This has a great concept, but perhaps I just wasn’t the right audience for the execution of it. I love the idea of an alternate history, but it’s far too dense to feel like I was invested.

Unfortunately I did not really enjoy The Carnival of Ash by Tom Beckerlegge and I had to DNF it. I think I had different (lighter) expectations of what this book would be like, but this was way too dark for me. I felt like I should push through but it just was not worth it for me.

The Carnival of Ash is marketed as a fantasy book, a story set within an alternate history in a fictional city where the crafted word rules supreme. Cadenza is a city filled with giant libraries, where hundreds of printing presses work around the clock, churning out work, and where poets and creators control the life of the citizens. However, the book seems to have been woefully miss-sold, leading to a jarring reading experience.

The Carnival of Ash begins following Carlo Mazzoni, a young poet who has travelled to Cadenza in order to show off his epic poem and to find fame. Unfortunately, he came to the city at the worst possible time as the leader, Artifex Tommaso Cellini, has died suddenly. Now the city is in turmoil, and Carlo discovers secrets about his family history that not only disturb him, but makes it look like he may be involved in Cellini's death.

From here, the book shifts perspectives across each of the twelve cantos, featuring an ink maid who writes pornographic letters to paying clients so that they can live out their sexual fantasies, and a pair of poets who are fighting over a woman they both desire to name but a few of the early ones. Unfortunately, as the focus of the book shifted to a new person with each segment it meant that the main plot of the novel, the special political ramification of the appointment of a bureaucrat as the replacement for Cellini rather than a poet, felt incredibly lost in the background.

As I mentioned earlier, the book has been marketed as a fantasy novel, and thanks to the descriptions of giant libraries, and a city dedicated to poetry and works of fiction. As such I came to this expecting a focus on those aspects, to get to explore these huge libraries, and with it being a fantasy book I was hoping for some kind of magic to be involved with them, whether that be stories that can come to life, the power of the written word, or having to bind books with power to keep dark things from escaping the pages. This book has none of that. It seems like it's been marketed as fantasy because it's set in a city that doesn't exist in the real world, but other than that this is a lengthy, ponderous, historical novel.

This isn't in itself a bad thing, there's a big market for historical fiction, and alternate history is a popular genre. However, if you come to this book expecting something very different, as I did, this revelation that you're reading a completely different genre is a huge disappointment. I spent so long reading the book waiting for something to happen, something unusual or out of the ordinary that justified its labelling as fantasy, something that would make me actually enjoy it; but nothing came.

It wasn't just the surprise change in genre that I found troubling whilst reading the book, however, as there were a number of things with the content that I ended up not enjoying. One of the biggest things that I need to talk about is the fact that this book doesn't come with any content or trigger warnings, and the content really does need some. There is constant sexual objectification of women throughout the book. Women are treated incredibly poorly in this book, often being reduced to sexual objects, and there are even moments of sexual violence. With this being a fantasy or alternate history these kinds of things didn't need to be included for 'historical accuracy', and they serve no real purpose towards moving the plot forward. As such, the book felt like it was very much not geared towards female readers, and the lack of warning about some of the graphic content could put a lot of people off. There's also moments of extreme torture, abuse, fatphobia, and abelism scattered throughout to further dampen any enjoyment of the book.

I came into The Carnival of Ash expecting certain things thanks to how the book was advertised, and when the book turned out to be something completely different I found it hard to find much to grab my attention thanks to a plodding, and almost aimless seeming narrative, and content that often threw me out thanks to it shocking or disturbing nature. I went into this book hoping to find a lot to enjoy, but spent the majority of my time reading it forcing myself to get through it. If you're a fan of dour and lengthy historical fiction you might enjoy this, but just be warned before picking it up.

