Phew, that took me a while to read. Unfortunately, this was one of those books that I just didn't connect with for some reason. Whilst it may not have been for me, I'm sure others will love it.

3.5/5 stars

I do like the premise of the book. The theme and tone of the book complement the flow of the story. But one thing that I think lacks in the story is for the readers to really care about the characters. The characterization is good but not that interesting. The flow is also dragging and slow-pacing.

Despite of these things, I still want to read Abraham's new series. Looking forward to the next sequel.

I did enjoy this and there are some great ideas here to nicely set up the rest of the trilogy. It is quite slow to get going, the main plot doesn't become apparently until at least half way through and while it's never a slog, a slightly faster pace would have been appreciated.

Hard to say anything more without going into spoilers but the real identity of a character is excellent and that is something I'm very interested in reading more about.

I have finally read my first Daniel Abraham book!

Daniel Abraham’s books have been on my tbr! I have heard great things about The Expanse, The Long Price Quartet and The Dagger and the Coin series, but for some reason, I have never gotten around to reading any of Abraham’s books. I was very excited when OrbitBooks sent a review copy of Age of Ash! This finally gave me an excuse to read some of Abraham’s work. So what did I think?

Age of Ash is the first book in The Kithamar trilogy and follows Alys, who lives in Longhill, Kithamar. When Alys’s brother is suddenly murdered, Alys becomes resolute to determine what ultimately happened to her brother. However, Alys is unexpectedly swept into a conspiracy that will threaten the future of Kithamar as we know it.

I have frequently heard that Abraham’s prose is beautiful, and I can finally understand why he receives such praise. Abraham’s prose is alluring and wonderful, rich with beautiful descriptions and exquisite characterisations. Reading Age of Ash reminded me of Robin Hobb’s books in some ways. Abraham does a phenomenal job at creating atmosphere and tension. Moreover, Abraham is not afraid to spend considerable time fleshing out the characters and the world. While the reader doesn’t get much insight into the whole of Kithamar, the district of Longhill is masterfully brought to life. The reader gains insight into the culture and grittiness of Longhill! Longhill is one of the poorest districts in Kithamar, and its people face many hardships and challenges. Abraham does a phenomenal job at making the reader experience how ruthless Longhill is!
Moreover, Abraham does a fantastic job introducing the main characters, Alys and Sammish. These characters are complex, troubled and are struggling with grief and their identity. While I didn’t necessarily love how these characters behaved at times, Abraham’s does make an effort in justifying their actions. Consequently, Age of Ash has some fantastic themes about grief, loyalty, family, friendship and overcoming hardships.

While there is much to love about Age of Ash, the latter half of this book fell flat for me. Abraham spends a considerable amount of time fleshing out the main characters and setting up the plot. However, it almost felt like this book didn’t start until the 250-page mark. While the story starts picking up at 60%, this was just too late for me. I kept reading since I could see that Abraham was building toward something. However, the payoff just came too late. I started losing interest in this world and its characters after 200 pages of barely anything happening. When things finally started to pick up, I didn’t care enough to try and get fully reinvested in the plot. While I don’t mind a slow burn, this book could easily have been 50 pages shorter. This book has a lot of great things going for it, but I do worry that a lot of readers will feel similarly to me and might DNF this book before the plot starts to pick up.

Moreover, the tone of this story was a tad bit too depressing for my taste. Age of Ash is not a story filled with hope, love and happiness. On the contrary, this world is rough and is filled with injustice and adversity.
I can imagine that Age of Ash is one of those books that will make more sense when the whole trilogy is published. While I did enjoy several aspects of this book, Abraham was not able to get me fully invested in this world or its characters due to its slow pace. If you are looking for a book with beautiful writing, great world-building (or city-building) and interesting themes, then it is worth checking out Age of Ash!

3 / 5 stars

A special thanks to Orbit Books for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

From the co-author of The Expanse, Age of Ash is an exquisitely written and engaging fantasy about a city steeped in history and hidden dark magic.

