Every centarch manifested dait differently-as lightning. ice. raw force, or subtle energies. For Maya, it has always been fire. Deity was the fire of creation, the raw power of the universe.
- Release date : July 21st 2020
- Publishing house : Head of Zeus
- Series : Burningblade & Silvereye
- Pages : 560
Spoilers ahead
I was acquainted with his work by reading The Shadow Campaigns a few years ago. I had really loved the series and I’ve felt the same thing with Ashes of the Sun.
We follow two characters: Maya and Gyre. They were separated at 5 years old and 8 years old respectively while they were but children by someone from the Twilight Order, a mysterious organisation wielding magic. Maya was taken by Va’aht Thousandcuts, a centarch from this organisation because of her strange illness. Gyre tried to defend her as she didn’t want to go but Va’aht took one of his eye for having injured him.
After that, we are taken twelve years later.
Gyre is part of a rebel group and is known as Halfmask. Their purpose is to improve the living conditions of the people by bringing down those taking too much advantage of them.
Maya has been training to be a centarch with Jaedia Suddenstorm for a few years to become in turn a centarch.
“The Chosen are gone, but as long as their heirs hold their weapons over the rest of us, who can stand up to them? They say they have the right to rule, out of a duty to keep the rest of us safe. As though we were children, inferior, just because we weren’t born with whatever special trick that lets the centarch touch deiat.”
I was impressed by the characters and their relationships. Maya and Beq’s for instance wasn’t rushed and developed all along the book. Sometimes, I was like « yes, here we are, it’s going somewhere » but he chose to further develop them and to keep the tension up.
Maya is the kind of character that would go all in to right a situation, taking huge risks, using her magic too much and so on.
As for Gyre, his love life has been troubled. He has been in love with the leader of the bandit group, Yora, but she doesn’t seem to share his feelings. Her death – that was unexpected – shook him up quite a lot. I was a bit sad about her death. She deserved better.
Even with Kit, he doesn’t have much luck. Even if they spent some good time together, her state at the end of the book was heart-wrenching!
Loyal to his dream, destroying the Twilight Order, it made his behaviour questionable. He came across as someone using other people to get what he wants, even if he appears to care about them a bit.
Let’s talk about the world and what happens in the book now.
Set in a world disfigured by a war between ghouls and the Chosen, humans have been trying to survive by living in high-walled cities or underground. Just before disappearing, the Chosen founded the Twilight Order and gave them the means to use magic (deiat).
At the top of command, you have the kyriliarch, masters of deait guiding the organisation. They are divided between 3 categories : pragmatic, dogmatic and revivalist.
Just below, we have the centarchs, remarkable warriors using deait to fight. Some use wind, fire, space and so on.
Then we have their trainees, agathia, who have to train for a few years with a fully-fledged centarch.
But, warriors aren’t the only people you’ll find here. There are also arcanists, servants, blacksmiths and a whole other range of professions.
Their job is to roam the Dawn Republic to take care of threats to humanity: plaguespawn (grotesque creatures using what they eat to grow other legs, eyes…), dhak (unsanctioned arcana) and dhakim (humans controlling plaguespawn with ghoul magic).
“Jaedia had once described plaguespawn as the product of a mad taxidermist, given the run of the contents of a butcher shop and a morgue. That was close, but Maya thought that no human mind, however mad, could have matched the awfulness of the real thing. And despite all its deformities, the thing functioned.”
The Twilight Order is the protector of humanity but the people seems rather fearful of them. Gyre points out that they are afraid of normal people becoming stronger than them by using the unsanctioned arcana. The Twilight Order doesn’t seem to explain why this kind of arcana is forbidden while another isn’t. It seems that it’s more out of not knowing what it could do.
« Blood was painted across the cobblestones, vivid crimson in the lamplight. »
Politics plays a big part in Ashes of the Sun. Jaedia, Maya’s mentor, warned her about the toxicity of The Twilight Order’s politics. Each group within it has its own vision of what they should do, creating heated discussions on how to tackle certain issues. Jaedia said that they could go as far as making another member of a group look bad in front of the Council. For instance, during Maya’s first mission with Tanax as leader, Jaedia is sure that he is here to make her look bad so that it could discredit the Pragmatics. One faction could then gain power over the other.
I have high hopes for the next instalments! Ashes of the Sun is a dynamic story with two siblings on « opposite » side. It has interesting and some morally grey characters, high-stakes and a good mix of fantasy and science-fiction.
L'Antre de la Fantasy 