There is much about this book that I really enjoyed, to begin with a city run by poets that is dominated by libraries is my sort of city… I enjoyed the way the book was organised, the twelve cantos weave together well and create a delicate and intricate thread that ties the story together, and I enjoyed getting to know each character, which also provided the reader with a deeper understanding of the city and the corruption that runs through it.

The writing is strong and fluid, and at times very intense, and the book deals with some difficult topics. Overall a good adult debut.

I was not surprised that a book with blurb like “… a city in turmoil, the looming prospect of war with their rival Venice …” would contain violence. The setting in a renaissance style made-up city, at a time of intrigue and murder, also containing great beauty, as a City of Words and home to poets.

Other reviewers have conveyed content/trigger warnings and if this is of concern, please search them out.

The book is told from different perspectives in twelve cantos or parts. Each character is interesting but not all the narrators are likeable. This added to my enjoyment of the book, as it was different. Different characters appear and then reappear, through the eyes of others.

Look out for Fra Bernardo’s canto, I found this the most intriguing, a medieval monk detective. The book is laced with history. I don’t know how much is real history, but it lends an authentic air and enhances the narrative.

It is a witty novel, with much situational comedy - much drinking gives rise to many mishaps – and there is a lot of drinking of wine.

The writing is incredible; this on old scholars watching a girl disrobe: “Wrinkled necks crane in my direction; forgotten worms stir beneath robes.” Another is of candles flickering as a person entered a room: “They bowed their heads as Vittoria walked by.”

Vittoria, or Hypatia as she is known, is an ink maid and produces word porn. She writes letters to her clients, giving them their fantasies in prose. This again is something new.

This book is a bit like life – magnificent but made messy by man. If you can bear with the mess, it is a refreshing read, excellently written.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #Solaris and #RebellionPublishing for the eARC of #CarnivalOfAsh.

I thought the book was off to a great start! The first chapter really seized me. However, the more I progressed and the more it felt like I was just thrown information left and right, which made it hard to follow.

The premise looks great, as readers, why would we not like the idea built for poets ? But some themes were hard to grasp. It often felt like the characters were in their own little world. Even as readers, I was not sure what the challenges were. We are often standing in the past, then in the present, and context is giving in both times. There's a lot of information to retain to optimize this reading - thus I would not qualify it as 'light reading', but it is entertaining.

The ambiance is oozing of drama and dark secrets. It reminded me a bit of 'If We Were Villains''.

Sometimes I would read paragraphs without understand much of it, and then I would have to read it again and deconstruct very long sentences to make sense of them. It feels like a long poem. Somehow, that's also the strength of the book: the richness of the vocabulary. To me, that changes the whole experience.

I feel like either people are going to love the conspiracy tone, either they are going to hate it.

The cover is gorgeous.

I will say this: the synopsis had a very different vibe from what I've actually read. This was wayyy more politic and it bothered me because it was not what I was excepting. I was expecting fantasy, I got boys playing war.

Also, there are many triggering themes, such as violence in its many form. I hope trigger warnings will be included. Also, describing women the way it's done? As a woman, it is getting old. And it's enough for me to not finish the book - which I sometime considered.

I'm giving this 3 stars because of the writing style and the world building.

A far darker and more disturbing read than bargained for.

TW: Suicide ideation, sexual abuse, torture, gratuitous violence

I feel that perhaps this book was mis-shelved under Science Fiction and Fantasy, and would better belong as Social Horror, Gothic Horror or Historical Fiction.

This alternative history is divided into twelve cantos. These diverse individual stories are skilfully built to give the narrative of Cadenza.

I loved the idea of Cadenza, a city of words and poets, where libraries are built like cathedrals and writing and books are prized above all, culminating in the Carnival of Wit. However, it is also filled with corrupt and powerful men with disturbing, violent sexual appetites, gratuitous violence, harrowing punishments, torture, sexual abuse and plague.

I appreciated some of the lighter elements, such as, Plagiarism (poet kidnapping,) a murder mystery and a husband laying siege to his wife in the courtyard of their home.

