Saturday, September 22, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani



Memories of Ash is the successor to Intisar Khanani's earlier fantasy novella, Sunbolt (reviewed here).  Unlike Sunbolt however, Memories of Ash is a full novel as opposed to a novella.  More importantly, Memories of Ash feels a lot less derivative than its predecessor - it still shares some themes with Robin McKinley's "Sunshine" but the plot feels more inspired and less like a rip-off - and the result is a story that feels a little more fresh and surprising.  I'm not sure if future books in this series are coming, but I hope they do, because I have enjoyed these stories so far.  That said, the book has a satisfying ending in case future books do not come, even if it mostly sets up future plot arcs.

Note:  As I said in my review of Sunbolt, that novella felt very much like the prologue to a longer series, and this book reads more like Book 1 in a series thereafter.  As such, you can read this book without reading Sunbolt and I don't think you'll have much trouble, though you'll miss a little bit. 

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
One year ago, Hitomi cast her powerful Sunbolt, destroying a powerful fang (vampire) and burning away most of her memories in the process.  In the year she has spent studying how to use her magical ability in secret with the mage Brigit Stormwind, only a few of those memories have returned, mainly the most recent ones.  Still as she trains, her life has been relatively simple.

Until her mentor Stormwind is summoned to the High Council of mages on a charge of Treason...and the Arch Mage Blackflame, the evil mage who tried feeding her to that fang years ago and destroyed her family, is responsible.  Determined to save her mentor, Hitomi journeys to the High Council, only to find even getting to the city will require her to traverse dangerous magical lands and deal with powerful supernatural creatures....in addition to the Blackflame's minions.

And then there's the council itself, which punishes wild Talents like Hitomi either with death....or by enslavement to a powerful mage, to be used as a battery for that other mage to use.  In order to break out her mentor, Hitomi will need all her skills, some unlikely allies, and a whole lot of luck if she wants to not only save her mentor, but to survive....
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Memories of Ash continues Hitomi's journey from Sunbolt but makes a more cohesive full-length adventure out of it.  That's not to say that this book doesn't have some very disparate elements like its predecessor (Sunbolt's first and second halves almost read like different stories/genres), but even in its more supernatural-heavy first part, Memories of Ash keeps its eyes on its main plot of Hitomi's quest to save her mentor from imprisonment....or worse.  That's not to say the story doesn't have many twists and turns - it has quite a few, including a final act that surprised me in how it played out and yet worked fairly well.

The key to this for the second straight story is that Hitomi is an excellent protagonist.  Driven to help those in need - in the novella she helped a noble family and in this book she is driven to help her mentor - she is a fun, quick thinking heroine who is incredibly easy to root for, especially given her surprising conscience regarding the use of her own abilities.  If there's one complaint about her it's that her "loss of memories" often feels more like an informed trait than a real one - she remembers to a necessary extent nearly every person that she might find necessary to go on - but other than that, her quick thinking and drive to do things others would consider reckless at best and incredibly stupid at worst because of her sense of right and wrong makes her a great heroine for this series.

In addition to Hitomi, the book further develops a number of characters and beings in its worldbuilding.  We learn more about Arch Mage Blackflame and Hitomi's mother, as well as the other mages in the world, who were basically not touched in the prior volume and clearly will be major players in the future of this series.  There are the other beings - not always human - who Hitomi encounters and are of interest....as before this is a fantasy that is willing to include creatures of all types from all different myths and it does so effectively.  And then there are the returning characters from the prior volume, particularly Val, who gets some tantalizing development that isn't quite followed up on but is enough to peak one's interest.

The book's ending is a satisfactory ending to the conflict that is the heart of this book, but is clearly the start of a greater series (and I don't see any sign of Book 3 on the author's website), so new readers may hesitate to pick this up while the future is uncertain.  Still, I do think it's worth your time, even if it's not a work that really goes beyond "good" into "great" territory.
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