Dan’s Reviews > Ashes of Man > Status Update

There was a pretty strong novel, probably the best in the series, between Kingdoms of Death and Ashes of Man. Whoever made the call to split the book in two made a pretty bad one.

You’re right Hadrian. The slave empire whose centralized power is maintained by a fanatical religious organization built on a lie is in fact the light of humanity. I am your liberal goth gf and I concede to your based paleo-con world view.

Hadrian truly never misses a chance to be a pedant

Valka just is not a character anymore. She could be replaced with literally anyone that is comforting Hadrian any the story would be the same. I remember reading early on that this series’ women characters are really terrible and being confused in book 2 because I felt they were alright, but oh my god.

Wow curious that Hadrian is not waxing poetic about the governing principles of the empire now that he has learned its De Jure reason for existing is not what it seemed! Seems like here is a point to examine Hadrians extreme biases that we had to be subjected to last book at length for the first 33% of the novel. Curious there’s no such examination here!