It follows the tale of Alys and Sammish, two young women and thieves from the slums of Kithamar. When Alys' brother is murdered under mysterious circumstances, the two of them set out to discover why. They soon become entangled in a plot to take down the ruling Prince and discover dark and ancient secrets about their city which is laced with hidden magic.

If you're they type of reader that loves detail, this book is definitely for you. Kithamar is one of the most vivid settings I've read about in fantasy. Abraham brings it to life in a thousand little details as you travel its streets. It was so easy to get lost in this world every time I picked up the book.

I did find the detail of the magic system to be quite murky and unclear, but I think this was an intentional choice made by the author to enhance the mystique surrounding it. I hope it does get explored in more detail in subsequent books, however, because the parts we were shown were fascinating and deeply chilling.

I loved Abraham's writing style, but there is something about it that feels as if you're viewing the characters and their emotional experience from a distance. A lot of the prose focuses more on the details and context around the characters rather than the emotional journey they go on throughout the course of the story.

While this was not of any detriment to my enjoyment, for readers who want to be plunged more deeply into the psyche of the characters, this story may not work quite so well for them.

Abraham also offers a level of complexity to the antagonists for this story that I couldn't help but admire. While they certainly committed villainous acts, I often had to question whether they are really the villain of this series, or are the forces that oppose them the true villains?

Age of Ash lays a solid foundation for the Kithamar trilogy, I can't wait to find out where the author takes the story in the next book.

Thank you to Nazia at Orbit Books for giving me an ARC and allowing me to review this!

Something stirs dark in the Heart of Kithimar itself. An abandoned sister seeking revenge for the loss of her brother, a man that was respected in his community. Murderous Princes vie for the throne of Kithimar, and priestesses, monks and figured shadows all have a role to play in this world of treachery and deceit. Another woman makes her own path throughout this novel. This novel is a bit of a slow burn, but when it picks up the pace, it becomes really good.

Summarising this plot would take some time. But the gist is, that Allys embarks on a journey that changes her forever. It exposes the rot of Kithimar's rich nobility, and that their ideas and ideals of the order are nothing more than devices meant to hold them forever in their power. Corruption runs deep in this city. I was impressed by Daniel's ability to include a ton of worldbuilding for each region of the city that I went into. Be it Longhill, Greenhill and many such locations. I think this novel would have benefited from a glossary - which would be very helpful for the locations and names of other cities. There is a rich array of characters, a rich display of action, and sometimes, even fantastic moments of prose that is hard to replicate anywhere else.

What I liked about this novel the most is that each character has their own motives and their own agendas. And it doesn't need to contrast with Allys's personality. However, I did sometimes end up disliking Allys purely because her quest to discover the truth behind her brother's murder lead her into dark avenues that made her eviler than anything else. But she is young, and at that age, grief can drive any person mad. Sammish was a terrific character that often was far more opportunistic, making her own moves, and driving the story forward. This story is so rich, deep, and complex that at times I am amazed it is has been amazingly written. Really, this is a great novel.

Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK, and NetGalley for allowing me access to an early, proof edition of this magnificent fantasy novel.

You know when you read reviews where the author says that the location is 'almost a character in itself'? Here, Daniel Abraham takes that one step further.

The reader is dropped into a very 'real' fantasy world, full of struggles and heartbreak, love and loss, danger and hope.

All the characters are fully rounded, interesting people, some of whom you'll love, some you'll hope get their comeuppance, but all of them exist in three dimensions.

The plot is engaging, surprising and thought-provoking. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and look forward to more tales from/about Kithamar.

What is interesting about Age Of Ash, from a fantasy epic point of view, is just how inconsequential it all is. That's not to say it isn't an engaging and entertaining story about kings, princes, intrigue and magic - because it is all of that. But at the heart of it are a couple of characters coming of age, grief, unrequited love, and bitterness that would probably fold out in a similar manner if they didn't happen to get accidentally entangled with the "epic" part of the story. This is undoubtedly a good thing, the personal stakes are what made this a very quick read (that and Abrahams clarity in his prose).

