Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Ashes of the Sun follows the story of two siblings, Maya and Gyre, as they stand on opposite sides of a cause to save their world.

They were separated in childhood when Maya was taken away by the Twilight Order and Gyre was left wounded, without no chance to cross paths as the years go by. Gyre is an underground rebel with the goal of dismantling the Order and Maya is everything that represents the Order, the thing he despises.

We begin the story with the siblings separated, with no knowledge of each other after their separation. Maya must prove herself to be a worthy Centarch candidate and Gyre steals from the rich.
The plot seems divided as the reader has no idea how the two points of view will converge, but each story is captivating with well-crafted characters and action. I appreciated how Wexler keeps the story moving along, and there was never a moment where I felt bored.

My favourite thing is by far the characters. You don't know if you can trust them and you can't help but care for their place in the world. At the end, you do find yourself feeling conflicted if you should root for Maya or Gyre, and I enjoyed how it all unfolded.

I adored the relationship between Maya and Beq and how we were witnesses to it slowly growing. I honestly can't wait to see more!

I think the world building could have been explored in depth, I have questions as to how some things work but maybe I will find those answers in the sequels.

My first experience with Django Wexler and certainly not my last.

Received arc from Head of Zeus and Netgalley for honest read and review.
Thank you for a chance to read this book.
First in a new series by Django Wexler of Burningblade and Silvereye and centres around 2 siblings who are split up when young and meet later on.Maya and Gyre are such good characters that I was hooked from the beginning.
A really good read and looking forward to next in series.

Two siblings stand on opposite sides of a looming civil war. This fantasy novel is fresh and exciting, it leans on the often used narrative of separated siblings but uses it to its advantage, creating a brutal and fast paced world from these two vantage points.

Intriguing and rich world-building combines with engaging characters and a gripping plot to deliver an adult fantasy that is sure to delight both old and new fans of the author.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for providing me with an e-arc of this book. I also purchased the Goldsboro edition of this book for myself.

This is my second Django Wexler book and he definitely has the potential to become one of my favourite authors! His writing keeps me fully engaged with the story, I love his characters and I find his worlds and magic systems to be really unique!

I can't wait to see where this series goes!

Unfortunately, I had to DNF this book 200 pages in because I couldn't connect to it. I loved the writing and the synopsis, I thought the idea was very interesting and I wanted to love it. However, I really couldn't get into it. After 200 pages of pretty much nothing, even though I was enjoying the characters and what they were doing, I found myself avoiding picking it back up. I had no interest in either Maya or Gyre and was dreading having to finish it.

I do want to say that I really did enjoy the writing, it's very good and flows very well. I've really saddened the book wasn't for me since there's nothing wrong with it and it's actually pretty good.

Two siblings separated at a very young age and which end up experiencing very different up bringings. One is driven by honour and the need to protect and the other is driven by revenge and hatred.

This was an enjoyable fantasy read set in a world where only certain people are allowed to wield magic and in which these rulers control the use of magical objects. There is a conspiracy of some sort going on and our protagonist is working to get to the bottom of it.

I enjoyed the switches in POV of the two siblings and how they inevitably cross paths. Both convinced that they are on the side of right.

A solid 4 star read.

Ashes of the Sun is a tale of two siblings ripped apart and now on opposing sides of a long running conflict.
The story of Myra and Gyre are told with a twin point of view.
Overall there is good character and world building. Whilst there is plenty of action the pace seems a bit plodding. My general feeling is this is very much a coming of age book and as such is more suited to the young adult than the older generation.

First of all I want to say thank you NetGalley and Head of Zeus for my copy of Ashes of the Sun.

I was also lucky enough to pick up a gorgeous copy of this book from Goldsboro.

I had never read any of Django Wexler’s previous books but this was a nice introduction.

“Gyre hasn't seen his beloved sister since their parents sold her to the mysterious Twilight Order. Now, twelve years after her disappearance, Gyre's sole focus is revenge, and he's willing to risk anything and anyone to claim enough power to destroy the Order.”

This was a fast paced, fun and exciting read. Some of the story was a little predictable but that did not take away from how fun it was.

The thoughtful and detailed descriptions what Wexler has put into this book has made this book one of my fave reads this year and I’m excited to see where the sequel takes us!

This wasn't quite what I thought it would be, in a good way. Though I'd say it leans more towards fantasy technically, it definitely has more of a sci-fi feel. I believe the author was inspired by Star Wars and you can tell, but overall this is definitely a unique story of its own!

There are two main POVs, estranged brother and sister Gyre and Maya, and though I liked them both as characters Maya's storyline was easily my favourite - after all, I love a good bit of political intrigue and mystery. Gyre is basically a rebel, with more of an action focused storyline which wasn't so much my kind of thing but was done well nonetheless.

