Wednesday, June 9, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: First Become Ashes by K.M. Szpara

 




First Become Ashes is the second book by author K.M. Szpara, who had previously been Hugo and Nebula nominated for short fiction before making his long fiction debut last year with "Docile."  Docile (my review here) was....an incredibly hard book to read, featuring a dark sci-fi take on capitalism and consent and abusive (M-M) relationships, which ended in a provocative and difficult fashion...which I'm not really sure actually was earned or worked.  Docile was a book that featured prominent on-page rape, sexual abuse, and other abusive scenes, which is very much not my thing, and yet it used those scenes to hit its message really really hard, making the book impossible to have weak feelings about.  

First Become Ashes isn't quite as full of triggering scenes as Docile - sexual abuse, physical and emotional abuse all feature prominently once again, but not quite as often.  But it isn't anywhere near as interesting as Docile as it deals with a boy who grew up as a chosen one in a cult (suffering the aforementioned abuse along the way) and winding up on the run in the real world when the cult gets raided by the FBI.  So there's some interesting themes about abuse, about figuring out what to believe after a childhood of brainwashing, and about love and how you can best help someone struggling with these issues.....and the book entirely fumbles these themes with a last act swerve that just feels out of place and unearned.  So with similar difficult passages to Docile, even if less extensive, but without the interesting and questioning themes....it makes me not very interested in reading what comes next from Szpara.  

TRIGGER WARNINGS:  Self-Harm, Self-Harm by Proxy, Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, Physical Abuse, Rape.  You get the drill.  



-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Lark has spent his whole life as one of the Anointed in the Fellowship of the Anointed, learning to wield magic under the tutelage of the Fellowship's leader Nova alongside the boy he loves Kane and two other Anointed.  As Kane turns 25, he is sent out of the Fellowship where the Forces of Evil ("FOE") are said to roam, with a quest to hunt down a monster, and Lark frustratingly watches the boy he loves leave, wishes desperately he could go with him.  

And then Lark's world is turned upside down when the Fellowship is stormed from the outside by armed men, FBI officers brought there by none other than Kane, who thinks that he's saving them all from their cruel, abusive and duplicitous leader.  But Lark is unwilling to believe that the magic he has felt all his life isn't real, and that the monsters aren't actually out there, and desperately runs from it all.  

Along the way Lark meets Calvin, a cosplayer desperate to believe that magic could actually be real.  But as Calvin and his friend Lilian begin to help Lark go....somewhere, he begins to question is what he was taught about the outside world really real?  What does it mean if it isn't?  And for Calvin, who wants desperately for Lark's magic to be real, is he really doing the right thing in helping Lark stay on the run instead of getting him help?
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First Become Ashes' narrative switches off between four characters in two different timelines.  The prime narrative is that of Lark in the present day, with Calvin joining him as a more modern perspective once he shows up.  Then there's the narrative of Kane in the past, as Kane slowly realizes how abusive the Fellowship's leader's practices are and how wrong it is, and becomes desperate to escape and bring it all down.  Kane's narrative is especially brutal to read, as you discover how brutally abused Kane, Lark and the others were, and how some of the other elders in the Fellowship abused them, and how hard it was for him to try to turn them all in given how committed Lark, the one he loved, is to the whole belief structure of the cult.  

And then there's Lark and Calvin's central present day narrative, which is just so incredibly brutal and difficult to read, and yet fascinating at the same time.  For Lark, you have the boy who was brutally abused as a child and made to believe it was necessary for him to wield magic as a chosen one, who fell in love with that narrative, only to be betrayed by a loved one and to be told it isn't real - and who can't quite deal with that.  And so he runs and insists upon reenacting some of it all, even as he clearly can see that it can't all have been true.  For Calvin you have a guy who has spent his life cosplaying as magical figures because he wants magic to be real, and so when he sees Lark insisting it is, he can't help but buy in and hope that Lark is right.  They're absolutely terrible for each other as enabling, something that Calvin's friend Lilian calls out more than once, but Calvin's knowledge of the real world and willingness to accept Lark's claims of magic is enough in some ways to keep Lark alive while teaching him that not all of the teachings - such as all outsiders being corrupted - can be true, such that he begins to question.  

The problem is that the plot can't really commit to this idea, to the struggle of Lark realizing his abuse was not for a good purpose and that his brainwashing is wrong, and has to muddle the waters by throwing in the possibility that some of the magic is real and that monsters do exist.  And so, Lark's acceptance of what happened to him and commitment to move forward never really makes sense....because the magic is real!  Szpara tries to have Lark essentially learning that the magic can come from something other than pain and abuse...but it never really works or feels earned, as there's never any instant or slow burn moment of realization for Lark to make his acceptance work.  And Calvin absolutely IS enabling Lark, as the book acknowledges, and causing problems for others who are trying to help him, even if they're being perhaps a bit too aggressive for Lark's own good, and is absolutely selfish in why he does so, and he suffers no consequences and finds love in it all as a result.  Calvin and Lark's endings are just never absolutely earned, which just makes the few interesting ideas of this book really not work.  

And that's a problem given all the things the book forces you to go through in order to read this story, particularly the descriptions of the abuse.  The fourth narrative, that of Deryn, Lark's non-anointed sibling who helps the FBI at first out of jealousy before coming to a revelation about what it really meant to have not been chosen, also never really feels earned....although the problem there is also that it never is as interesting a narrative in the first place.  The best thing the book does is feature a world where there are multiple NB or queer characters and everyone openly introduces themselves with their pronouns without it being anything out of the usual, but that optimistic setting feature can hardly make up for all the other problems with the narrative and themes.  

So yeah, First Become Ashes is a miss for me, and with this being the second book featuring on page abuse in a row from Szpara, this is likely the last I read from him in a while until I see word that his next book features something different.  

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