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Age of Ash: The Sunday Times bestseller - The Kithamar Trilogy Book 1

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Kithamar is a center of trade and wealth, an ancient city with a long, bloody history where countless thousands live and their stories unfold. Never even friends, more colleagues, Alys and Sammish’s relationship is strained for most of this book. Again, I find myself praising Abraham’s decisions here. What could have been a very simple unrequited love story turns into something more nuanced. As Alys grows distant and more cutthroat, Sammish at first tries to convince herself that she doesn’t care. In reality, she cares quite a bit. And so their relationship goes through ups and downs as each learns more about the secret of Kithamar in their own time and own ways. I like that these two are at odds more than they are aligned, and that the book gradually pivots from being wholly Alys’s story to including Sammish too—I think a good argument might be made that Sammish is more the protagonist than Alys even. The plot was also quite good, though I have to say that it meanders for a bit and sometimes it feels like you are just running around with characters. But there are some chapters that are SO GOOD.

Atoms contain three particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons are located in the nucleus, while electrons orbit around the nucleus. The number of protons determines which element you’re examining. For example, all atoms of carbon have six protons, all atoms of oxygen have eight protons, and all atoms of gold have 79 protons. The number of neutrons, however, is variable. An atom of an element with a different number of neutrons is an isotope of that element. For example, the isotope carbon-12 contains 6 neutrons in its nucleus, while the isotope carbon-13 has 7 neutrons. Earth’s atmosphere contains three isotopes of carbon. Carbon-12 is stable and accounts for 98.9% of atmospheric carbon. Carbon-13 is also stable and accounts for 1.1% of atmospheric carbon. Carbon-14 is radioactive and is found in tiny amounts. Carbon-14 is produced naturally in the atmosphere when cosmic rays interact with nitrogen atoms. The amount of carbon-14 produced in the atmosphere at any particular time has been relatively stable through time.Abraham's prose is beautiful and the early chapters where he is building the city for the reader were a joy to read If you cut a tree trunk, the light spring wood and dark summer wood are clearly visible in bands around the tree. By counting each dark ring of summer wood you can find out how many growth cycles the tree had; giving you its age.

What I enjoyed the most were the characters. We have a very diverse set of them ranging from petty thieves, witches from another country, slavers, and members of the (cultish) royal family. They all scheme, and it is all personal: we see grief over losing a loved one shapes one's path; we see someone's idealizing her (unrequited) love interest and grieving with the letting go when that person changes; we see someone losing themselves in a scheme for who is close to their hearts; and we see someone's actions being shaped by their past and her slow realization that she was a pawn, but can no longer be with the right group of friends. Above everything and everyone, I loved Darro and Sammish. Sammish was just very dear to me, I loved witnessing her development from a literal shadow to what she becomes. It's been a long time since I rooted for a character as bad as I have for her. Alys is just another nobody from Longhill, a gutter rat relying on ‘pulls’ to survive. Each theft wins her little more than enough to keep a roof over her head and food in her belly, the spoils shared between disparate players, together only for the sake of the job. Her big brother Darro, on the other hand, is running far bigger plays. The high-stakes kind that might help him escape this low-born world. That kind that brings in gold. That gets him killed. Losing the only family she cares about puts Alys on a path of revenge. Desperate to find out who killed him and why, she finds herself playing a very dangerous game with people who know far more about the city than she does. As she starts to lose herself to the chase, Alys must decide how far she’s willing to go to avenge her dead brother, especially when she’s not the only one who’ll be paying the price for her success…This outstanding series debut . . . instantly hooks readers with dual mysteries . . Readers will eagerly anticipate the sequel Age of Ashis an easy book to understand and follow…but once you delve beneath its surface, there’s far more to it than it first appears. Just like Kithamar.

As much as I appreciate the worldbuilding skill on show here by Abraham, he fails to match it with plot and characterisation. Not a series I’ll continue. From a Hugo award-winning New York Times bestselling author comes a "fascinating" epic fantasy trilogy that unfolds within the walls of a single great city where every story matters (Joe Abercrombie)—and the fate of the city is woven from them all.What is the most captivating about the book is that while it is not so much character-driven, it definitely is character-dependent. And one of those characters is the city. It is always in the spotlight. We can see and smell its crooks and nooks, its best and worst; the city itself becomes a protagonist that can help you or kill you if you’re careless. It is also incredibly atmospheric. A note about the audiobook: hard to listen to at times bc of some weird sentence intonations. Hard to describe but if you listen for even a short time, you'll see what I mean. Survival (PvP): It's every dragoneer for themselves! Pit against other players in a ferocious and unforgiving free-for-all clash.

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