In terms of secondary characters, Maya's squad was a lot of fun; her love interest Beq is a cute nerd and I loved her, and I also really enjoyed Tanax, Varo, Marn and Jadaea. Gyre's storyline mostly focuses on him and Kit, but there are a few fun secondary characters there too. I really enjoyed the few moments when characters from the different storylines came together - and of course Gyre and Maya's relationship was super interesting to read about. I'd like more content with the two of them together in the next book!

The casual diversity in this book was really well done. Maya and Beq's romance is the romantic relationship given the most attention in the novel, and it is super sweet and wholesome. Kit is bisexual, and we also have multiple queer side characters. There's even a shout out to asexuality earlier on.

My quibbles with this book are purely personal preference. There are a lot of action scenes, and though they were fairly well done, I did skim read most of them. I have liked some action scenes in the past - the ones in the Nevernight books are the first to come to mind - but it's a rare occurrence for me. I liked this book best when it focused more on the political intrigue and character dynamics, which were really good!

So, overall, a fun 4* read.

I read this for a blog tour.

This was a terrific read - the beginning of a new series by an accomplished writer.

Two siblings on either side of a long running conflict, one an accomplished thief, the other in training to serve the realm.

There's adventure, battles, thrilling escapes and near misses, magic and monsters.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, there's humour and drama and it's absolutely cracking. Don't sit on this if you're a big fantasy fan.

The book was advertised as an adult fantasy, and I guess it had to be given it has its share of sex and gore, but the writing style felt eminently YA to me. The pacing is weirdly relentless for such a long book, capital-e Events are constantly happening to drive the plot along, and a few characters - looking directly at Kit - had that flippant, sarcastic vibe you so often see in YA heroines. Also, an unfortunately critical factor to this mood, our heroes are absurdly young. The aforementioned Kit is like 17 and she's going around talking about that time a few years ago when she spent a whooole week drinking and having sex with strangers. It's useless to try and apply boring Earth rules to this fantasy world but this always makes me sigh unhappily. Anyway it's not a bad thing for a book to be YA, but it also wasn't what I expected going in and this almost certainly affected my experience with it.

My main complaint against this book is the worldbuilding, which I found to be generally good - the author clearly had an idea of what was going on! Even several ideas! - but hampered by a few weird choices which continually confused me. This is probably in part due to the aforementioned writing style; I cannot overstate how badly I get into Head Empty mode when I'm reading YA so this may well be a me problem, but continually using the word "ghoul" to describe one of your master races and then not having them be undead monsters (they're furries???) made me feel extremely unmoored all the time. I'm not sure we ever get an explanation of dhak or how it's different from deiat except "comes from inside you and not around you" (???) and "everyone can use one but only some are born able to use the other". This is good to know but doesn't help me! Why do we hate dhak?? "It's dangerous" I need more! "Here's this city that likes dhak and sells it everywhere" what? What??? The end notes say that this book was inspired by Star Wars so maybe if I cared more about that series this would make more sense to me?? Actually these questions are somewhat answered in the glossary at the back of the book, so perhaps my advice to people would be to read the glossary first?

My final worldbuilding quibble is that the main characters are continually going "400 years is such a long time for our master race who we definitely know existed to be gone, nobody cares about them anymore! Only this One Dude is waiting for them to come back and he's an Established Nutter, ha ha" while we are living in a world with far less proof that our master race ever existed and people are still keen for judgement day 2000 years on. YA even ageing down evangelist timelines, smh

The rest of my complaining can probably be mostly chalked up to the fact that this is the first of a trilogy. I didn't feel that Maya or Gyre particularly transcended their character archetypes; she's the idealist within the corrupt overarching organisation and he's the anarchist who's leaned too hard into nihilism, but they have to be like this in the first book so they can change in the following ones. She wants to change things from inside the system and he wants to tear it all down, and this philosophical thread does not have to be resolved by the end of the first book, I know this, I do know. The ending didn't feel satisfying to me, but there are two more books to come! I know! I register my complaint and then, sulkily, withdraw it again.

