The King of Ashes – Feeling Feisty

Goodness gracious, Raymond Feist is back. I hope all of you are somewhat familiar with Feist. He was a staple of my childhood and wrote a ton of fantasy that was a part of my gateway into the genre, and into reading in general. His classic Magician is fantastic and I was excited to hear that he was writing something new. His new release is called The King of Ashes, and is the first in a new series called The Firemane Saga. I dove into it full of nostalgia and the hope that it would be another classic – but did it live up to my expectations?

First, as always, let’s talk about the plot. The King of Ashes is the start of a “big” series that has plans on being a sweeping epic that tells the story of a large continent. Appropriately, the story starts with some backstory about the death of a kingdom. On the continent of Tembria there are five countries, all in an uneasy peace with each other. The King of Ashes begins with the death of one of these countries, Ithrace, at the hands of the other four. The kings of these four countries have gotten greedy, and came up with a backstabby plan to collectively take out a rival, kill all of his bloodline, and split his land. Not everyone in the four kingdoms supports this plan, and we open the book with the POV of a semi-independent duke who is trying to quietly avoid being involved with the pillaging of Ithrace. Due to the duke’s reluctance to be a part of the bloodbath, the sole remaining heir to Ithrace (a baby named Hatu) ends up in his care. The duke, in a moment of kindness, decides to hide the child and have him raised to one day take back his home. Declan is sent to a school of spies and assassins to learn their ways until he comes of age. Hatu is our first protagonist, but we also have a second lead named Declan on the other side of the world. Declan is a smith prodigy that is beginning to come up in the world and his rise to stardom slowly brings him to meet Hatu. Each of these boys is part of a puzzle that will change the land of Tembria forever, and this is their story.

I know that plot summary is vaguer than I usually give, but this story is massive and it is really hard to give you a spoiler-free sum in a paragraph. Our time is divided half between Hatu at his magical school (which seem to be big this year in fantasy books) and Declan mastering his forge. Both the leads are enjoyable POV’s to follow, but I tended to prefer Declan. Hatu is an angry and spontaneous orphan that can sometimes make his story frustrating to read about, but I came to enjoy him a great deal by the time I finished the book. The world of Tembria is vast, complicated, and has a ton going on. A significant part of the book is devoted to world building, with Hatu often going on spy missions to gather intel or Declan spending time at taverns learning what is going on in the world. The King of Ashes felt like it was laying a foundation of a sweeping epic with a huge scope, but it still manages to hold its own as a self-contained book.

The book is filled with magic, friends, twists and all the things that Feist’s older novels taught me to expect in the fantasy genre as a child. On the other hand, The King of Ashes is definitely aimed at an older reader compared to Feist’s earlier work, with a larger emphasis on graphic scenes (both sexual and violent) and more complex prose. It felt like the perfect novel for someone who grew up on his earlier work and was now looking for a more adult version.

However, despite my praise I did have one major problem with The King of Ashes that held it back from getting high marks. The book can feel noticeably repetitive sometimes. In particular when it came to internal monologues, several characters obsess over things and will bring them up multiple times per chapter. For example, Hatu is obsessed with his growing feelings for one of his classmates. While I enjoyed this the first time it was brought up, my appreciation for the budding love interest waned after it was brought up an additional 20 times without any indication of Hatu actually doing anything about his feelings. The King of Ashes is not a small book and I felt it could have been trimmed a little more to take out several of these repetitive moments for a better paced read.

Overall, I would say that Feist still has it and has created another book that people will be talking about for awhile. I did not enjoy it as much as some of his earlier works, but that was a high bar to meet and I still think The King of Ashes is worth picking up. I look forward to seeing if Hatu and Declan change the world as it is for the better or if they burn it down and rebuild it as kings of the ashes.

Rating: The King of Ashes – 7.5/10
-Andrew