It also answers one of the bigger problems in trilogies, why end where you end when the story isn't over. Abrahams has a decent track record here, not just as part of the Expanse co-writers, but also in his own fiction - The Long Price in particular showed how a quarter could also work independently within their own timescale (each of those novels are set about fifteen to twenty years apart). Here the tale of Sammish and Alys's youth is over. Its possible in the next book we will meet one or both of them again, or it might shift to the intrigue in the palace, or more about this sprawling city of Kithamar. The present threat is averted, but more important this phase of their story is pleasantly wrapped up.

The other thing Abraham is good at here is to create a city that does indeed endure. The central big picture question here is what makes a city last. Is it strong leadership, is it the people. The antagonist is arguing for the former, while the book makes a very firm bet at the latter - if you weren't one of the five or six people bundled up in the ongoing plot here its unclear if you would even notice any effect on your day to day life. We spend most of them in the slums, with the thieves and con artists and nothing that happens in the palace or government seems to affect them, And yet this doesn't come across as cynical, rather a celebration of peoples ability to survive. As such I am intrigued to see where this goes next but found this extremely enjoyable.

Daniel Abraham does it again, ladies and germs. He (and Ty) rocked my world with The Expanse series and not that it's gone, and I'm in the period of mourning, I can say the Kithamar series has been like a drug for the past few days. I am going to add a bit under my review in case anyone who was an Expanse fan wants to know if this is for them.

Kithamar is a city of many colors and many schemes. Those who have coin and royalty hire petty thieves and lowlives to perform roles in their stratagems. Alys, a poor girl from Longhill, gets herself involved in the midst of a pull that can shake the entire city. Some loss coin, some loss their lives, and she may even lose herself as she plays as a little wolf for the puppetmaster.

Age of Ash is a slow fantasy with a methodical unravelling of the plot that shows everything is a plot, within a plot, within a plot. And surprisingly, while there is magic in the story, none of the main characters - Alys and Sammish - know how to use it. The Kithamar world is one where people fear magic and those who practice are powerful and few, often unknown. The two characteristics reminded me of The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, though I must say that I find Abraham's writing more of my style (I have seen reviews mentioning the style is a hit or miss, it is a total hit in my case; I'd read Abraham's grocery shopping list and give it five stars at this point).

What I enjoyed the most were the characters. We have a very diverse set of them ranging from petty thieves, witches from another country, slavers, and members of the (cultish) royal family. They all scheme, and it is all personal: we see grief over losing a loved one shapes one's path; we see someone's idealizing her (unrequited) love interest and grieving with the letting go when that person changes; we see someone losing themselves in a scheme for who is close to their hearts; and we see someone's actions being shaped by their past and her slow realization that she was a pawn, but can no longer be with the right group of friends. Above everything and everyone, I loved Darro and Sammish. Sammish was just very dear to me, I loved witnessing her development from a literal shadow to what she becomes. It's been a long time since I rooted for a character as bad as I have for her.

My only complaint about the story was the lack of description of the characters. Hair color is rarely mentioned and whereas we know people of Inslic or Hansch origin tend to have this or that characteristics, I needed more. I only got to know Sammish's hair color and eye color by the end of the book; same with the witch (who, for some reason, I pictured with shaven blonde hair? I can't even explain). It was weird to reach the end and realize I had misimagined some of them, while most of the characters were still not described at all. Alys, for example - how does she look like? I know she looks like her brother and wears hoods often, but that's pretty much it.

Here's my favorite quotes:

<i>"If and if and if. They'll poison us if we let them, these ifs."</i>

Violence is the nature of the world. Peace is the pause between blows.

