Age of Ash

I didn't dislike this book and I can see how plenty of people would like it, but after a certain point I was tortured by the question of whether I should bother to keep reading. The world is rich and full of characters despite being bleak. Just about everyone is a scumbag, even the somewhat sympathetic characters. I can see the attraction to that, but I think it makes it hard to read.

It's well written, but has two particular problems. First, the author makes some choices that are just hard to understand as far as construction goes. There is a character who is murdered early on, and this is supposedly the impetus for the protagonist's journey going forward. However, the guy who gets killed is a POV character early on...for what reason? This feels too much like a wink toward fans of Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, and A Song of Ice and Fire: “Hey, we killed someone you thought important! It's one of those books.” Except in terms of story, the character is useless as a character. Everything revealed through his point of view is repeated later through other points of view. The story could have started with his murder. That's just an example of this sort of winking at the reader, and I just don't get it.

Abraham also resorts to frequent flashbacks and perspective shifts, and the introduction of new POVs as if they're cheap. Again, I just don't get it. This doesn't help tell the story. It just confuses things. The plot is just not that interesting. Kind of pedestrian.

To sum up: engaging enough prose to keep me reading through a flight from Denver to New Orleans, but not an interesting enough plot or world to keep me reading when I have other books available. This feels like the grimdark version of midlist fantasy; kind of throwaway.