The Wings of Ashtaroth

Series: The Sands of Hazzan, #1

Genre: Dark Fantasy

Author: Steve Hugh Westenra

Book Description:

The great city of Qemassen is at a crossroads. A powerful empire from beyond the ocean threatens to reignite a centuries-old feud. A slave rebellion brews in the tangled labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city streets. And Crown Prince Ashtaroth, the city’s supposed saviour, is considered unfit to rule even by those closest to him.

When the high priest burns one of the royal children alive as a desperate offering to the city’s absentee gods, it destroys the fragile peace within Qemassen’s scheming first family. Seeking revenge for the death of her child, Ashtaroth’s mother calls on a powerful demon named Lilit.

But Lilit cannot be trusted. Her cruel machinations pit brother against sister and father against daughter, laying waste to Ashtaroth’s family. Then Lilit approaches Ashtaroth with a demonic pact of his own – one that could save his people and his home. But between war from within and a revolution erupting within, even a demon may not be enough to keep Qemassen standing.

Set in a secondary world based on the conflict between Ancient Carthage and Rome, The Wings of Ashtaroth is a sprawling, multi-PoV epic fantasy, full of queerness, political intrigue, and demons.

Review:

Since I can’t stop thinking about this book, I figured I might as well put my thoughts to words and have a review by the time I’m done. But given that – and that a lot of this will take us into deep spoiler territory – I figured to start with a condensed review that might work for those who don’t want to know all the good stuff 😀

I’m honestly not quite sure why I picked up The Wings of Ashtaroth. The author had said a fair number of things that intrigued me, and I’d also gotten the impression the book was likely to be a lot more of a grimdark sort of book, and probably with more detailed violence than I like, and I don’t remember what the author said that got my interest enough to overcome that. It was interesting, but nothing more.

Be that as may, for whatever reason I picked up the book and started reading, and the prologue did get my interest quite a bit more.

What made this book for me are its characters. All of them feel real, and many of them are – well, I really like them for a few reasons. A handful embody hope, and loyalty, and love, and a tenacity that doesn’t give up or cower, to varying degrees in a way that I rarely see, and crave more of. It is true that I had a great deal of difficulty getting as close to a couple of them as I’d like, and therefore did not get to enjoy those characters as much. The elements of horror and descriptions of gore in the perspectives of some of the characters were prevalent, and I had to skim a lot to avoid those elements (and as it is got far more than I liked), but that doesn’t change what’s good and likable about them. And it certainly does not change how much I loved the few that I could get close to, and which I liked best for so many reasons. In these one or two characters, this book is something I’ve been looking for, for a long time, and almost never find.

It isn’t often that one comes across a world with a rather grimdark setting – where there are conniving, scheming, cruel and evil people, a world where bad things happen, and aren’t whitewashed, and sometimes the characters don’t win, and have to face situations where there are only “bad choices,” – and there are characters who decline that choice. Who don’t believe the lie that they “can’t” do something – no matter what the consequences of their actions will be, or what others might do in response. Who don’t give up fighting for what they care about, just because no one would give them any chances of success. Who believe in good and evil, that some things are just bad, and are going to try to be love the people they love, and do what they care about, no matter what others tell them about gods or consequences or duty.

They’re not perfect – who is? and that’s not what I asked for – but they’re there, trying to live their ideals, among other characters who aren’t. And that’s something I’m always looking for, and almost never finding. Even in far lighter, simpler books, I don’t see these kinds of characters … almost ever.

In the end, it was really one – or two – characters who carried the book for me (though it was a different character – who I have rather confused feelings about – who brought me far enough to get to know these first), as the horror elements and far-too-gory descriptions begged me many times to throw the book away for good. Some of these were utterly sickening, beyond being simply gore, as I very much did not the ideas about death present in the demons and the horror, though it runs side-by-side with an uncertainty about what ultimate reality is like, and several gods and pantheons who were quite interesting. Including a god of happiness, whose follower must seek to make themselves and others happy and sin is to knowingly do something you know will make you unhappy. One of the characters worshiped such a god, and I enjoyed that influence on the book.

But in the end, this is both a warning and very high praise. The gore and details really are pretty bad in places; this is not just Raina being sensitive, and I’m sure I avoided a lot, though I’m going to be sure to read the next one when I’m in a better mood to avoid things well. But, for all of that, I still loved some of it, enough that I really intend to read the next one, enough I keep thinking about the characters, at least the ones I can think about … enough for me to say all this about it …

Let’s just say that (apart from the horror and gore) this is a book I have been looking for.

