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suave 's review for:
Ashes of Man
by Christopher Ruocchio
Overall I think this book was mostly boring and somewhat bloated. You can tell how last book and this book could have been combined to form one epic book, but instead we got two split books with extra amounts of padding to fill them out, and this one was more egregious with it. The parts that were good (especially the last 100 pages or so) were really good, to the point that I was almost tearing up at the end.
I don't like how it seems Valka has been relegated to the dead spouse trope, her death felt less earned and more like she was fridged by the author so Hadrian could plausibly lash out and be exiled in contention with the throne. Alexander will probably become the next emperor soon, or Hadrian becomes emperor and rules until he blows up the sun and then Alexander becomes emperor after Hadrian steps down.
I also don't like how Cielcin are basically just space orcs now and I feel their uniqueness has been stripped from them as they became more of an allegory for demons who are serving "Cthulu esq creatures" to literally destroy their universe. Idk, on one hand seeing Hadrians naivete diminish as he grew old and realized his boyhood dream of making peace with them is not just misguided but basically impossible has been cool. But it came at the cost of the Cielcin as a whole and how they are now relegated to be the "real devils", they went from potentially multi faceted to exactly what they had originally seemed at surface level. Compared to book one, they feel like they were regressed in order for this Hadrian chosen one story to be told better.
I also don't like how Cielcin are basically just space orcs now and I feel their uniqueness has been stripped from them as they became more of an allegory for demons who are serving "Cthulu esq creatures" to literally destroy their universe. Idk, on one hand seeing Hadrians naivete diminish as he grew old and realized his boyhood dream of making peace with them is not just misguided but basically impossible has been cool. But it came at the cost of the Cielcin as a whole and how they are now relegated to be the "real devils", they went from potentially multi faceted to exactly what they had originally seemed at surface level. Compared to book one, they feel like they were regressed in order for this Hadrian chosen one story to be told better.
I would put this book on par with book 1 for me, maybe slightly above just cause at least it's not derivative of Dune (tho this book felt sooooo Star Wars influenced, Hadrian really is Anakin)