Ashes of the Sun

This is a reasonably popular fantasy novel that ought to, in my opinion, be a lot more popular. I would honestly give it 3.389 stars rather than three because the good outweighs the bad. I think the bad parts can be attributed to reader (or editor?) expectations and not to any deep fault of the author. That's a nearly impossible judgment to make, but where this book fails in portraying human nature, it makes up for it in worldbuilding, readability, and plot.Brief summary: Gyre and his sister Maya were separated at a young age because of Maya's emerging abilities with deiat, one of the forms of “magic” (although, in good style, Wexler never uses the word “magic”) in this world. When they are young adults, Maya is a knight-in-training, fighting for the establishment, and Gyre is a career criminal who's fallen in with a group of local dissidents. Their paths will cross, and the way they do is surprising and fun to read.First and foremost, this is probably the most exciting world I've read about since [b:Twelve Kings in Sharakhai 24611565 Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (The Song of the Shattered Sands, #1) Bradley P. Beaulieu https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1434513419l/24611565.SY75.jpg 25652373], but for very different reasons. Whereas Sharakhai and the world it lives in are richly-imagined and lived-in, the world of Burningblade and Silvereye is really freakin' cool in a fantasy sense. This is definitely a fantasy setting, with palaces, fortresses, dirty cities full of sewage, ragged clothing, taverns, and all that crap in an imagined world (i.e. not Earth or Earth-future or Earth-past), but it's also hard to distinguish it from a sci-fi setting. There's all the cool fantasy stuff (people fighting with swords, villages, monsters), but there's also basically light sabres and blaster pistols, bombs, and “arcana.” What's so cool about the way this world is put together is that it's hard to pin it down: it is fantasy, but it's hard to pin it down as steampunk or whatever sort of subgenre you want to devise. It just is an original and fresh conception of what a fantasy world can be, without having to pin it down. It's also not dependent on recent or older genre conventions; it's not trendy, in other words. There are airships (the weirdest trend in fantasy worldbuilding, that I still cannot figure out), but they are crashed and discarded. This is a post-apocalyptic world, where the technology they have comes across more like ancient secrets that have been mastered only by a few individuals. I am pretty tired of people saying they're looking for something other than settings based on medieval Europe. People have only been saying that for SIXTY YEARS, and I can only conclude that people who say that today aren't going to bookstores, but are rather watching TV and playing video games. Medieval Europe is cool, for one thing, but it's also not the basis for most fantasy settings that are coming out now; fantasy's greatest influence is still Dungeons and Dragons, but a lot of fantasy these days is far more influenced by Asian mythology, anime/manga, and video games themselves. Ashes of the Sun shows that regardless of influences, an author can create a world that has a huge range of influences, isn't indeed based on any one particular culture (unlike many new books that are literally advertised as African-influenced, Asian-influenced, Florida-influenced, etc), and just comes off as totally original. And that is despite a powerful Star Wars influence that is acknowledged by the author and not hidden at all.What I'm saying is that this is just a really cool world to read about, even without the dynamic characters and the struggles they face. It reminds me of some books from the seventies, like [b:High Couch of Silistra 622866 High Couch of Silistra (Silistra, #1) Janet E. Morris https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1467327530l/622866.SY75.jpg 609230], where you can't really say whether it's fantasy or sci-fi. That's just cool. What's better, is that instead of dwelling on that world with heavy, monologue-requiring, comic-book style exposition, Wexler pays out the worldbuilding with a great plot and intense personal struggles for the characters, based on family. The characters here are a doubled-edged sword: they are well-rendered and believably written, grappling with their unique challenges alongside regular coming-0f-age stuff (starting a career, having a crush, losing a mentor, etc). But they are pretty young, and so they come off more as anime characters than as strong people who are capable. They read like teenagers, which I suppose is a good thing, but in some passages, I just felt like I was reading a YA book that couldn't be YA because of all the R-rated stuff in it. That is another plus: I like the hardcore, gritty nature of much of this book, even if it's delivered sometimes with action-movie intensity. That's just a reader preference. What kept this from being a four or five star book for me was Wexler's handling of sexuality, although honestly his handling of sensuality was really good. In this semi-technological world, where there are blasters and light sabres and all these layers of society, and libraries full of knowledge ancient and modern, birth control is never mentioned. And yet people are screwing left and right like “it's just sex.” Abortion is never mentioned either. There are characters saying “Hey, do you wanna fuck? Sure, let's fuck.” Men and women are treated as if they have identical sexual values: a male character is referred to as having been a whore, and female characters are accused of visiting a brothel. Staffed by women, or these mythical male whores? (Yes, I'm a grown-up, I know there are male prostitutes, but they're not patronized by women). A female character says she spent years doing nothing but “drinking and fucking.” Oh yeah? And no mention of all her pregnancies, miscarriages, and abortions she would have had