For me, a deeply uncomfortable read. I rarely dip my toe into horror and this time, did so unexpectedly.

Favourite quotes:
“You believe that a man could be so desperate to read a book he would resort to murder?”

“You have lost your mind! To kidnap a poet is one thing, but to take his work and claim it for your own… it is unconscionable.”

Thank you to NetGalley for the e-ARC.

Due to The Carnival of Ash's blurb about a city of libraries and it being labelled as fantasy, I had a certain type of book in mind and - although I try not to do that - went into this book with some ideas of what I might expect. Well, I was wrong. This book was nothing like what I expected nor what the blurb seemed to promise.

The book is split into 12 Cantos narrated from the perspectives of different inhabitants of Cadenza. The first Canto is indeed about a character by the name of Carlo Mazzoni, who arrives in Cadenza on the day the Artifex (the city's political leader, and also a poet) is found dead under a toppled bookshelf. However, the second Canto focuses on a so-called "ink maid" who gets paid to write letters of a certain nature to her correspondents. The book circles through the perspectives of poets, political leaders, and other inhabitants of the town and one by one, more of the corruption and intrigues that are going on in the shadows are revealed.

This still sounds fairly good (I'd say), but in contrast to that my rating is very low for the following reasons:

1. I wasn't invested in any of the characters at all. It took me a while to get through the first Canto due to the pretentious language and the lack of plot, but I was relatively interested in what would happen next, which was - nothing. We meet Carlo and the grave digger Ercole, and then they are barely mentioned for the rest of the book. The same was true for the other characters, and it prevented me from really liking any of them (or even remembering their names, frankly).

2. It was just so drawn-out and boring. It must be in part due to not caring for the characters, but either way I also didn't care who profited or suffered from the intrigues and thus the whole ordeal was plainly boring to read.

3. The male gaze and problematic language. Everything that concerned women was blatantly focused on their bodies, and there was so much over-sexualisation mixed with dubious consent. It made me feel extremely uncomfortable, and so did the ways in which POC or even the Venetians were described. Yes, this is alternate historical fiction, but "alternate" means you can very well choose not to write a male, eurocentric focus.

4. This book is labelled as "fantasy", when I'd say the furthest stretch would be to say that it has paranormal elements - which were absolutely and utterly unnecessary and didn't add to the plot in the least. This is such a pet peeve of mine. Whenever these elements came into play, they just confused me and, as I said, didn't enhance the story in any way.

5. The ending was both disappointing and perfect - disappointing because it was very anticlimatic and didn't help to wrap the story up in my opinion, and perfect because the same can be said for the rest of the book, so it fit the plot well.

The only thing I can say in favour of The Carnival of Ash was that the writing style was good and the world building was done slowly but well. Had it not been for either of these points, I would probably have DNF'd the book at 15% - which, looking back, I should have done anyway.

1.5/5 stars.

I do understand why this was a story that needed to be told in a slower pace format but what I don't understand is the choice of also telling this story through 12 POVs. I get that all of the characters are connected and all of the storylines come together in the end, but pretty much nothing happened in the individual sections of the characters and if something happened it felt so insignificant towards the plot that I was bored throughout pretty much all of it.
The plot was fine for the most part, however, if this were a movie, it would barely pass the Bechdel Test and I get that this is supposed to be historical but this book is published in 2022 and if you give me female POVs, I want/need them to be done right.

The Carnival of Ash follows the rise and fall of Cadenza, a city dedicated to the word where poets are revered above all else. It is a cautionary tale on rhetoric without action, where corruption is hidden behind library walls, leading to the destruction of the city by those who are supposed to be protecting it.

I found the concept of the book intriguing, however I struggled to keep up with the number of characters which were introduced in each new stanza, and how they all related to each other. Each stanza is told through a different characters perspective, and at times switches between the first and the third person. As the story progresses towards its inevitable ending, the pace seems to pick up, and the perspective sometimes changed from paragraph to paragraph. Although this cleverly echoed the chaos that reigned supreme in the city too, it was too much for me and I often found myself lost and flicking back and forth trying to remember the role that each person played.