"She went to sleep, and she didn't wake up." And then, with a solemn knowing not, "She woke down."- This is something I would say and I cracked up.

And now, for the Expanse fans who are thinking 'can this be my new thing?': This is very different from the Expanse. You will not have an Amos or an Avasarala here, though there is a character who may recall you of her. It's not only fantasy but the writing and unraveling of the plot are slower-paced and known to you. There is no found family and, obviously, there is no space nor the Rocinante. That being said, this book has plans within plans within plans. If you enjoyed the character exploration and development in the Expanse, the political intrigue, and how one plan could shake everything (and did), you may certainly enjoy this. Is this going to scratch that The Expanse itch? Probably not, but it is still an insanely good book.

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Any bias from this reviee comes from my own fangirl ass. I am still happy dancing that I got to read this early.

First thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to this book.

Now Age of Ash is a new book by the coauthor of the Expanse. As a huge fan of the series I have always wanted to read his fantasy but this is my first time with it.
Having said that I will say I'm not disappointed at all bu there were a couple that things that weren't exactly my cup of tea.

Let's start with the good. Kithamar gave me exactly what I wanted. I love fantasy books that are more confined, instead of a gigantic fantasy world, so this one was right of my alley.. And I enjoyed exploring every part of it, but I also felt like we didn't really explore all of it.

The magic, let's just call it that so we don't spoil anything, was also fascinating, as well as the Brotherhood, which I just wanted to know more of.

The plot was also quite good, though I have to say that it meanders for a bit and sometimes it feels like you are just running around with characters. But there are some chapters that are SO GOOD.

Now for the more conflicting parts. The writting style is fantastic but it is also so detailed that we would be stuck for several paragraphs in a descripcion when I wanted to see where the story was going. Also the characters were quite unlikeable and I'm not sure if that was intentional or not...

This felt like a gritty, quite dark and sad story and I really enjoyed it. I feel like there is A LOT of potential for book two, and I'll be here for it.

I enjoyed it. The world gave me definitely Lies of Locke Lamora/early Name of the Wind vibes with slum/Street life and thieving gangs. It was really well written described and so vividly pictured. It's always a good thing when the world building gives you that sense of realism, and there are a lot of themes prevalent in society today.

Both characters I really liked, but the only downside for me was the middle section where the two other main characters are introduced and the story lost a bit of luster. The first and last thirds were extremely enjoyable to read.

2.5/5

If I had to sum Age of Ash up in one word, it would have to be boring. I had no investment in the characters and, if I am honest, I can’t even really remember much of what happened.

The story focuses on Alys who, for a main character, is rather non-descript. I know she has a brother because the main plot of the story but apart from that I couldn’t tell you anything about her. The other character is called Sammish and I know even less about her. I cared even less about her as well.

I can’t even remember the plot. I can remember something about a plague but, other than that, I can’t recall any major plot points. I’m sure there’s a good story in there somewhere but it obviously just isn’t for me.

Age of Ash turned out to be a massive disappointment, which is a shame because it is rather well written. The issue, however, is that the story just didn’t grab me and I found the characters to be very lacklustre. There just isn’t enough in the book that I actually liked and I forgot most of what happened once I finished it. I’m not sure I am going to carry on with the series.

(Orbit Books, 2022.)
Rating: ✶✶✶✶½

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My father died in January 2020, weeks before the pandemic entered India. My sister and I thank the powers that be for not keeping him around to witness the ensuing devastation. Nevertheless, I dream of women trying to resurrect father figures, powerful men, and reignite their living legacy, be it for better or for worse. I dream of women because my father raised me as a woman, although I turned out to be different. I dream of dead men because I knew my father to be a man first, before I realised he could’ve been something different, too. Possibly like me.

