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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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 warning, per book flap: First, Become Ashes contains explicit sadomasochism and sexual content, as well as abuse and consent violations, including rape.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Torture
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Torture
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I feel like I just need a KM Szpara shelf for "what if fanfic, but taken EXTREMELY SERIOUSLY" and yes that's a compliment.
Szpara is fundamentally interested in the darker side of fanfic, the one that thinks about trauma and desire, except he plays it out extremely seriously. Both the plot and style owe a significant amount to the past...15 or so years of fanfic and its a testimony to writers like Szpara that it's becoming its own genre in the sense that it has recognizable motifs and movements in the larger story.
But the point of both this book and Docile is that stories of trauma and recovery aren't just food for dark fantasy, they're also psychologically terrifying and that in and of itself is a story.
In so many ways, this is a story about the difference between fantasy and reality, the lines that are safe to cross and the lines that are dangerous, the difference between wanting the story of the thing and the thing itself, with the inevitable recursion that comes from the fact that Szpara KNOWS that the thing itself that he is writing is also the story. Whether the point is driven home or undermined by the fact that he wrote the sex scenes using the rules of fanfiction rather than either the romance novel or the work of literary fiction is, frankly, left up to the reader. Is he writing hurt/comfort fanfic or its takedown or both? Look, at a certain point, it's just sadomasochistic turtles all the way down.
I'm also SO fascinated by the reviews complaining about whether the magic is real or not. I mean, that's, like, the POINT. You don't know. You don't get to know. There's nothing definitive in either direction. Haven't you all heard of the Sopranos?
In some ways, the point is that every piece of ritual and magic can be explained by the heightened emotions of human beings and the states we can send ourselves into, especially in groups. And also to fully chuck everything into that category feels like relying a bit overmuch on coincidence. It's meant to live in the space between, much like the story itself straddles the border of imagined desire and real trauma.
Szpara is fundamentally interested in the darker side of fanfic, the one that thinks about trauma and desire, except he plays it out extremely seriously. Both the plot and style owe a significant amount to the past...15 or so years of fanfic and its a testimony to writers like Szpara that it's becoming its own genre in the sense that it has recognizable motifs and movements in the larger story.
But the point of both this book and Docile is that stories of trauma and recovery aren't just food for dark fantasy, they're also psychologically terrifying and that in and of itself is a story.
In so many ways, this is a story about the difference between fantasy and reality, the lines that are safe to cross and the lines that are dangerous, the difference between wanting the story of the thing and the thing itself, with the inevitable recursion that comes from the fact that Szpara KNOWS that the thing itself that he is writing is also the story. Whether the point is driven home or undermined by the fact that he wrote the sex scenes using the rules of fanfiction rather than either the romance novel or the work of literary fiction is, frankly, left up to the reader. Is he writing hurt/comfort fanfic or its takedown or both? Look, at a certain point, it's just sadomasochistic turtles all the way down.
In some ways, the point is that every piece of ritual and magic can be explained by the heightened emotions of human beings and the states we can send ourselves into, especially in groups. And also to fully chuck everything into that category feels like relying a bit overmuch on coincidence. It's meant to live in the space between, much like the story itself straddles the border of imagined desire and real trauma.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Based on the conniption fit thrown by book twitter when this book was announced I was anticipating some kinky problematic goodness, unfortunately I was just kind of bored through a lot of it. I didn't get my fix of the ol' problematique 😭
Didn't love it, didn't hate it.
Also, there are a surprising amount of Harry Potter reference in this brand new release written by a trans author. It was a little weird.
Didn't love it, didn't hate it.
Also, there are a surprising amount of Harry Potter reference in this brand new release written by a trans author. It was a little weird.
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes