Legacy of Ash

Legacy of Ash is a fantasy novel by the British writer Matthew Ward, published in 2019.

The republic in the book was founded on an argument and has been governed for generations by families who are now more interested in each other than in the state, which is the arrangement the Hadari invasion is designed to exploit. Viktor is the soldier the republic calls on when it needs somebody to be unquestionably loyal, and the secret he keeps makes his position impossible; Josiri is the prisoner whose mother's rebellion has become the family's only inheritance; and Calenne, his sister, has decided that the least she can do is refuse to be defined by it. Ward moves between the three of them and a cast of soldiers, priests and conspirators, and the novel's interest is in the price that has to be paid by people who are asked to defend an institution they do not respect. The battles are written with a clear sense of ground and supply, and the quieter compromises that keep the great families in place are given just as much room, so that the arrival of the invading army reads as a judgement on them as much as a threat to them. It began a trilogy about the same war and the same republic.