Tuesday, July 7, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ashes of the Sun by Django Wexler

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 21, 2020 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Ashes of the Sun is the first in a new epic fantasy trilogy by author Django Wexler.  Wexler is a bit of a prolific writer this decade in the genre but I've only read before his YA fantasy series, The Wells of Sorcery (Ship of Smoke and Steel, City of Stone and Silence).  I've really really liked the Wells of Sorcery so far, with its dark YA fantasy taking some very surprising turns, featuring very solid romantic subplots, and dealing with some very strong themes.  So I was interested to check out Wexler's newest work when I saw it pop up on NetGalley.

The result is a very enjoyable, if long (when he says "epic", he means it) epic fantasy novel, which begins a new trilogy but also manages to tell a satisfying self contained story at the same time.  Like Wells of Sorcery, there are clearly Star Wars influences here: this world features an organization of energy wielding crusaders called "Centarchs" who are supposedly independent arbiters of justice in a world mainly governed by a "Republic", which will call to mind some clear Star Wars concepts.  But Wexler takes these directions in different directions, with one of our protagonists being on the opposite side of the Centarchs resulting in a plot that is very much its own.  Add in some really interesting characters and very solid dialogue, and it all adds up to a very enjoyable trilogy starter.


----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
As a little girl, Maya was frequently sick, but she had a loving family and an older brother in Gyre who cared for her.  But when a Centarch of the Twilight Order comes to take her away from that family, Gyre refuses to let Maya go, and the Centarch uses his searing power of deiat to destroy one of his eyes and cause him massive pain.

Years later, Maya has attained the rank of Agathios in the Order, and is perhaps on the verge of becoming a full Centarch herself.  Two things separate her from the rest of the Order - her mentor is a bit of a maverick and belongs to a less stringent political faction - and the strange object, the "Thing", implanted in her chest as a child to control her illness, and which she has been told to keep secret.  Yet when politics forces Maya away from her mentor for the first time, she begins to see that the rest of the order doesn't have the same ideals of justice as she does...

Meanwhile, Gyre has left his family a long time ago, and found himself in the outsider city of Deepfire.  There he has become a prominent leader of the city's rebels against the Deepfire's cruel corrupt ruler, under the name "Halfmask".  But what Gyre really seeks is some power that can enable him not just to fight a small rebellion, but to possibly overturn the Twilight Order's control over power itself, and to ensure acts like the ones that took his sister and scarred him never happen again.  And when a reckless young woman promises to take him to a legendary place that might contain that such power, he leaps at the chance, no matter how reckless.

Gyre and Maya haven't seen each other since that fateful day years ago, but fate will conspire to bring them together once again....only this time, they will be on opposite sides, and the fate of the world may hang in the balance......
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As I mentioned above, Ashes of the Sun very clearly has Star Wars influences, as made explicitly clear by the book's own acknowledgements.  We have a Republic which relies upon an independent group of energy wielding warriors to help promote order (the Twilight Order) - an Order that relies upon taking children with gifts from their families, willing or not.  Like the Jedi, the Order was once meant for fighting against an ancient enemy and forbids certain practices associated with them.  You can easily see some of the critiques about the Star Wars political system that results being shown here, with the Order being more explicitly controlling and dictatorial (and corrupt) than the Jedi, and the Republic only really being good for those in wealth, and not those who are downtrodden - especially those outside its borders who get all of the downsides and none of the benefits.

This is made even clearer by a major difference from Star Wars - the Order didn't come about on its own, but is the remnant of a seemingly extinct race known as the Chosen, who died off in their final fight against the Ghouls, another elder and seemingly extinct race, whose objects of power the Order tries to heavily control.  In other words, the Order isn't some independently formed powerful group for the purpose of justice - it's a group that was created by people who are long gone, still acting despite their original purpose being gone....and still impacting the lives of many.

This setup creates the world of Gyre and Maya, both really interesting characters, and the story bounces back and forth between the two of them every chapter (and occasionally within the same chapter).  Maya barely remembers her childhood, and doesn't remember what happened when she was taken, and was raised by the Order.  Fortunately for her, she was raised by a member of the order's "Pragmatic" faction, which believes in helping people first and foremost and otherwise trying to stay out of peoples' lives - as opposed to the "Dogmatic" faction which believes their foremost priority is wiping out all traces of Ghoul technology/artifacts and that anyone who stands in the way of same must be pushed aside.  So she's kind and compassionate, with a sense of justice that often makes her a bit reckless and gets here into trouble because she absolutely always wants to do the right thing.

But again that upbringing has essentially sheltered her from the realities of the world - of its poverty and cruelty and even in how other members of the Order act and how that affects how the world looks at them.  And even in ordinary things like romance and sexual want - a thing that becomes clear as Maya becomes attracted to another girl of the Order, an arcanist named Beq, who gets assigned to her mission.  Maya is extremely clever at times but her lack of experience and naivete in both the world and in personal matters makes her a very enjoyable heroine to read - especially with Wexler's excellent dialogue/thoughts-writing.

By contrast, Gyre is extremely experienced - in both the cruelties of the world and of matters near and personal (at one point in the book Gyre is having sex in a cave while at the same time far away Maya is awkwardly trying to figure out how to kiss, for instance).  Like his sister, Gyre is very quick witted and has a sense for justice.  Unlike his sister, he doesn't see that justice as coming from a central authority, as all of these he's seen in this world, be it the Republic, a Corrupt Aristocrat, or the Twilight Order, and he wants especially to take down the Order and give people freedom from what he sees as dictatorial rule.  Gyre has found himself a role in a group of rebels in the city, with people who care about him, and with a role there helping people.  And like his sister, Gyre genuinely cares about those people....except it's just not enough for him.  Gyre needs to destroy the entire world order, not just a city, no matter what it costs him.

In a nice twist, Gyre is no fool about this ambition - he knows it's insanely dangerous and likely to lead to bad outcomes if he can even find a way to put it into action, and it hurts him that it will.  He also knows that if he does wind up seeing Maya ever again, she will likely be fully "indoctrinated" in the Order's ethos, and not the little sister he remembers.  This doesn't stop him and his commitment - he knows it has to be done, and so he'll try to minimize the harm he causes, but he will absolutely not give up.  It is a nice twist on the classic two siblings on opposite sides dynamics - Gyre is aiming to find and work for the most likely bad guys in this trilogy, but he is fully aware of what he's doing and what he may find, and so the reunion isn't some traumatic experience like you'd expect for him.

These two characters and the minor characters are really well done, and help to build a plot that keeps you on edge, with the characters' quick thinking resulting in turns that made me smile on more than one occasion.  Wexler's dialogue and character moments are as spot on here as they are in his Wells of Sorcery trilogy, making the book read really quickly for one that is still pretty damn long.  And in a nice surprise, while the book does tease several plot threads that it doesn't resolve, the main arc of the story IS resolved by this novel, so one could actually be satisfied stopping here, and will be satisfied even if they don't.

So yeah, this is a really solid and enjoyable epic fantasy novel, and I look forward to its continuation for sure.  It never really reaches into true brilliance, so I wouldn't declare it a must read, but it's a very good read if you're looking for something new in Epic Fantasy.
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