I finished reading Age of Ash, the first book in a new series from Daniel Abraham. Now, I’m a huge Daniel Abraham fanboy. I discovered him with the story The Cambist and Lord Iron, which you should read. I mean, now. Go, click, read. That lead me to the Long Price Quartet, which has one of the most unique and interesting magic systems in a fantasy series I’ve encountered. Then The Expanse, of course, and also The Dagger and the Coin, a more straightforward epic fantasy, which is not really my bag these days, but had super interesting bad guys and went to some cool places.
So now we have Age of Ash, the first in the promised “Kithamar Trilogy”. And I found it incredibly disappointing. It doesn’t have clever, unique ideas like his other works. It move ploddingly. The central conflict isn’t revealed until halfway through the book. It is mostly about characters who are part of an underclass in their city and their struggles to survive from day to day. Which is fine, but this goes on for hundreds of pages. If you want to read a fantasy novel about characters finding as many gig work jobs as they can, this is for you.
The character arcs just feel very rote and predictable. It commits the cardinal sin, which is that it is boring. I don’t understand how Daniel Abraham wrote this. I certainly hope he returns to his more interesting, creative works when he’s done with this.