On a side-note, there are a few things I thought I’d mention, of varying importance to me, though less than what’s above: the political intrigue side of things was rather well-done, I think. I fiercely disliked the high priest, and I did not find him to be at all sympathetic. Some may think this was not so great, but I applaud the author for creating a villainous character who is complex, with a complex and in-depth history (though it is slowly and incompletely revealed) for whom I don’t sympathize. I don’t mean he’s irredeemible (warning: Raina doesn’t believe this about anyone), or that I’m indifferent to the suffering he’s endured. But I see his deeds as undiluted evil, and his motivations are dark, twisted, removing him from the humanity that lingers underneath. And I enjoyed this. I get tired, sometimes, of it when the villains are always revealed to be sympathetic, in such a way that any reasonably empathic and tender person can sympathize with the path they choose or at least see how their pasts turned them down their dark roads – though we might condemn their actions as wholly evil and be in no conflict over what our choices would be. So I liked this. I thought the political intrigue was well-done, being political intrigue instead of trying to make everyone’s characters and choices sympathetic.

The world also definitely has an ancient feel. One can see the influence of Carthage on Qemassen, and one can see Rome in Lorar: though it is only inspired by these places and their conflict, not determined by them. For example, Lorar as it is in The Wings of Ashtaroth combines elements of Rome from various time-periods. Others of the peoples seem as if they may be of mixed inspirations as well, and combine elements of eras that weren’t contemporary with each other in our history. In many ways, I think I liked this better, and I thought it was well-done.

Now, we’ll go on to the spoiler section, because while some of what I’m going to talk about is pretty early in the book and wouldn’t involve spoiler, I’m not going to be able to manage very well if I have to carefully sort out what is and isn’t spoilerish.

The Good Stuff Review (Warning: Some people call some of these ‘spoilers):

There also might be some bad stuff. Or some stuff I can’t decide about. Either way, this is where I’d definitely go, if I was reading a review to decide if I’m interested in a book or not. 😀

To start with, there’s the Queen, Moniqa, from the prologue. My feelings about her are conflicted. One very quickly get the sense that what love she has for her children is twisted, incomplete, and warped by what she’s been through, born into a royal family and married to a king she doesn’t love, her own nation lost. Mine! This is the thought that strangles her. She’s desperate for a place that belongs to her, and some of it is a natural, and wholesome, human desire, but it’s warped into something far more sinister. It strangles her love until it’s not love at all, as evidenced when she offers the lives of her other children for Aurelius’, the one they intend to kill, but already hinted by the fact she loves Aurelius so much because he seems more hers to her: she got the privilege to name him. But, at the same time, being a queen, she hasn’t nursed them and held them and bonded with them as a mother should.

But what really got my interest in how hard she fights for Aurelius’ life. How she never gives up, never says she can’t: tries to strangle the high priest, fights her way out of her room. She’s not bound by the lie that cages so many, that just because it’s all but certain you will fail, therefore you cannot try, cannot choose, cannot act. But this only made me wish even more that her love was at least a little purer: I’d love to see a character who really loves, with this kind of fight.

Then there is Dashel, her Erun servant – and far more than a servant, in that he cares out of his heart. I’m not sure how they met each other, how the relationship between them first came to be. His character is another one that’s conflicted, as she has charged him with the safety of her children, and he is determined to protect them.

It was an evil thing that had forced the queen to offer her other children in exchange for Aurelius’s life, and evil things had to be stopped. Some things were simple like that, and true.

And impossible.

I loved the simplicity, the purity, and the conviction here. Yet pressured, Dashel doesn’t hold to it. I wonder, sometimes, if he could have? What would have happened if he had not suggested burning the newborn? And, instead, he compromised.

Dashel’s expression hung dark and hollow, his words halting, choked. Samelqo bristled that Dashel would dare feel such things. “I don’t know the twins. The seventh is the heir, but there’s a sixth.”

One sees the taint of that all through the book, poisoning him from within as he becomes a drug addict and falls into depression, still accompanying Aurelius, the child he saved now a man he adores, and yearning for his love. I believe, at the end, Dashel is motivated not only by the fact he’d do anything for Aurelius, die without hesitation, but by his own death wish, after having failed his own conviction in such a horrible way. A constant guilt and self-hate running through him. So, in the end, he hopes to redeem himself in dying for Aurelius, not knowing how – or perhaps not having the strength, and belief in his own convictions anymore – to redeem himself in living.