I always end up sounding like I hate my 3-star books, but I promise I don't, I think I'm just harder on them because I do like parts of them. The rapid plot and chapter-by-chapter POV switches were well handled, and in the back half particularly it felt really easy to read. I like, structurally, what the two main characters represented and how they opposed each other; I would be curious to see how they develop in future installments. The side characters were well-drawn and one of them in particular goes through a nice little growth / redemption arc, which I always like. There's a main F/F relationship and a lot of incidental representation with your one-off random villagers; the main M/F relationship had a surprisingly strong conflict element / incident that I did like. Not sure if I liked where they ended up, but you can't have everything. Genuinely, I don't know who I would recommend this to but I am sure there is an audience for it. Thank you to Head of Zeus & NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first book I have read by Django Wexler and I loved it, so much so I am going to read his back catalogue too if they are all as good as Ashes of the Sun. I read it slowly because I realised early on this was a really well-written and entertaining novel that I wanted to savour. It has a flavour of Sarah J Maas' Six of Crows and a flavour of Brian Staveley's Emperor of Blades trilogy with a bit of Susan Dennard's Windwitch books thrown in too. It is set in a world where the use of magic is strictly controlled by the Twilight Order and in a society trying to survive after a magical war between Ghouls and the mysterious Chosen who had access to technology as well as magic. The story follows Gyre and his sister Maya as they find themselves fighting on opposite sides and beliefs. Maya was taken by the Order at the age of 5 for showing magical ability and turned into a warrior of the order,a centarch with mystical powers and a mission to defend the helpless. Half-blinded by the centarch sent to take Maya, Gyre grows up with a determination to destroy the order that broke his family and he becomes the mysterious rebel assassin Halfmask, In the coldest, deepest tunnels of the mountains he makes dangerous alliances with ghouls all to gain access to a weapon of mass destruction. But then he meets Maya and everything changes for them both ...
This was such an exciting novel to read and I can't wait for Book 2!

Ashes of the Sun starts strongly with the abrupt seperation of our two MCs Maya and Gyre, who are siblings.
I was immediately pulled in to both the characters and was eager to find out how this event shapes them up and where it will lead them.
But unfortunately after the initial few chapters, the plot moves along at a snail’s pace. There was a lot of action but I wasn’t able to keep up my emotional investment in the characters and gradually lost interest as the book progressed. The side characters were also mediocre and some were really annoying and kept me from enjoying the book further.
Maya’ PoVs were the more interesting of the two but I had to plod through Gyre’s PoVs.
The technicalities of the world and the magic got to be too much after a while making it difficult to enjoy the story.
Overall I was a but disappointed
Rating: 2.5

Django Wexler’s genre-fluid tale of sibling rivalry, Empire and Rebellion is a fast paced, action adventure from start to finish.

Wexler has carefully crafted a tale that successfully entwines SciFi Fantasy, Space Opera and coming of age tale to begin his new series, Burningblade & Silvereye

The story centres around two siblings, Maya & Gyre.

At the age of five, Maya is torn from her family to enter The Twilight Order, so that they can save her life and teach her the ways of Deiat (the magic used by the Order). As Maya grows, she becomes an apprentice to the famed knight, Jaedia.

Meanwhile, Gyre is left to suffer the consequences of his sister’s cruel removal from the family by a system that does not care about the havoc it wreaks. Gyre grows up to become disaffected and impoverished, eventually leading him to a life of crime to survive and become an enemy of the state. The rebel, Halfmask.
The book is generally action and character driven, telling the divergent stories of Maya and Gyre from each sibling’s perspective. Maya is the most compassionate of the two characters with a strong sense of morality, idealism and justice whilst being in the confines of a bureaucratic order that stiffly maintains tradition in order to maintain control. Wexler weaves a coming of age tale with a coming out tale, as not only does Maya have to traverse the many trappings of the Twilight Order, but she must navigate her own feelings toward fellow apprentice Beq.

On the other hand, Gyre is a cold and distant individual, who, whilst bearing the physical scars left to him by the Knight who removed his sister from their bucolic lifestyle, also bears the emotional scars of this trauma, and as a result has become obsessed with finding The Tomb. A fabled city of a civilisation that was destroyed centuries ago in a bloody war. This war shaped the current civilisation forming it into the unjust and tyrannical establishment that has no regard for the welfare of the people that it states it protects.

Gyre believes that when he finds the fabled city, he will find the ultimate power to destroy The Twilight Order and the establishment that leaves its people in poverty and hunger, scrabbling for ancient pieces of technology in the dangerous tunnels so that they can make a living. However, whilst Gyre may have ideals, his actions clearly indicate that he will use anyone in the pursuit of his obsession. He has become individualistic and self-motivated in his quest to obtain the power that he strives to wield, so that he can smash the Empire that he hates. That’s not to say that Gyre is a bad character, but he is morally grey in his actions and he is made greyer at the introduction of the character Kitsrea Doomseeker, a sociopathic individual who has the morals of an alley cat, and promises to lead him to the Tomb and towards his goals.

Wexler populates his colourful world with all sorts of creatures that include mutants, evil magic wielders and mythological races, that all in all, bolster the plot that Wexler has turned up to eleventy – stupid, engaging the reader from beginning to end, never letting the reader have a minute by introducing a plot that involves heists, quests, treachery, romance and much more.

It’s not to say that the plot is faultless, there are some questions that are left unanswered in the book, such as the relationship between Church and State, the history of the Republic and how the effects of the war affected the people. But, as I said, this is an introduction to this world, and there is a lot more scope for these questions to be answered as the series progresses.

