Monday, April 4, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ashes of Gold by J. Elle

 




Ashes of Gold is the second half of J. Elle's YA Fantasy Duology which began with last year's "Wings of Ebony" (Which I reviewed here).  I really liked Wings of Ebony, which featured Rue, a black teen caught between two worlds - one filled with magic but ruled by an exploitative dictator (who is even worse than he appears) and one that is basically our world, on the inner streets of Houston, where Rue's friends, family and people are preyed on by drug dealers and a racist populace that refuses to help.  It was not a subtle or unpredictable book at all, what with the drug dealers using white women as "innocent" spies and the magical dictator turning out to have stolen the magic from the indigenous people of his island, but it worked really well at showing its themes of race, injustice, imperialism and cultural theft as well as featuring a really enjoyable lead character in Rue.  

Ashes of Gold is a bit more focused book, focusing entirely on the magical island of Ghizon, and while it's still a very solid piece of YA, it doesn't quite live up to its predecessor as a result.  Rue is no longer torn between two worlds, and instead struggles with self doubt about her seemingly prophesied role as the leader of the Ghizoni people against the Chancellor and his loyal Grays who stole their magic - especially after her first attempt at leadership goes horribly wrong.  The result is a story that still works, but at the same time is a bit more paint by numbers, with a reliance on certain tropes that don't quite really work for me anymore.  

Disclaimer:  As the author notes in her acknowledgements, she wrote this book for black girl readers particularly.  I am a white cis adult reader, and as such am not the target audience for this book, so you may want to keep that context in mind when you read my review - it's certainly likely the target audience may have different feelings than I do.  

----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------------
After stopping the General and his drug dealers on the streets of Houston, Rue returned to the island of Ghizon intent on stopping the Chancellor, who stole the magic from the native people of Ghizon - Rue's own people - and returning the magic to her people.  Rue figured that after her work in Houston, and after she exposed the Chancellor's lies for what they were, she'd be able to accomplish her goal with ease.  

Rue was wrong.  

Instead, after a disastrous charge led by Rue leads to countless dead, Rue finds herself with missing memories, imprisoned with Jamal in one of the Chancellor's dungeons, with no idea how she got there or what went wrong.  And while Rue is able to escape, she finds herself gripped with self-doubt, especially as she realizes how little she knows about her own people, their culture, and their ways.  Who is she to lead these people, especially after she got so many of them killed?  But despite there being several other capable leaders, a strong faction of them insist upon Rue continuing to lead them, to her dismay.  

And so Rue hatches a plan to get her people's magic back, so that they won't be reliant on her own, and can work together to overthrow the Chancellor.  But the Chancellor isn't done with Rue just because she's escaped from his clutches, and he may have some surprising allies on his side, including people who Rue thought she could trust....
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As I mentioned above the jump, Ashes of Gold is a more focused book than its predecessor, dealing solely with the conflict in the magic-filled island of Ghizon.  Rue uses her special watch to still talk to the boy she has feelings for - Julius - from Houston, and during a few moments uses it to travel back to Houston for moral support, but the Houston conflict, which dealt most blatantly with issues facing people in our world, is resolved and doesn't pop back up here.  

Which is not to say at all that Ghizon isn't filled with conflict and issues that are incredibly relevant to our world.  As we learned in the last book, this is a world led by a dictator, whose people stole magic from and oppressed/murdered the indigenous people and forced them into hiding, who imposed a caste-like system on his own people based upon little other than his own personal whims.  But it's more than that.  For example, as Rue learns, the native Ghizoni aren't simply a single culture, even as they've been forced together, and is instead made up of many different subcultures and peoples with their own traditions and viewpoints (just like real world Indigenous peoples).  The oppressed castes of the Grays, like those who were not given magic and forced to either live underground or die, have their own gripes with the Chancellor...which can make them allies or additional third party enemies that Rue has to learn to deal with. 

And in all of this, there's Rue, an outsider really, who is asked to play some kind of leadership role, if not THE leadership role, despite her being a teen, a girl who doesn't really know these cultures, and despite there being others who DO know these cultures available and willing to lead.  Rue's journey as she navigates the above issues, and the conflicts they pose, as well as the issues of love between peoples, between individuals, and desires for power, is really well done as she grows and learns and deals with heartbreak and heartache and comes away from it all stronger and capable of being a leader, even if she's still perfectly fallible.  The book also does a good job showing how envy and love can tear people apart along the way.  

Still, this plot is reliant on a bunch of tropes that I really don't like and some of them aren't pulled off particularly well.  Most notably is the reliance upon a character who can prophesize that someone will betray Rue, which leads to her not trusting anyone, which is just a trope I hate - and it isn't helped by the potential betrayers being pretty obvious.  Nor is it helped by the eventually revealed betrayer being someone whose motivations are kind of weak, with it being believable to me that that character might act against Rue but absolutely not believable to me that that character would be in league with the chancellor.  And the way the book resolves the love triangle, featuring a boy from each world, (and which was the weakest part of the first book) is kind of lame, as it basically doesn't force Rue to make a choice at all and just resolves things the easiest - if still heartbreaking - way possible.  

But still Ashes of Gold is a perfectly solid duology ender, just one that can't quite match the depth and complexity of its predecessor.  If you liked Wings of Ebony, you will likely like this as well, and it's worth your read to continue and finish the series.  

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