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A review by motherofbooks93
Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham
4.0
Reread Update
I still feel the same way about this as before. I really enjoyed it!
“The term for the night between the funeral of the old prince and the coronation of the new one is gautanna. It is an ancient Inlisc word that means, roughly, the pause at the top of a breath when the lungs are the most full. Literally, it translates as the moment of hollowness.
For one night, Kithamar is a city between worlds and between ages. It falls out of its own history, at once the end of something and the beginning of something else.”
This was one of my most anticipated releases because of how interesting it sounded, but when mixed reviews started coming in, I got a little nervous. I looked at a few reviews and determined that I still wanted to give it a chance and that worked out so well for me.
Age of Ash is set in this city called Kithamar and it is a place with a bloody past, and a city where only the wealthy seem to have an easy life. Everyone else has to fight for their right to live and survive. We follow this woman named Alys and she is doing just that, surviving. However, when her brother gets killed, it sends her on this quest for revenge.
Let me start by saying that this is a very character and kind of setting driven story. There are not a lot of action scenes on the page, which I enjoyed, but fantasy fans looking for that may leave a bit disappointed. So much of the story is moved forward by Alys, or Sammish. Alys is also not an easy character to love a lot of the time, but she is going through a lot, which made it more understandable in my eyes.
Alys lost her brother and she is grieving the loss of him through most of this book. We see her go through the many stages of grief from sadness to anger, and I loved the way Abraham showed this on page. She becomes obsessed with keeping him alive in her own way, which us as the reader can see is destructive, but to her it is the only thing she has to hold on to.
There is another character that I would argue is a second main character and that is Alys’s friend and partner in crime, Sammish. I really liked Sammish’s character. She wasn’t dealing with the same grief that Alys was, though arguably by the end of the book, she kind of was. This allows her to make better decisions than Alys. Through Sammish’s eyes, we see so much of the world of Kithamar and show how expansive it truly is and how different areas in the city differ from each other.
Kithamar itself feels like a character at certain moments. The city feels alive and it has this feeling that it will eat its inhabitants alive if needed. As the story progresses, more about the city and its rules are revealed. The ruling of the city is in danger because of other people who want to take over, which sets up these interesting politically intriguing moments. There is also quite a bit of magic, and some of the questions I had weren’t answered in this first book, which means they will probably be answered in future releases, which excites me.
I also have to comment on the writing. I was so impressed by how beautifully Abraham writes. There were so many lovely sentences and it’s not the purple prose style that a lot of people are not a fan of. This makes me want to read more from him because the writing drew me in from page one and never once let up by the ending.
Abraham has said that each book in this series will follow the same events, but will be told from a different character’s perspective, which I think is so unique and I can’t wait to see how that plays out. I have some ideas of whose perspective the second book will be from. I think the author is doing something special here and I hope the right audience continues to find this story. As for me, I am impatiently waiting for the sequel.
CW for the death of a sibling.
I still feel the same way about this as before. I really enjoyed it!
“The term for the night between the funeral of the old prince and the coronation of the new one is gautanna. It is an ancient Inlisc word that means, roughly, the pause at the top of a breath when the lungs are the most full. Literally, it translates as the moment of hollowness.
For one night, Kithamar is a city between worlds and between ages. It falls out of its own history, at once the end of something and the beginning of something else.”
This was one of my most anticipated releases because of how interesting it sounded, but when mixed reviews started coming in, I got a little nervous. I looked at a few reviews and determined that I still wanted to give it a chance and that worked out so well for me.
Age of Ash is set in this city called Kithamar and it is a place with a bloody past, and a city where only the wealthy seem to have an easy life. Everyone else has to fight for their right to live and survive. We follow this woman named Alys and she is doing just that, surviving. However, when her brother gets killed, it sends her on this quest for revenge.
Let me start by saying that this is a very character and kind of setting driven story. There are not a lot of action scenes on the page, which I enjoyed, but fantasy fans looking for that may leave a bit disappointed. So much of the story is moved forward by Alys, or Sammish. Alys is also not an easy character to love a lot of the time, but she is going through a lot, which made it more understandable in my eyes.
Alys lost her brother and she is grieving the loss of him through most of this book. We see her go through the many stages of grief from sadness to anger, and I loved the way Abraham showed this on page. She becomes obsessed with keeping him alive in her own way, which us as the reader can see is destructive, but to her it is the only thing she has to hold on to.
“Grief was supposed to fade. Wounds—even wounds to the soul—were supposed to heal. She felt hers getting worse.”
There is another character that I would argue is a second main character and that is Alys’s friend and partner in crime, Sammish. I really liked Sammish’s character. She wasn’t dealing with the same grief that Alys was, though arguably by the end of the book, she kind of was. This allows her to make better decisions than Alys. Through Sammish’s eyes, we see so much of the world of Kithamar and show how expansive it truly is and how different areas in the city differ from each other.
Kithamar itself feels like a character at certain moments. The city feels alive and it has this feeling that it will eat its inhabitants alive if needed. As the story progresses, more about the city and its rules are revealed. The ruling of the city is in danger because of other people who want to take over, which sets up these interesting politically intriguing moments. There is also quite a bit of magic, and some of the questions I had weren’t answered in this first book, which means they will probably be answered in future releases, which excites me.
I also have to comment on the writing. I was so impressed by how beautifully Abraham writes. There were so many lovely sentences and it’s not the purple prose style that a lot of people are not a fan of. This makes me want to read more from him because the writing drew me in from page one and never once let up by the ending.
“‘Death is division,’ the priest said. ‘Not only for the dying who passes from this world to the coming cycle, but within each of us. We are trapped between the life we had when our friend, our lover, our parent, our child was with us, and this diminished world without them. We are split in two, and bringing ourselves back to wholeness is the spirited work of mourning.'”
Abraham has said that each book in this series will follow the same events, but will be told from a different character’s perspective, which I think is so unique and I can’t wait to see how that plays out. I have some ideas of whose perspective the second book will be from. I think the author is doing something special here and I hope the right audience continues to find this story. As for me, I am impatiently waiting for the sequel.
CW for the death of a sibling.