Some stanzas were easier to follow that others, such as the stanza that describes the situation of the woman in the tower, and were more enjoyable to read, but then I found that I couldn't relate these to the rest of the story.

There were some beautiful descriptions, especially around the fire scenes, but all in all this felt too complicated to be a truly enjoyable read and I felt like I had to really work at it.

I fear this book may have fallen afoul of the 'wrong book, wrong time' phenomenon as it caught me when I was exceptionally busy with very little time to savour a slower-paced book. So please take this review with that context of being very busy and time-poor!
I do think there were good aspects to this book, I liked the setting and the aesthetic and there were at least two sections that I very much enjoyed which were what carried me into reading the entire thing as opposed to DNFing. Which leads me to believe that someone more equipped for that slow pace might have a much better time reading this book.
For me, however, I found this to be too slow, with too many threads to keep track of and not enough reason to want to track them. I didn't find I cared particularly for the characters or for what they were trying to achieve and if I did try to parse out the motivations everything stopped making sense for a while. I am aware this book was meant to be lyrical but I think it tipped over into feeling stuffed full of content and not that much substance. That's all to say that me and this book did not get on particularly well. I do think there were some good ideas in this story, I loved the gravedigger and the ink maids but I felt I didn't get to spend enough time with them in the story for my liking.
I think that for a very specific kind of reader this will be an ideal read. Those who like to take their time over every sentence and construct mental timelines to keep track of the events and players. It is a great sadness that I am not that reader and as such this book just did not work for me.

When I read the synopsis originally, I had misinterpreted what this book was actually about. I thought it was going to be more fantasy then anything but it wasn't. The messages it was trying to send were deep it just was a tad boring. I don't think I could really recommend this to anyone since it was so slow-paced, but I do believe that there are people out there that would enjoy this novel.

This is a "marmite book" I think, either you'll love the style or you'll hate it. Unfortunately, I did not like the style at all.

The twelve sections of the book are told from a different character's perspective, save for the last, which is a new character narrating every scene. Some are returning POVs, a lot of them are new. These narrating characters might turn up as a background character in another section, if you're lucky. Most of the time, they don't really make an impression on the previous or following sections at all. For example, the only other two times you see the first narrator is as a co-conspirator in a "traditional kidnapping" at the midway point, and then as a single scene narrator at the end.

hat is a style that I don't click well with, because the characters felt so separate, linked by the city rather than plot, goals, or actions. It made the book feel like a series of vignettes of people's lives as the city fell apart, rather than a single cohesive story. After a while, I stopped even trying to care about the characters because I knew they were unlikely to come back again, and that lack of care undercut the book's ability to draw me in.

The vignettes also failed to contain tension for me, and not just because I didn't care. On the rare occasion the character narrating had a goal, they rarely achieved it or made progress towards it. They sort of just floated along. I can best sum the sections up as:

1) A wannabe poet nobleman who's been ridiculed thinks his life is over and makes melodramatic attempts but gets talked down each time. Ends up becoming a gravedigger.

2) An ink maid (a writer of erotic letters) loses interest in her job and keeps meeting a strange (never identified) man who wants to watch her write.

3) A poet gets annoyed and writes a scathing, denouncing poem but is thwarted by his underling.

4) The head of the city sees odd messages that unnerve him.

5) Some guy searches for lost books.

6) There's a murder to be solved (this is the only section that has a goal that's achieved!)

7) A "traditional" kidnapping goes wrong.

8) A scholar suffers the vengeance of his patron.

9) ??? Really not sure what happened here (see below.) I think someone's wandering around miserably and happens to overhear plotting???

10) A guy is employed to lay siege to a tower where a wife has taken refuge and is refusing to even speak with her husband.