Age of Ash (Kithamar #1) is a high fantasy novel centred around an unusually sincere and grounded perspective on mourning. The novel is about other things, too, such as crime, guilt, loyalty, class solidarity, sorcery and the nature of evil. But there are other fantasy books that deal with those themes. Terry Pratchett, for instance, had a character argue that evil begins when people start treating other people like things. Daniel Abraham himself, as James S. A. Corey, wrote The Expanse series of science fiction novels, a significant part of which is about crime and the nexuses which undergird the different strata of society in the present as well as the far future. No, the reason why Age of Ash struck a chord with me is because it’s so real about mourning people one loves, and sometimes loses to life before death. I don’t mean the kind of mourning where someone moves mountains in honour of the memory of the one lost. I mean the kind of mourning where one refuses, makes a mess, clings to unrealities, and gives up.

So, while I could go on about the book’s many excellent qualities, such as it’s vivid, cinematic, and very effective opening paragraph, it’s atmosphere, with a neo-Victorian eye on social corruption deepening the low fantasy vibes reminiscent of George R. R. Martin at his best, the interesting world-building, with the illustration of Kithamar on the cover and the map of the city showing a blend of Gondor, London, and King’s Landing, it’s about this kind of mourning, and memory, that I keep thinking of this book. It’s this focus on mourning and memory that invites comparison to Arkady Martine’s recent Teixcalaan duology, particularly A Memory Called Empire.

This is why the story really comes into its own with its Part Two: Winter. Winter is the season when old people are most in danger from dying of unsuspected cardiac arrest or brain stroke. Winter is the season when memory brings hopelessness before it brings any sort of redemption. Part Two begins with a section where Alys, one of the protagonists of the novel, reflects on her memories of childhood and her dead older brother, Darro, that shines a different light on what life in poverty looks like for people who live and love in it, for whom winter has been and will always be much more dangerous than anyone else. Part Two has Sammish, the other protagonist of the novel, slowly pull herself together against her hopeless infatuation with Alys, and the inexorable wreckage of her dreams of escaping poverty and her home in Longhill, the story’s main slum/ghetto. It’s where she begins to turn into the hero of the story. Part Two has some of the best and most methodically paced characterisation I have come across in recent SFF, with Alys and Sammish turning to two different paths of mourning in the aftermath of Darro’s death: Alys transforms herself into her imago of her lost brother, the person she cared about most in her life, and therefore into a refined archetype of her own individualist self-image. Sammish, on the other hand, picks up the loser’s way, sort of losing herself in a network of dead, dying, or missing people, chasing clues for a woman who’s largely out of her reach, before she can pick up her own way again.

Part Two is also where the chief antagonist of the novel, and possibly the trilogy, makes its first appearance. Its called the Thread of Kithamar, but, really, its memory. Its a symbol of the continued perpetration of a violent dominant ideology founded on concepts of racial and genetic purity, that exploits and subjugates the bodies of other races. It is a consuming memory that reproduces a stagnant, unequal culture based on dynastic politics. It appropriates genderqueerness in a larger context of power, and weaponises a sensualist hunger against the inevitability of death and ruin. It raises the question of how much of our own toxic culture(s) IRL is a poisonous memory that refuses to fade into history, how much we cling to things long past because of shadowy motives, and how the re-producer(s) of cultural memory exploit these hungers in consumers that refuse to be sated. It raises the suspicion that, alongside the popular thought that there are ghosts amid us, perhaps we are turning into ghosts of our real selves. Perhaps this current world order reproduces only ghosts, an inevitable side effect of a life that finds itself in making a killing.

Is it a surprise, then, that the Thread of Kithamar is associated with the aristocracy, with the ruling elite, while Alys and Sammish, the protagonists, are both Inlisc, a subjugated race in the story?

