But we never see that here because all 300 pages of First, Become Ashes are devoted to Szpara exploring things that he thinks are cute or cool to the detriment of any enjoyment that the reader might have had. I guess if your interests as a reader are perfectly aligned with the author's - if you enjoy Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, Harry Potter, cosplay, nerd culture, *and* BDSM - then it's *possible* you might find this book right up your alley. I would not say that it's a guarantee though, because everything here is superficial and ultimately irrelevant to the story. The trappings of geekiness and of kinkiness are seemingly just there to entertain the author and anyone else who finds kinship in shared love of intellectual property. Sadly, that's not nearly enough for me and this book proved to be a frustration and a disappointment.

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freddielounds's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated

I had such high for hopes for this after loving their debut novel, Docile, so much; unfortunately this one fell a bit flat. The multiple perspectives failed to elevate the story in any, real meaningful way and left the pseudo-enesemble cast under developed. The story maintains such an intense focus on decided protagnoists Lark and Calvin, that, as a result, the perspectives and characters of Derryn and Kane (who we get entirely in the past as world building) fall a bit flat. Additionally, the lack of perspective from Nova was a missed opportunity. Both the beliefs and practices of the cult as well as the extent of Nova's villainy are mostly left off page. To be clear, though Nova by no means comes across as a good person (the few flashbacks we do get are trully awful) there's a layer of removal there that creates a disconnect with the story. There is simply not nearly enough of her on the page for Nova to represent much more than an idea of a character. The fellowship as a whole felt underdeveloped and unexplored and Agent Miller is never given enough time on the page despite, as Nova's child, the story positioning her as the indirect cause of the cult's existence. It almost feels like she belongs in an entirely different story. Calvin's interests feel more like a convinient plot device vs. concious character choice, but, again, that may also be a symptom of how underdeveloped the entire novel feels as a whole.

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