Review of Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

Daniel Abraham is one of the busiest men in writing. He is one half of the “James S.A. Corey” pen name which produces the Expanse series (ten books and counting), as well as co-writer on the television adaptation. He is the writer behind the pen name M.L.N. Hanover, and adapts George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books into graphic novel form. He regularly contributes short stories to Martin's Wild Cards anthology series and other venues. On top of all this, he somehow finds time to write epic fantasy under his own name, producing two lengthy series the past 15 years, The Long Price quartet and The Dagger & Coin series. The latest fantasy series to come out kicks off with Age of Ash (2022). Let's see if the workload affects quality.

Age of Ash, while occasionally viewed through side characters, is predominantly experienced through the eyes of Alys and Sammis. Alys is tough and street smart. Part of a gang of petty thieves, she runs distractions while her accomplices, one of whom is her brother Darro, get away with people's valuables in crowded markets and streets. Darro has loftier goals in life, but his schemes eventually catch up to him, leaving Alys with even tougher choices to make. Sammis is the ying to Alys' feisty yang. Quieter, calmer, she takes lesser known paths to resolve problems—particularly the problems Darro's adventures get the gang into.

Behind these two young women and the events of their lives lies the city of Kithamar. An omnipresent character in itself, Kithamar is where the entire novel takes place—slums, underworlds, markets, and all. Having a story of its own, Abraham attempts to spice up its vanilla Medieval-ness with a touch of the fantastic shrouded in mystery. Revealed in enough detail to be evocative and yet not too much to be overwhelming, by the end of the book it's possible readers will feel at home in the city. It's also possible that readers will feel been there, done that given how subtle the touch of the fantastic is and how textbook the city can feel at other moments.

Age of Ash distinctly reminds me of two books. The first, somewhat naturally, is the opening volume in Abraham's The Coin & the Dagger series, The Dragon's Path. Clearly an opening volume, it's patient building main characters and the world. Tension ratchets up at occasional moments, but rarely achieves epic impact. But the touch and feel of Age of Ash reminds me most of Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs. To be clear, Abraham does character, emotion, stream-of-consciousness better, but in terms of the city and the underlying, rarely-seen-but-always-felt sense of magic and the supernatural, Age of Ash delivers a similar effect; ordinary people in a world that is physically similar but which is occasionally breached by the uncanny.

In the end, Age of Ash is a tough novel to judge on its own. It's clear that the story is a chunk of a larger story, and thus in some ways dependent on what comes after. In some ways, this changes the context from “Is this a good novel? to ”Does Abraham set a reasonable stage for a series”? I've read... many fantasy novels, and this one is not standard but close. It lacks several pieces one would consider normal for a Medieval world (dragons, knights, mighty battles, etc.), but the city, which is essentially a character, is Medieval-Medieval. Abraham sets his book (slightly) apart through the human characters. They feel somewhere between 2D and 3D—which is more than most fantasy of this caliber. Recommending the novel thus hinges on the expectations the reader has for character (vs plot) and how much they like either Abraham's earlier work or Bennett's City of Stairs. And if you're woke, looking for politics more than good writing, Abraham gives you two female leads—one empowered and the other emotionally sensitive, covering his bases. (I jest, natch, and so to be fair to Abraham it does not seem he was overtly attempting to cash in on the political zeitgeist; see the lack of sword-wielding women on the book cover and the realism of character.)