What Age of Ash accomplishes is a dark look at the exploitation of memory, and the weaponisation and simultaneous neglect of mourning as a natural process, in the current scenario of power politics. It questions the public spectacle of mourning and the interests it serves, and makes a more authentic depiction of grief and humanity in poverty than is usually found in contemporary SFF. The depiction of royalty and aristocracy in the story is deliberately less vivid than the slums and the business districts of the fictional city, which makes for a welcome change from the routine fetishisation of royalty in our culture and in high fantasy. On the other hand, it offers a genuine look at crime, particularly theft, and how it reflects our modern gig economy through a decidedly late feudalistic-early capitalist lens.

Mourning is slow work, and Age of Ash is best read slow. I will be putting this book down with the quiet but strong hope that anyone else reading this book, and this review, will be encouraged to pick up whatever parts of their life they have been grieving, the parts that stuck in their memory, and turn them around so that time is changed, and the winter of our world turns to spring.

Age of Ash follows the story of Alys and Sammish in Kithamar; a city of extreme divides between the poorest and richest in society. Alys and Sammish make a living by working in teams to steal from the wealthier citizens. Just one of the many jobs they do in order to survive in a harsh environment. When one of their heists goes wrong, it ends in Alys’s brother being murdered.

Alys is determined to find out why her brother was murdered and while searching through his belongings a woman appears to her in a candle flame. She goes in search of this woman and when greed and grief consumes her she starts down a very dangerous path. Sammish follows Alys, helping in any way she can, blinded by her love for her until they come to a crossroads.

I don’t want to say much more on this because I really enjoyed learning all about the woman in the flame, how her brother died and what happens to the friendship of Sammish and Alys. The ending was satisfying but there are lots of questions left and I am looking forward to learning more about Kithamar and the dark spirit that is at its root.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Age of Ash is a definite 4.5 star read!

I received an e-ARC on Netgalley from Orbit in return for an honest review.

Let's begin with a very clear warning. This is a fantasy story about a city. This means that the main character of the series the city it self and the people living in it just its moving parts. I know how weird this sounds and it took some getting used too, but boy what a refreshing approach to fantasy.

The plot starts out as a murder mystery centered around a boy in a slum. We follow his sister Alys and her friend Sammish as they try to make sense of this murder. They stumble upon a major plot involving the highest rulers of the city of Kithamar. During this they grapple with their place in the world and their feelings for one another.

Abraham writes a compelling story, painting a vivid picture of an ancient city and it's citizens. The end result is a world that feels alive and real. You can imagine this city having existed a 1000 years ago. The fantasy elements are there, but they a more of a mystical nature than overt magic. Making this more appealing to Historical Fiction readers than an Epic Fantasy fan. He goes into great detail on the different neighbourhoods and who lives there. Really trying to setup a believable society, reminding me a bit of New York's boroughs or Jerusalem's different quarters.

Alys and Sammish are fully fleshed out characters. Alys is a bold personality, but with a strong sense of insecurity about her life. She struggles to live up to the image of her brother she has created in her head. Sammish is a girl I could relate to. She is how every wallflower feels at a party. She blends into the background of every situation and never gets noticed. Her feelings for Alys are precious and Alys her casual disregard hurt as if they were real. Abrahams focusses on the love for family, both literal and found. Showing us what grief can do to us and how it makes us question the world. Legacy is the second major theme, what does it mean to follow in someone else's steps. Is building a legacy worth any sacrifice?

All in all this is one of the most refreshing fantasy books I have read in a long time. It doesn't try to build a giant world. Nor does it want to give a massive story. It tells the story of a city and what cost its inhabitants have to pay to live in it. It has mystery, it has love, it has grief and most of all it feels alive.

What a book! I’m not always a fan of slow fantasy (though I know it’s often necessary for good world building) but there was something so deliberate about the pace of this book, like a vulture slowly circling its prey, sprawling much like the city its set in. Kithamar is a fascinating location – it is a huge and ancient city that, over the years, has swallowed up smaller settlements until old enemies have settled into being relatively comfortable neighbours.