One of the admirable aspects of the book is the way that it does not openly tout good or evil. Maya intrinsically, is a good character who has lots of worthy qualities. However, she is a shining star in an establishment that seems to be overtly oppressive and corrupt. Gyre, on the other hand, seems to have an admirable ideal in attempting to overthrow the establishment that is oppressive and corrupt, but his character is morally redundant, and in all honesty has few commendable qualities.

On the whole, Wexler has crafted a story that introduces new facets to the fantasy world whilst drawing on established SciFi fantasy tropes and has let loose a cracking book that will leave you hoping the second instalment is just around the corner.

Ashes Of The Sun by Django Wexler, is everything I was hoping for. A fascinating world with insectile armoured soldiers wielding swords of sun flame and hardened air, strong female characters and the story of a one eyed thief. It’s a perfect read for anyone who loves fantasy.

When reading this book you are thrown into a Star Wars like world. It was fast paced with interconnecting storylines that never left me wanting more.

There are dual timelines, in which we follow Maya, a training soldier and Gyre, the best thief in Deepfire. Both characters are fully flessed out an neither feel second best.

Overall this book is a great action packed fantasy that will leave you desperately waiting for the second book to come out.

This book was frankly a little terrifying to go into. I'd just been binging YA historical fiction, which were paperbacks about half the size of this tome. Combined with the cover, which just feels so... imposing, I really wasn't sure what to expect

I really enjoyed this book, which kept me company through a power-outage in a lab and then a pounding headache - and the fact that it kept me so entertained while lots of distractions swirled around me is a mark of how engaging ASHES OF THE SUN, even if I have yet to call it the right name (hahaha, how many times am I going to write SUN TO THE ASHES before correcting myself in the course of this review?)

ASHES OF THE SUN is a book made of merged ideas that on one level feel like they "shouldn't" work, but they absolutely do.

A review-snippet on the back calls this "post-apocalyptic fantasy", which is such a perfect description of the setting and I'm somewhat surprised that it's a new-to-me sub-genre. I tend to think of post-apocalyptic as part of dystopia alone, but ASHES OF THE SUN is definitely a fantasy book with its magic and ghouls. However, the world has suffered since the end of the last war, and has that very broken-and-decaying feeling I associate with post-apocalyptic dystopia.

There are a lot of magic systems in this book. There's a more "typical" magic system of deiat and the centarchs (which read like paladins) who can wield its impressive power, the ghouls' mysterious magic, magic-turned-tech like blasters, and alchemy/arcificing. It really plays into the feel of the world blend to have so many different ideas combined into one battle for power.

This merge-feel is carried through to the plot. Gyre's story is more heist-y, motivated by revenge (I was <em>so glad</em> he was never hoping to get his sister out, but was realistic from the start about her being one of them after so long in the order). Meanwhile, Maya's is an adventure/mission she's sent on by a corrupt order that turns into a person semi-quest.

I think the SFF blend vibe of the book works so well because every aspect fully embraces that - it's not just the magic or the setting or the plot. It gives it a cohesiveness.

The characters were a blast. Naturally Kit "Doomseeker" stole almost every scene she was in, given she always eager to plunge into danger and never gave an outward sign that she cared what anyone thought.

So yes, the two POVs are very separate for much of the book, with little overlap or impact on one another aside from the two very brief sequences they share. I'd have liked them to spend more time impacting one another, as it did feel like two distinct books at time that shared the same world. However, both POVs were engaging enough that I wasn't simply reading through one to get to the other, which is usually what happens with non-entangled multi-POV books.

It's also very obviously the first in a trilogy as it didn't feel like there was much resolution at the end. There's still so much left hanging and it felt like characters hadn't made big enough steps to what they wanted. Given how many times the goals and vibe of the book shifts (playing into the blend-feel), it could feel like it was a bit <em>too</em> sudden at times and so there wasn't enough time for things to play out (which is a bit surprising given the size of the book). Potentially another chapter of denouement would have helped here?

Overall, though, it's a really fun start of series - and introduction for me to Django Wexler. I am certainly eager to see what happens in the next instalment.

I like Wexler’s books, but this one wasn’t for me. I must have lost my appetite for slowly building fantasy that takes forever to get even to the starting point of the plot. There was a lot of action from the start, but it was mostly to set up the characters. However, I couldn’t quite connect with them enough to care where they were headed. The side characters felt even more distant and disconnected from the main characters. The world was complicated and so overflowing with special features that I couldn’t keep up, and I was constantly lost. So I gave up. But the writing was good, it clearly built up to something large, and the world -- the little I got a hang of -- promised interesting things. Hence, three stars. Maybe I’ll even finish the book one day.

This is a great start to the Burningblade & Silvereye series. It took me a little while to settle into it but after a couple of chapters I was invested in the story. The characters are all well written, the plot is compelling and the world is an interesting one.