Ashes of the Sun (Burningblade and Silvereye #1) by Django Wexler
This is the first book I’ve read by Django Wexler and I really enjoyed myself. It’s main strengths are it’s characters and their believable and stakes raising relationships, a mysterious magic system that offers great fun especially in terms combat, an exciting style and pace and of course a story that puts all of these things to excellent use.
Ashes of the Sun revolves around two main characters, Maya, a young farm girl who suffers mysterious bouts of sickness and Gyre her loving and protective older brother. One fateful day a Centarch of the Twilight Order, sort a ‘Jedi knight’, arrives at their home offering a cure for Maya and proceeds, despite her screams, to try and take her away. Her older and protective brother Gyre intervenes and loses half his face as punishment resulting in a serious revenge obsession and an overwhelming desire to see the entire system destroyed.
Years later life has gone on. Maya is still alive, a powerful junior Agathios on her way to becoming a full Centarch, and fully indoctrinated into the system she now serves. She believes that everything they do is for the greater good and this is in large part down to her mentor Jaedia, who has taught her that she must be decent and wise to the people she protects not laud over them with her power. Her heart is still in tact and with much of her time spent chasing plunderers of illegal old world magic she genuinely wants to do what she thinks is right. Gyre has grown into the leader of a group of bandits who disrupt and harass the authorities always seeking access to some sort of raw power or ancient technology that will eventually give them the edge of the magically infused Centarchs. He is driven by a need to overturn and destroy the system, to claim his own autonomy and to see the heavy-handed tactics of those that hold all the power and its possibilities usurped by those that live and work in the dirt.
Now obviously the two will meet up again but that’s pretty much the end in terms of predictability and I loved this part of the book. Even when prophecies appear and you’re thinking oh here we go, they’re never ponderously explained or vital enough in the moment to encumber the story. I truly never knew what was coming round the corner, I didn’t know who I was going to like from chapter to chapter and I didn’t want to know in case it brought the story to an end. There is a real skill in keeping someone that reads 50 fantasy books a year guessing and if you look very closely at the picture above you might be able to spot some very slight damage to the cover when something particularly surprising happened that caused me to throw the book across the room. I savored the moments of discovery but never felt distracted by a lack of information if you know what I mean.
The world is a crazy one. Ancient ghouls wielding powerful magic, the Centarchs and their desire to protect/control (again I come back to a comparison with the Jedi and their order), horrific beast’s joined with each other creating hybrid voluminous heaving sacks of guts and teeth and deep underground pits full of as many untold horrors as untold riches, I could go on and on.
Ashes of the Sun is great unpredictable fantasy that packs a serious punch and I'll definitely be picking up some of Django's earlier series to fill the gap before the release of the next book.
8.5/10
Ashes of the Sun is published by Orbit Books and releasing on the 21st of July 2020. Thank you to Orbit for providing me a copy in exchange for an honest review. Sorry I trashed the book but there was the throwing thing and then I took it poolside in Vegas and you know.....Vegas.