as a result? The birth control that's never mentioned never went wrong? No impact on her values? She doesn't grow up at all after spending years “drinking and fucking?”Lastly is the handling of homosexuality, which seems to be all-out wish fulfillment (either on the part of the author, or perhaps in service to hypothetical readers; they could be the same thing). One of the main characters is gay. Great. Fantastic. I was really looking forward to how things would work out for her. I wanted to see how she would handle a relationship, how her crush would work out, how the other character would receive it, and what would happen if they got together (of course). All of that should be impacted by, or reflected in, the culture surrounding sexual values (i.e. culture) in this world. In other words, the obstacles the character experiences internally (her identity crisis) ought to be reflected or impacted by cultural attitudes regarding homosexuality or sex in general. This character, Maya, experiences a fair amount of knowing she is different, being unable to bring up her attractions, and so on. But every indication is given that homosexuality is not seen as morally divergent or even remarkable in this world. Characters are off-handedly mentioned as “his husband” and “her wife” with no sense that homosexuality denotes a subculture or that gay people are segregated from society in any way. These gay people aren't different in any way other than who they live with. Nor is there any mention of how these relationships are possible or desirable in a world that depends on children for labor (as indicated in the prologue). One character is referred to as “a family man” who loves his children despite being married to a man and being a career criminal. If you can be all those things, then why would anyone question their own feelings of same-sex attraction?The main character's mentor says to her “You might be attracted to men, women, both, or neither” and there's no moral attachment to any of these eventualities. I know this is the mom that a lot of people wish they had, but think about that for a minute: the mom they wish they had. The character has the mom people wish they had, and therefore she ought to have absolutely no struggle with her identity based on her sexuality; she has no conflict with her peers; no alienation; no reason to hesitate telling another girl she's got a crush on her. Wouldn't it be a lot more interesting if her mentor had only spoken about boys during the “facts of life” and then Maya has feelings she doesn't understand when she meets and finds herself attracted to girls?But then, she does seem to have conflicted feelings, and she does seem to know that it's different from other girls her age. But how does she know that? In this culture, people are going out of their way to be accepting. No one bats an eye at a man married to a man...and yet? There is no mention of the moral stance The Twilight Order (the organization Maya trains to be a part of) takes on homosexuality, although it seems like they could be portrayed as at least mildly homophobic and it would be pretty believable. Considering that they barely saved the world from utter destruction by a race of monsters and are the earthly messengers of semi-celestial, magical beings, I think they'd be pretty focused on reproduction and family values. But no, even within the Twilight Order, everybody's just screwing each other with no regard for how that's connected to reproduction or family. Yay! Consequence-free sex! Go!The only mention of any moral stance on anything sexuality-related is very late in the book when one character discovers a relationship between two others. But then...why does he care? Nobody else does. But they still hide it? I just don't get it.I honestly don't get this level of wish fulfillment; the society where these things are true is The Real World in North America and Europe in 2023. If you put it in a fantasy world, it simply makes for predictable (i.e. bad) relationship arcs, unbelievable behavior, and just nonsensical non-struggles for the characters. I mean really, if you are interested in reading about how a lesbian relationship would play out (which I am), from crush to acceptance to establishment to even HEA, why would you want to read about it happening in a culture where there is absolutely no resistance to it? Wouldn't you rather read about a lesbian relationship developing in Iran or Saudi Arabia, where it could get someone killed? In the lesbian fiction of the fifties and sixties, the primary barrier was family alienation, which is enough to make it interesting (the main characters were sometimes or often depicted living in Greenwich Village or in a subculture where lesbian relationships were accepted, but they'd have to deal with their parents). I wouldn't be interested in the depiction of a straight relationship where there isn't a war or a pestilence or some political barrier to the people getting together (think about it: if relationships are presented in fiction, they are either a complication or they are the goal; complications that don't complicate things aren't complications, and goals without complications aren't goals). So why have a lesbian relationship with absolutely no barriers? It's like freakin' fan fiction, man. The bright side of all this is that as I mentioned, Wexler's handling of sensual situations is actually really good. Once the characters do get together, they (somehow) seem to have actual feelings and the sex that happens is done with tenderness where appropriate and horniness where appropriate. And he does this without going into a lot of detail or having long sex scenes (I think the longest one is just a few lines). That makes it all the more confusing, since before getting into bed the people don't seem to care about each other at all. What happens once the main character gets together with her crush is handled well, even if it is useless as far as her personal struggle or identity crisis is concerned.