Book Review: Realm of Ash
I read Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, the first in the Books of Ambha series, at the end of 2018 during my hiatus. I’ll go back to it and do a proper review at some point, but it was good enough that Suri went on my “authors to watch” list more or less immediately. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Realm of Ash was being released toward the end of 2019., since Empire of Sand felt like a standalone.
Realm of Ash takes place in the wake of Empire of Sand’s conclusion, but focuses on Arwa, Mehr’s younger sister. Since we last saw her in Empire of Sand, Arwa has focused on being the best Ambhan noblewoman she can be. In the wake of her husband’s untimely death, Arwa ends up in a retreat for widowed noblewomen, where her Amrithi blood and its power is discovered. Soon, Arwa is whisked away to the emperor’s court and put to work with the emperor’s bastard son, researching a way to discover the deceased Maha’s memories. Because without him, the empire is failing and monsters are returning.
Realm of Ash has the same sweeping romantic feel that Empire of Sand has. And the similarities don’t stop with the tone - the plots are fairly similar as well. In Empire of Sand, Mehr was sent to work on a magical project under the aegis of a powerful empire official, fell in love with the man she worked closely with, and rebelled together with him. Swap Mehr for Arwa, and you’ve got almost the same outline for Realm of Ash.
The differences lie in the details. Unlike Mehr, Arwa is willing to sacrifice herself for the benefit of the Ambhan Empire, at least to start. Unlike Mehr, Arwa knows very little about her Amrithi heritage and has little opportunity to learn more beyond her sessions with Zahir, the illegitimate prince. And unlike Mehr, Arwa lives in a world which is crumbling and falling apart, with an extremely traumatic experience in her past that she needs to confront.
One of the most refreshing parts of this book is actually how the empire is crumbling to pieces around Arwa. You see a lot of fantasy novels about revolutions, about toppling evil empires and kings. But you don’t see as many novels that deal with the aftermath. You don’t see as many novels that look at the everyday people who are impacted by the changes that come after.
Realm of Ash is one of those rare few. Mehr defeated the Maha, but now Arwa has to pick up the pieces. We see it from her point of view first as an Ambhan noblewoman, the loss of stability as the emperor grows ill and his children jockey for power. Meanwhile, the people are restless and scared, and all of the negative “dreams” that the Maha suppressed for so long are rearing their heads again. Once the story leaves the palace, we get to see a lot of this firsthand as Arwa and Zahir travel the countryside, toward their end goal.
I do have a few nits to pick. The beginning, with Arwa in the widows’ retreat, feels unnecessary almost. It’s such a short interval that it feels rushed; pacing wise, it would have been better either to expand it or to simply start with Arwa’s arrival at the court. That’s where the book really begins to kick into gear, as Arwa meets Zahir and they begin their attempts to enter the realm of ash and learn the Maha’s secrets. After that, the book’s pacing is almost perfect, vacillating between exhilarating sequences of action or new knowledge and quieter character moments.
Arwa’s character arc is mostly good, even if it feels a little contrived in places. As I said above, she knows very little of her Amrithi heritage, and thanks to her stepmother, she’s been raised to live in fear of it. She barely remembers her sister. Her story, then, is one part learning that the empire was not as good as she was raised to believe, one part learning that her heritage is not something that must be feared, and one part falling in love with Zahir.
She’s stubborn about it, but she gets there eventually. The arc regarding her heritage is handled the best, particularly when she has to confront the creature responsible for the trauma in her past in order to save a city full of people. Her reunion with her sister is one of the most heartwarming scenes I’ve read in a long time.
The other characters are enjoyable enough (though this is one of those books where if you don’t like Arwa, you’re probably going to stop reading). Zahir is similar in many ways to Amun, from Empire of Sand. Beyond the obvious romantic parallel, Zahir operates in a precarious position where he has little real power. As the illegitimate child of a disgraced mother, his only real value is in what he can provide and he relies on his family seeing that worth to survive.
Suri’s worldbuilding is as beautiful as ever — the India-inspired setting is as lush and deep as it was in Empire of Sand. Suri chooses to highlight different aspects here, such as the emperor’s court. She’s also chosen to highlight a different aspect of magic, not necessarily specific to the Amrithi: the titular realm of ash (which also highlights the “what comes after” theme, so I’ve got to hand it to Suri for that one).
This is a realm of dreaming and memory, where our selves pass when we die, and skilled practitioners can enter it even as they live to taste the ash of their ancestors and learn. It has consequences, like any powerful magic should, and Arwa and Zahir have to pay a price for knowledge. But it’s an excellent piece of worldbuilding and an even better plot device. It makes retrieves the Maha’s terrible knowledge possible, and as Arwa and Zahir learn more of what he was, what he did, they have to decide if it’s worth seeking out that knowledge and all its oppression, or whether they can accept an imperfect world with a crumbling empire.
Overall, Realm of Ash is a worthy successor to Empire of Sand and a welcome return to the Ambhan empire. I have no idea if Suri plans to continue writing more Ambhan books (there is no obvious thread for a third book, the way Arwa was left open as a subject for this one), but if she does, I’m more than happy to invest additional time here.
Grade: 4/5 stars
Memorable Quote:
“Do not eat the ash.
So he had written and yet he was consuming it now, before her eyes. Suddenly, his soul’s skin was burnished with the luster of embers still hot from the fire, of ashes cooling to chalk and amber. Suddenly Arwa’s own head was full of facets of memory, as fragmented as her own unnatural skin. Her hand (not her hand) holding a needle, fine muslin upon her lap; her grandson (not her, not her) pressing his cheek to her knee.”
