Published: March 15, 2022
Publisher: Solaris
Series: Standalone
Genre: Claims to be Fantasy
Pages: 528 (Hardcover)
My Rating: DNF at ~30%
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
An extravagant, lyrical fantasy about a city of poets and librarians. A city that never was.
Cadenza is the City of Words, a city run by poets, its skyline dominated by the steepled towers of its libraries, its heart beating to the stamp and thrum of the printing presses in the Printing Quarter.
Carlo Mazzoni, a young wordsmith arrives at the city gates intent on making his name as the bells ring out with the news of the death of the city’s poet-leader. Instead, he finds himself embroiled with the intrigues of a city in turmoil, the looming prospect of war with their rival Venice ever-present. A war that threatens not only to destroy Cadenza but remove it from history altogether…
Have you ever picked up a book and then realized the synopsis wasn’t exactly telling you the truth? Maybe not outright lying about the premise of the book, but certainly misleading a potential reader. With The Carnival of Ash, I went in expecting a fantasy book about this beautiful Italian city full of wordsmiths and poets, where the written word reigns supreme and surely there would be book magic! Or some sort of fantastical element, no matter how small! My hopes were dashed, because in the first third of the book there was no such thing. This is straight up historical fiction/alternate history.
That’s not even why I decided to DNF this book!! I DNF’d it because I only stumbled across one character I remotely liked and the rest were unbelievably pompous pricks! It went from one self-centered, entitled male poet to another and if you ask me, they were practically interchangeable if you aged them up or down. Vittoria, the ink maid who writes custom smutty fiction for her patrons, and who now has a mysterious admirer sending her intriguing letters was the best part of what I read. Her section of the book was brilliantly entertaining and then it ended…
Overall, this didn’t live up to my expectations (and apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt this way), but I could have lived with that if it had been an entertaining read. I was bored and decided to move on to the next book in my queue because life is far too short to force yourself to read something you’re not enjoying. Especially if it’s not educational.
Powder & Page 
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