The part of the city we see the most is Longhill, where the main character Alys is from. Longhill is the home of the Inlisc people, and it is the poorest area of the city, made of fragile wood and looked down upon by the rest of Kithamar. The story starts with an eagle-eyed view of the city, coming at it a year after the main events begin; the Prince has died and the city is in limbo, but before things gain too wide a perspective the focus narrows down to Alys and how she came to her current situation. Alys is a young woman who spends her days running pulls, teaming up with others from Longhill to steal from those more fortunate, especially on festival days when people are out in their finery.

When the leader of her team decides to target a member of the city guard for their next pull, Alys gets caught and is able to get away only with the help of her older brother Darro. He sends her into hiding for a few days, promising to take care of everything, but when she emerges again Darro’s corpse has washed up on the shores of the river. In shock and grief, Alys takes up Darro’s last job to try and discover what killed him, and she is catapulted into a world of secrets, danger, and magic, and she runs the risk of losing herself to her anger and the city itself.

As I said at the start, this is a slow-paced story, though it has many bursts of action, but the slow reveal of the mystery at the heart of Age of Ash is so worth it, and as Abraham builds up the tension he also builds up a strange and beautiful world. I am not sure I would ever want to live in Kithamar but I would happily read many books set within its walls, as I’m sure hundreds of stories could be told about it. Though I loved that Alys, a young girl from the slums and of no political importance, took centre stage, I was also itching to catch more glimpses inside the walls of the palace and I do hope we get to see more politics and intrigue in the rest of the trilogy. This was my first encounter with Daniel Abraham’s work (apart from my current obsession with The Expanse tv show) and it certainly won’t be the last – I eagerly await the next book in the Kithamar Trilogy and will definitely be exploring the author’s backlist.

Age of Ash is a bit of a strange one for me, because I usually leave my reviews for a couple of days after finishing the book, and let everything sink in, mull it over for a bit. With this one though, I’ve had plenty of time and although I enjoyed it overall, I find I don’t have an awful lot to say about it!

I think that unless you delve into the themes, or the specific character motivations, that is sometimes the conundrum with reviewing a Daniel Abraham book though.

The character work is good, although I felt some of the more interesting character development was right at the end of the book, so there was little time to enjoy this. The story definitely had its moments, with some of those interesting character developments driving the plot forwards in the latter stages of the book.

The standout theme for me was one of grief, with Alys, our main character, trying to come to terms with the loss of her brother, while also trying to unravel the mystery surrounding his death. This was all well handled and I enjoyed the exploration of loss and the path it set Alys upon.

Some people will tell you that the first book in an Abraham series is a slow burn and you don’t really appreciate so much it until you’ve read the full series. Here, I don’t think that was the case. Although it didn’t read at a blistering pace, Age of Ash was still a pretty quick and riveting read.

Probably the only real negative for me was the lack of clear separation between scenes. A few times, there was a change of scene mid-chapter, right at the top of the page on my Kindle. This really threw me out of my rhythm as I would just carry on reading without pause and then have to backtrack slightly, thinking I’d missed something.

Overall, I’m definitely interested in continuing the Kithamar series, and as long as you don’t need great battles, a massive cast and action-packed pages, Age of Ash comes well recommended.

"Age of Ash" didn't quite grab me the way I thought it would. It's a slow-burning story and was (for me) a slow read. The writing is good, the characters are interesting, and the setting is so-so. I couldn't decide if this book was a 3 or 4 star read for me, but I'm hoping the slow build-up means that books 2 and 3 of the trilogy will throw everything at me, so I've gone with 4 on the basis that the plodding will have a purpose.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

