‘Legacy of ash’ is the first book of a trilogy, written by Matthew Ward. With close to 800 pages of epic fantasy, stuffed with political and military intrigue, even the seasoned fantasy reader will find this a tough bone to chew.

Once you can tear your eyes away from the beautiful cover, you’ll discover a nicely detailed map in front of the book. Maps in fantasy books are not always of the best quality. E-books in particular often contain a low-detailed scan of what is printed in the paper book. Not in this case. When opened on a computer with big screen and fully expanded, the map remains extremely sharp and detailed. Nice! I often read fantasy without consulting the map a single time. This time I did use it, and discovered that not all places mentioned in the book are on the map though.

The dramatis personae between map and prologue already reveals that a whole bunch of characters is about to make their appearance. After an enthralling prologue then, it rapidly becomes clear how true this is, and how useless the dramatis personae in fact soon becomes. Matthew Ward bombards readers with one new character after the other. Who is on which side, and which role they play, becomes increasingly difficult to follow. After having read a quarter of this book, the situation hasn’t improved. Three main characters keep returning often, many others less or even rarely, and new ones still pop up. The plot of the story remains unclear for a long time and the purpose of twists is often unclear as well. An updated dramatis personae every quarter of the book to update readers on who is angry with whom and why at that point, would have been a useful addition.

It takes until over halfway before things start to clear up. That’s simply too long to keep your readers. Characters should have received more attention and background before switching to yet another one, and the number of characters should have been a lot less. Readers of fantasy are used to lengthy books, so the page size is in most cases not an issue, but having to read 400 pages and trying to remember who is who before the randomness of it all starts to fade away, definitely is. Too many characters and events are stuffed in too few pages. The content is that of an entire trilogy, not of only the first part of it. By the time I started to realise this might actually be a good book, I had stopped caring unfortunately. I kept reading until the very end, really wanted to continue to see if the tide would turn, but failed to regain my focus and interest. I wandered off too many times, caught myself reading paragraphs without knowing afterwards what I actually had read, and near the end just wanted it to be over.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
---
This is a packed book as expected of the starter of an epic fantasy series. I would recommend that readers go into this book with an expectation of numerous characters to keep track of. That said, each character is well developed and important to the storyline.

The plot is interesting and although the length of this book is a lot, the pacing is excellent.

Overall rating: 4 stars

Review Copy provided by the publisher—Orbit—in exchange for an honest review.

Legacy of Ash is an epic fantasy debut aptly designed for well-seasoned epic fantasy readers, and I wouldn’t recommend newcomers to the genre starting to start their epic fantasy adventure here.

We all know how it goes; if it’s an epic fantasy debut, the particular book will immediately be advertised as A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones meets (insert another author/series/book here,) and Legacy of Ash isn’t excluded from that tradition. As much as I often find this kind of advertisement misleading most of the time, Legacy of Ash may have just done justice to this often-misleading claim. Legacy of Ash is an epic fantasy debut with many characters and names to remember, imbued with the hint of huge scope found in A Song of Ice and Fire and action sequences that bear a resemblance to Bernard Cornwell’s.

“The Tyrant Queen’s reign is done, but vigilance remains. For just as the shadows are strongest on the brightest of days, we are never more imperiled than when we think ourselves safe.”


Have you ever heard the argument that prologue sucked and unnecessary? I won’t lie, it’s an opinion that I can’t understand, or maybe I’m just lucky because I haven’t found any prologue that ends up becoming unnecessary to the main story. Prologues have the capability to set the tone, background, and premise of what’s to come in the main story, and Legacy of Ash, the first book in The Legacy Trilogy by Matthew Ward, did this wonderfully; it begins with a prologue that’s integral to the main conflicts that start fifteen years after the prologue.

