“They do bad things, Clayara, her mother had told her with tears in her eyes. Good people with a terrible disease. That’s what the Haze is, but they don’t see it. They’re blinded by power, and that is the most tragic truth of them all.”
-Magic in Ashes, Sam Crook
So, one of the most beautiful things friends can do is help each other, and nowhere is that support perhaps most evident than in the friends of creators. We who share in the ever-growing burdens of creative endeavors—drawing, writing, painting, photographing—know the complexity and the toil of such creative acts. When the time comes and one of us achieves something, it is with the knowledge that we acted not alone but in concert with the many of us who cheered and supported us along the way. Though I have the pleasure of knowing Sam Crook in real life and had a hand in developing and editing her novel, I will nevertheless strive to remove as much bias as possible and give an honest look at her work in the words below.
Friendship and the cooperative means which follow a band of misfits with overlapping goals reigns as one of the main themes of Sam Crook’s Magic in Ashes. The cast is enigmatic and diverse—led by the perpetually ornery Clayara Tapai—and Crook’s skill in writing is in making her characters not only distinct, but endearing and sympathetic. There is life in these pages, whether it be from Clayara’s swings from tempestuous suspicion to genuine curiosity and wonder, to Liara’s overwhelming capacity for forgiveness and care, to Kahni’s ethereally threatening demeanor. Crook understands the dynamic ways in which people interact well, and through her talent for writing internal monologues and grasp of the varying ways in which people react to others they do, or explicitly do not, like, she creates a tight band of heroes and a worthy array of villains and obstacles for them to overcome that keeps the pace and the action front and center through most of Magic in Ashes.
Oh, there’s also Lano—a gun-toting, witty, insufferable man who thrusts our main character forward into an ever-darkening plot of magic, addiction, and mystery with a simple promise: Clayara can see her father again.
There is darkness here, to be sure. While the core of this found-family adventure remains, Crook has no qualms about plunging them into increasingly perilous situations and torturous environments. In a world with a magic like the Haze—an addictive drug that grants powers at the cost of a severely diminished lifespan and reduced quality of life—swirls about constantly in the back of everyone’s minds, Crook develops themes of internal struggle, temptation, and falling readily and thoroughly. There is a pain to the world not even her characters seem prepared to fix. This is without mentioning the monsters, the conspiracy, the constant fighting and ever-present danger of surrendering to one’s darker impulses.
Clayara herself maintains her demeanor because she has seen firsthand the effects of the Haze and therefore distrusts not only power but all the avenues to it. Watching her fight against losing her friends to the darkness about them but also struggle against giving into the want of power for herself is one of the central cruxes of Magic in Ashes and a powerful thematic through-line for the story. Crook does not shy away from the nastier aspects of this, and it leaves a haunting cloud over the plot that suits its tone well.
Therein is the wonderful balance of Magic in Ashes which keeps the plot tight and the story engaging. The constant tension between moments of sincere brevity between our main band of characters is kept perpetually on a dagger’s edge of suspicion and wariness. But in a world where not even oneself can be trusted, where everything (including magic) has a cost, and where everyone wants something out of everyone else, Crook manages to slip in specters of tenacity and hope which hook the reader as much as they do her own characters.
It is a tragic story as much as it is an enchanting one, and it is a story which lingers after it is read. I think there is much to commend for Crook’s ability to craft endearing characters, ones that stay in a reader’s memory, and to consistently develop a wealth of imaginative, fantastical, dangerous situations for them to battle through. Magic in Ashes delves into deep themes and examines the pain and the joy people bring each other, seen through the eyes of a main character who knows those high and lows better than most. It is an adventure, it is a quest, and it is only the first of two planned books.
Is it worth it?
As the people of Tandrala know—it always is.