With his co-written Expanse series now done, Abraham returns to his solo fantasy work. If the pitch for his second fantasy series, The Dagger & The Coin, was less instantly distinctive than that for his first, the peerless Long Price Quartet, then you could say that trajectory has continued; there's no poetry as magic here, no humanity genetically remade by a lost race of dragons, just a sprawling, bustling, unequal city, in which one girl from the wrong side of the tracks (or rather, river) crushes on another, whose big brother got mixed up in something bigger and more dangerous than their usual little grifts, and paid the price. But then, just because fantasy has the option of eye-catching pitches, doesn't mean they're all the genre can do. Sometimes it's fine to write a fantasy novel animated by the little details, particularly when you have such a good pen for them as Abraham always did. Now, granted, part of that was always a particular knack for catching scenes through smells, which is a mixed blessing when applied to fantasy as low and urban as this. Kithamar is a shitty city, figuratively and often literally, and the scents here are not the gentle or heady ones of the Long Price; they are, for the most part, stinks. But whatever the downside of that, the city sure as hell feels solid(s). "All through its streets, Kithamar shows the signs and remnants of the cities that the city has been" – just one of the ways it reminded me of London, but then most fantasy cities do. Old fortresses go from frontiers to half-noticed neighbourhoods in the heart of town; districts which adjoin each other still regard each other as strange and alien. There are little, specifically Kithamar details which work, like the particular horror of death by drowning ("Everyone knows that water is hungry"), but just as good are the evocations of more ubiquitous stuff like the insular spirit of a bad neighbourhood ("A city within the city, Longhill clung to its pride like a man with only one good shirt"), or the way some specifics of a memory evaporate even while you think of the whole as having remained. And of course, not having the world laid out for us from the off means leaves a wonderful uncertainty about where the dividing line between custom, ritual, superstition, magic actually lies, which bits of what people are doing are custom and which might bring or avert apocalypse. A book whose focus is so firmly on the have-nots is a political choice in itself, and an understandable one given the state of our own world; it also means that the book is about halfway through before the leads, or the reader, have much of a clue at all what's actually going on. But then, isn't life often like that, when you're not rich enough not to have more pressing concerns in the way? I hesitate to say much about the plot eventually revealed, but it plays perfectly off the book's appalled fascination with systemic inequality, reifying without being clunky in that way uniquely open to non-realist fiction. I did also wonder whether there was something of a low rent but high stakes riff on Blades In The Dark going on, but given I've never actually played Blades In The Dark, you probably shouldn't take me too seriously on that. Although one thing I can say with authority is that dear heavens but it's nice to have some cider representation in fantasy.

(Netgalley ARC)

NB: I received an advanced copy of this book from Netgalley. Inasmuch as I can be sure of such things, I believe that this has not affected the content of my review.

This book is a solid, well-constructed tale about how the poorest people in a city ruled by a corrupted, evil, undying spirit can--if not overthrow the villain and restore justice, at least make things very inconvenient for the evil spirit for a while. The character journeys of our two main characters, Alys and Sammish, their arcs of grief and love and disappointment and reconciliation, were believable without falling into tropes, and their eventual ending points felt satisfying and real, if bittersweet.

The characterization of the city of Kithamar, too, was skilled, with the character of the neighborhoods enriched with a careful attention to the social organization and economic habits of the people who live there. There were many particularly effective details about how hard life is in the poorest neighborhood of Longhill, how people live on the knife-edge of freezing and starvation, develop tricks for balancing the need for warmth and food with not enough money for either, about how they recognize the signs when somone starts losing that balancing act, but can't afford to help, because they're always teetering on that knife-edge themselves. It makes the moment when someone does help that much more affecting--particularly when they help someone who doesn't 'deserve' it, although of course even that moral calculus is suspect, since everone 'deserves' not to starve or freeze to death.

Abraham is very good at what he does. I don't believe this book is quite as good as his Dagger andd the Coin sequence, or his Long Price Quartet, but then it's only a single book, and his works tend to really shine as the story stretches out and complexifies. But I always enjoy his work, even in single books, and I look forward to reading the next book in this series. But I am not impatient for it, because, in a final gift to his reader, Abraham wraps the story up in a very satisfying way. There is room for a sequel, but it's not a cliffhanger. Kithamar will be ready for me when next I'm ready for it.