11) A bunch of imprisoned nuns rewriting history die off, haunted house style.

12) Everything goes to chaos.

These stories didn't feel linked, didn't feel cohesive, and half the time I couldn't work out what "the point" of them where, how they were impacting the overall city (which I figure was meant to be the focus on the book.) It was falling apart around them, but half the time, the characters and their stories had no impact on that. Only really 4, 9, and 12 really impacted on the city.

Most of the book was told in third person past tense, but then section 5 and 9 were told in first past and first present respectively. Not only was that very jarring (and in section 5, I don't think I ever learnt the character's name, which made it hard to link him in to the rest) but the section 9 style was very confusing.

It was full of what might have been flashbacks or maybe hallucinations, jumping between paragraphs describing Venice and a feast that felt <em>off</em> and the present day moping of a man unable to write as others plotted around him. By not being able to work out when what I was reading happened, if it did at all, I couldn't follow the section.

The setting, though, was interesting. It's set in a fake Italian town, probably sometime in the Renaissance based on people being referred to as "must reads." The fact it's set in a fake town obsessed with words and is about its rise and fall (and also how it's being marketed) is the only reason I'm calling it historical fantasy. There isn't any magic at all, but it doesn't feel like it's trying to be a work of historical fiction imagining what lives could really have been like.

Overall, this is simply a book where the style did not work for me.

Carnival of Ash by Tom Beckerlegge is a mostly enjoyable collection of linked short stories that for some reason is being marketed at least somewhat as a fantasy, though I’m not sure why. So just to get that out of the way, while it’s set in a made-up kind of Renaissance Italy in the made-up city of Cadenza governed by poets (yes, poets), that’s pretty much the sum of the fantasy (granted, poets ruling is pretty out there . . .). But if you temper your fantasy expectations accordingly, I think you’ll mostly fall under the spell of Cadenza, even if, since the city spirals ever downward, it’s sort of the fascination of watching a train wreck.

The book contains 12 “cantos”, a more appropriate divider than chapters for a book about the city of poets, with each of the cantos its own story, though the stories interweave via some repeating characters, setting obviously, themes, etc. And as we move toward the end you start to see how the individual stories start to braid into one strand. Like any collection of short stories, the impact is a bit varied. I’m always happy when half the stories work for me and consider it a major success if three-quarters do. Carnival of Ash easily hits the latter mark. Only one or two stories got an “OK” while the rest were better than merely solid, ranging from good to quite good, and several I also labeled “fun” or “fun if predictable.” One of the reasons I’m a big fan of linked stories is the whole is often greater than the parts (no matter the quality of those parts) and that holds true here as well. I also liked the aforementioned downward spiral. The downsides to the structure re that I can’t say I felt strongly attached to any particular character, and the novel does lose a bit of narrative drive/urgency.

Despite those downsides, I did enjoy the read and enjoyed it more the further in I went, so I’d recommend if you’re struggling to give it perhaps a bit more time than you might normally and let the linked nature and the sense of decline to work their power a bit more. And I’d also say if you’ve seen the marketing to drastically recalibrate your expectations regarding the alleged “fantasy” elements. 3.5

One of the things I liked most about The Carnival of Ash was the descriptions of Candaza, and the world building for this novel is fantastic. It felt like a place I would love to go to, with huge libraries and a printing quarter, ink maids who make a living by writing correspondences to the lonely. The book felt less of a novel and more like a collection of short stories that explore the world-building of Candaza, and while it does have an overarching plot that connects each act by the end of the book, the plot wasn't as interesting as the world the story is set in. Although I liked each narrator, and the characters are fleshed out and dynamic, I struggled to get into this book and it took me longer to read than most (though it is a relatively long book).

I loved the concept for this book – a city of libraries run by poets, brilliant. And the writing and characterisation was likewise excellent. But I found I didn’t really connect with the characters and something in the execution was just a miss for me. I think it’s a good book and if the concept interests you, give it a try. It just didn’t quite land for me.