Then there’s Ashtaroth, raised to be the chosen one, the king who’s supposed to save Qemassen. Regrettably, as the book proceeded, his passages were more and more full of the demon Lilit, and I had to be careful reading many of them, but through everything one thing shines through: his feelings about Aurelius might be very conflicted at times, even hate, but he does love Aurelius, too. In the end, it’s for Aurelius he gives himself to Lilit, and he’s willing to give up his crown to save his brother. He won’t “save the city” at the cost of his brother’s life. Ashtaroth is complex, poetic, and he often lets himself be pushed around. His feelings are sometimes unhinged. Yet there’s a purity to him, too, in the darkness. And as he stands against Lilit’s machinations, more firmly every time he falls and brings about some atrocity under her will, that’s only accentuated.

Aurelius made the book sing for me, though it took a long time to get to really know him. He’s always been a caring child, and though originally born heir, he’s resigned himself quite comfortably to the fact he’s not. He makes mistakes, and he has flaws, but he really loves people, and he wants to make their lives better. He’s sometimes callous and insensitive, but never out of cruelty – instead out of personality clashes, and a lack of understanding that comes from the life he’s lived. When, against everyone’s expectations, he falls in love with a woman he meets, it changes his life, as he cares deeply about her and intends to leave everything else behind to be with her. But, things don’t really work out right away.

In the course of events, he ends up condemned to be whipped for indiscretion with his younger brother’s to-be-bride, at the same time as many slaves, including children, are to be whipped far more severely, ostensibly for information about the mysterious leader of the slave rebellion. The children, whipped first, in an attempt to open their parents’ mouths. And Aurelius demands that they whip him instead.

As the high priest intends to try to kill him again, and his father raises little opposition, the exchange is permitted, and Aurelius is beaten within an inch of his life. And, virtually crowned King. Later, someone suggests that he never really gave up his desire for the crown, and he did it knowing the worship he’d gain for it. I don’t submit that this suggestion is entirely false. He probably did know. But I also suggest his action was different, and perhaps purer, than that. I suggest that he could not have known, when he first made his bargain, that he’d survive it, and Aurelius does not strike me as if the sliver chance of possible Kingship is adequate reason for him to court death. Instead, I suggest that while he probably knew that, and it probably some subconscious role in some of his behavior, it was driven primarily by two things: his kind heart, always appalled by cruelty, combined with the mark that losing his mother, nearly being burned alive as a child, and instead having his younger sibling burned, has left on him. I think that’s created a certain sense of kinship, and he simply can’t allow things to go as they’re going.

From there, things cascade. I’m not sure if I should reveal the whole plot, even here. For one thing, it would take up so much space. But that’s only the beginning of getting to know Aurelius as someone who follows his heart, who tries his best to save Dashel from being executed, failing because he’s still half-dead from the whipping – and in the end, accepts the throne in order to get to marry the woman he loves. I also can’t help but think that some people weren’t exactly thinking when they thought Aurelius should be fully recovered from the whipping, but he still was not acting it. For one, there’s a strictly physical possibility: he lost a great deal of blood, and some components in blood take the human body three months to replace. But more importantly, he’s lost Dashel. The loss of his father means no great deal to him: but the loss of Dashel (and how, but even just the loss alone) is going to be crushing for him. Dashel saved him as a child, has loved him ever since, his closest friend. Losing Dashel is going to ripple through his mind and life in a lot of ways.

And then – there’s Kirin, a gladiator in Lorar. Watching his story unfold is fascinating as well. As a captive, he’s come to adore the people who’ve captured and abused him, to bask in what praise they can offer, to identify with them. Yet there’s such light in his story as slowly – yet sometimes by leaps and bounds – he begins to think about things, and to break free of some of the chains in his mind, seeing the tricks of someone who’s had him on a leash, and choosing his own side. I don’t understand some of his choices. Some of the things he thinks will help him, and what he does didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But there’s hope in how he finds his humanity still alive. And how he reacts to the horrors of war and the atrocities of his friends. It’s very, very ugly. But it shows a man who’s trying, I think. So I liked that story of someone starting to break free.

I really won’t talk much about Iridescia, as her PoV has the most horror, and it gets pretty bad at times, even though she is a very sweet character. I won’t talk about some of the others because I simply don’t have the space or time, and my thoughts aren’t as developed or harder to articulate – or just seem less significant to me. There are a handful of times that characters missed things I really thought they should have seen, made assumptions I really thought they shouldn’t have. But it was not so badly as to put distance between me and them as a reader. It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

So I hope I’ve given as fair a picture as I can, here. The book is far more gory than I like, with a handful of elements that I really don’t enjoy. But I rarely see so many characters who struggle for hope, or to love, the way these do. It was really refreshing to see characters to whom their heart means more than their duty, trying to find their path amidst the darkness and struggles and confusion and atrocities of the world.

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