A review by scribblesandsuch
The Fire Ascending by Chris d'Lacey

dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No
Gods. I Love the first few books of this series. It takes a stark swan dive. As someone who loves world building I completely understand the desire to bury yourself in complexities and histories. It makes for very bad reading. The multiversal elements were confusing and boring, the story eats itself several times over, by the end of the book it feels like both the problems and solutions were beyond characters' influence- there is far too much 'greater power overseeing and controlling everything'. The actual resolution felt very deus ex machina-y. The author has a thrill in combining and splitting characters to no meaningful narrative effect. The last section was frankly insulting- no book has ever satisfyingly ended by saying the contents of the book are now just a story in Yet Another universe to follow. This was exhausting. I am so sad that such a good series took such self congratulatory turns into being basically impossible to follow. The heavens weep when a fantasy series turns to scifi for bigger and bolder twists. I wanted to finish the series for my child self who had a few of the early books and loved them. Boy oh boy did I finish it. Oof. Also what happened to the environmentaly messaging we were being forcefed earlier? This should have been a series about a lodger and clay dragons that are secretly alive. It should have been a trilogy. Also very odd choice to land so strongly on that specific type of traumatic tragedy right at the end of the book with no real setup or preparation for it
Also don't introduce two characters as this 16 yr old is besotted with this Significantly Older man and then just have them get together it's creepy
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