The main story in Legacy of Ash follows the dispute between the two factions: Tressia and the Southerner. The bad blood and hatred running between the two factions have been going on for more than a decade, and the chances of reconciliation are close to non-existence. In the midst of their confrontation with each other, there’s a threat of an upcoming invasion from another different faction: the Hadari Empire. The characters in both factions have to come up with a solution to resolve their problems, or they risk being obliterated by the Hadari. That’s the premise of the first half of the novel; the second half took on a different direction that’s very heavy on politics. Legacy of Ash is a huge debut; it’s almost 800 pages long, and the two main story arcs honestly made the book felt like two books combined into one omnibus. The themes of overcoming friendship, family, loyalties, overcoming prejudice, and finding freedom were strongly apparent throughout the narrative; the characters magnified the effectiveness of these themes greatly.

“It’s a big world. Lose yourself in it. I’ve learnt that it’s always better to do something than nothing.”
“Even if it means you’re following the wrong course?”
“How else will you find out where the proper course lies?”


Legacy of Ash has a large cast of characters to follow, and Ward did an incredible job in showing the perspective from each character. I loved that although some of the characters belong in the same faction, their respective personalities, background, and moral dilemma caused a division or unity. The main characters were well-written, Viktor Akadra was my favorite character from the book, but what I found to be more praiseworthy about this book was how Ward made sure that every single character—including the side characters—ended up becoming important to the overarching storyline.

“Treasure your family, Malachi. No one is poorer than a man who knows his wealth only when it’s lost.”


Unfortunately, I have to admit that the characters took a long time—200 pages—for me to memorized and feel invested in without looking at the drammatis personae. As expected of an epic fantasy, there are a lot of names—not just characters—to remember here, but I felt like they’re delivered to the readers too rapidly that it made the names harder to stick. Plus, Ward’s storytelling style occasionally switches between using first, last name, and nickname of each character that it gets even harder for them to be easily recognizable. For example, Revekah Halvor is called Revekah in one paragraph, and she’s instantly called Halvor in the next, and then back to being called Revekah again. Another example, the name of the divinities, Ashana—the Hadari Goddess of the Moon—is known as Lunastra in Tressia, and Lumestra—Tressian Goddess of the Sun—is known as Astarra in the Hadari Empire. This style, done for many characters repeatedly, gets confusing easily.

The rough beginnings with the names aside, my investment for the majority of the characters were definitely there. Legacy of Ash has no shortage of well-written flawed characters. The characters and relationship developments between the cast felt believable. Also, I would like to add that Ward writes great female characters. Have I mentioned that Ward has written one of the most despicable—in a good way for the story—evil queen to ever exist on a fantasy book? Seriously, watch out for Ebigal Kiradin. She’s utterly abhorrent, selfish, and manipulative; she pretty much made Cersei Lannister virtuous in comparison. And I love it. Ebigal made the politics in the book so much more engaging and intense, and she has the role of becoming a huge driving factor in the second half of the book.

“The irony of order is that it foments indiscipline. In seeking to control all we survey, we invite anarchy.”


The world-building was intricate, and I loved how Ward has interwoven the myth and history of the world into the current conflicts that the characters faced. The magic was lethal, and it still has more room for explorations in the sequels. I’ve mentioned that Ward writes battle scenes that are similar to Bernard Cornwell’s style at the beginning of my review, and this notion was first proven in the big action sequences that happened halfway into the book; it closed the first half of the story terrifically. Both the characterizations and setup in the first half played a significant role in making the almost-hundred pages long war scenes intense, vivid, and unputdownable. Honestly, the battle that occurred in the middle section has all the potential of becoming a final concluding chapter of a particular book; Ward did this twice. Ward closed the second half with another huge battle scenes that are brimming with tension and high-stakes.

“It’s myth. One step removed from story. And stories have only the power you give them. It does no harm to listen.”


As much as I would LOVE to recommend this debut to every fantasy reader, I think it would be beneficial for the book itself that it falls into the hands of readers who are clearly devout epic fantasy readers. Immensely remarkable and huge in scope, Ward concluded Legacy of Ash on a high note, making his debut a definite must-try for epic fantasy enthusiasts. I seriously have no idea where the story will go from here, the book felt like a large standalone with almost every plot-thread finished already, but I’m intrigued to find out more about what Ward left in store in his vision.

You can order the book from: Book Depository (Free shipping)

You can find this and the rest of my reviews at Novel Notions