What a beautiful thought - A city of poets. This is what we have in this fantasy. You might think that was going to take us on a journey of love and beautiful words; a world where everyone was in poetic harmony. That may not be the case however. It’s certainly what our main character came to the city expecting and found something quite different.
This is an unusual story. Deep and searching and in places, particularly the end, quite sad. You’ll have to read it to understand what I mean and I recommend you do.

I really liked the beginning of the book but had to DNF partway through due to the nature the women and consent are treated, as well as the violence and sexual violence.

I think this is a case of the content was really not for me. It felt like nearly every women mentioned is being described from a sexual point of view. The storyline itself is very interesting an unique I just feel like stronger trigger warnings should be mentioned about this book

This book suffers from a tragic case of misbranding. It's marketed as a "lyrical fantasy" when in reality, this is a heavily political work of (alternate) historical fiction. True, Cadenza never existed. True, there are whisperings of ghosts and alchemy in the second half. But other than that, CARNIVAL OF ASH takes place in real-world Renaissance Italy, which wasn't really what I thought I'd signed up for.

So, if we move past the fact that this *isn't* a fantasy, it is nevertheless a stunning work. The prose is masterful, the atmosphere is totally evocative, and oh, I adored the premise of a city that celebrates the written world above all else! We have fountains of ink, secret underground libraries, and counts who duel through poetry. It's fascinating and richly-wrought, and Tom Beckerlegge is clearly a formidable talent.

Another potentially offputting thing about CARNIVAL that isn't immediately clear from the blurb: the narrative follows 12 "cantos" with loosely interconnected characters. Some perspectives were more interesting than others, and as reviewers have noted, many POVs did seem to suffer from the dreaded male gaze. Some cantos were quite funny and melodramatic; others were horrifyingly tragic and violent. But they all twine together for a final act that felt pretty close to perfect, and even though it took a while to get into the ~vibe~ I did enjoy reading, especially in the second half.

Verdict: this is not a fantasy. This pseudo-historical fiction mostly concerned with the political machinations of a city that never was. It is challenging and flawed, but IMHO, worth the effort in the end.

The Carnival of Ash is a multiple POV story told in twelve parts (well ... eleven parts and a twelfth chapter that brings everything together). It's set in a fictional Italian city where poets are highly regarded and its characters range from a grave-digger to the barbaric former ruler of the city. It's difficult to really summarize the plot because ... well, there's both too much plot and no plot at all at the same time but ... I get ahead of myself.

To start with, I must highlight the good of the book which is to say that Tom Beckerlegge has an incredibly impressive command of language and the prose here is really well-written. It reminded me, in parts, of Umberto Eco's writing (I'm not a fan of Eco but I can admit there's a beauty in his usage of words). In fact, the book reads like a classic from decades ago, and I think it's quite admirable that the author has managed to pull off this style of writing and to make it believeable.

However, despite the clear talent in how the book is written, I feel there was a lot lacking in terms of plot structure planning before the writing began. This is a 500 page book with a large collection of characters and at literally any moment in the book, I could have put it down and never thought of it again (as I see many other reviewers have DNFed it at 15, 30, or even 65%). There's just no underlying thread pulling the story forward, no clear core hook to keep you reading. Essentially, due to the lack of the overall arc, it seems like it's 11 short stories but as the chapters are not self-contained and there is a hint of a plot, that's not really how it is. I feel like the exact same story could have been so much better had there been ONE CORE MYSTERY that kept you reading, that kept unraveling towards the end. Sure, the final chapter wraps up the fates of all the characters you'd been introduced to prior but ... I didn't particularly care, to be honest.

Overall, I feel there's a LOT of potential that's unfortunately not been fulfilled here as there's definitely a good writer here, there just needs to be a better storyteller.