I am SO excited to share a complete recap and review of Alchemy & Ashes by Amy Yorke with you all! I received an advanced reader copy (ARC) of Alchemy & Ashes from the publisher, so I was able to read it a bit before its official publication. This is honestly one of my favorite books I have read this year so far. Alchemy & Ashes is now available and is available for free through Kindle Unlimited!

If you’d rather listen to my recap, I recorded one on YouTube and you can watch here!:

Alchemy and Ashes Recap

One of the awesome things that Amy Yorke added was basically a reference guide for the book at the beginning! There is a map, a list of the gods, pronunciation for all of the character names, and a list of all of the places in the book and who heads each of the different houses.

Sylvie, Adria (her sister), Larus (their guardian), and Typhon (an emissary to Nithyria and heir to House of Horatio) are headed to the capital of Selara, Faros, for a several months long Great Festival of the Gods thrown by the God-King, Ronan. Sylvie is of noble family in Nithyria, and Adria is head of the House of Verran within the Nithyrian Province. Adria has a plan to kill Ronan, siege the city of Faros, and declare war against Selara during the festival.

Their home of Nithyria’s greatest export is the ash of the phoenix cypress tree. The alchemists in Selara have a way to turn it into gold. Selara was demanding too much ash from Nithyria, and left the people of Nithyria starving and weak. This gave the Orsan people an opening to attack Nithyria. Nithyria ultimately went to war with Selara in hopes for independence. At the time, Sylvie was too young to go to war, but her siblings, Seth and Adria did, as did her mother and father who both died in the war. Sylvie’s father died at the hands of the current king, Ronan. Adria took over to continue the war and ultimately surrendered to Ronan. After the surrender, Ronan gave some of the Nithyrian lands to the Orsa.

People are born into different schools of magic (I included a screenshot from the reference guide). Basically, the Codex (their religious texts) say that there is an order to the schools and that those with light magic are at the top of the totem pole, and those with shadow magic are at the bottom. Your personality has something to do with what magic you possess and being in tune to those personality traits fuels your magic. For example, Sylvie is shadow born, so they can create deeper shadows and tend to be sneaky or able to easily lie. So when Sylvie lies, it strengthens her ability to create shadows. Adria and Seth are both fire born and Ronan is one of two light born in the kingdom.

Adria and Larus inform Sylvie that they want Sylvie to seduce Ronan to get information and have him be unsuspecting of their plan to attack. Upon arrival, they meet King Ronan who, with his light power has the ability to heal, wield light to fight, and read emotions (among other things). Because of his ability to read emotions, Sylvie, Larus, and Adria know they have to be careful about what they think around Ronan so that he doesn’t catch onto their plan to infiltrate the capital, kill him, and declare war. Sylvie tries to be cool and aloof and not think hostile thoughts toward Ronan, but Ronan is hot lol. Despite the fact that Ronan killed her father, she naturally she has some thoughts about how attractive Ronan is, which he picks up on and starts flirting with her.

Later, while she should be getting ready for dinner, Sylvie comes across a unguarded secret passage out of the palace and into the market. While in an alley, someone puts a knife to her throat, which she returns by stabbing them in the gut. But she quickly realizes she stabbed a preteen boy. A man comes over and heals the boy whom he clearly knows. They chat and he introduces himself as Soren and offers to show her around the market and which vendors to avoid due to their prejudices against Nithyrians. He tells her that he imports rare goods he pays a number of shadow-born to spy on other vendors for him to get ahead. But one of his spies, Vesper has been missing for the past week. Soren and Sylvie have serious chemistry, but Soren has to leave after they spend the whole day together. At the end of their date, he winks, and Sylvie realizes he looks exactly like Ronan and begins to suspect that Soren and Ronan are somehow the same person.

There are some different houses that are not happy with Ronan for the changes he is making and also try to end his life. With the Festival of Sport coming up, Sylvie registers for archery and also trial of the blade (after getting into a verbal match with Ronan’s friend, Quinn). In the meantime, Sylvie begins to befriend Zara, the head of Alchemists. She is also light-born and mentions to Sylvie that the Alchemist’s guild is running into issues because there are certain things they are not allowed to research.

Later on, while practicing the sword with Adria, Ronan comes over and practices with Sylvie. After they fight and flirt for a while, Sylvie asks Ronan why Taran would be his closest guard, because he is Orsan. The Orsa and Nithyrians had a troubled past, and Sylvie can only see what the Orsa have done to her people– not the awful things her people have also done to the Orsa. She learns that Taran was found as a young boy by Ronan and his father after his family had been tortured and killed by Nithryrian soldiers. But once she is able to talk to Taran and see what he went through, she is able to put aside her prejudice and have an open mind about Orsan people. But she then she confronts Ronan about the grain that Nithyria should be receiving from Selara in exchange for the ash that Nithyria provides them. This is Sylvie’s biggest gripe with Selara: that they were forced from their ancestral home, Pyka, after he gifted it to the Orsa for their support in the war. Pyka had plains where they grew food, but Ronan had promised to keep Nithyria fed as long as they supplied Selara with ash. But then shipments started arriving late, or spoiled, or they were stolen by thieves. And so the people of Nithyria were going hungry, while the people of Selara were seemingly thriving while enjoying the riches that came from the labor of Nithyrians to make gold for Selara. Plus is was Sylvie’s understanding that they had asked for Ronan to fix the issues with the grain and he had refused, but when she confronts him about this, he acts like he didn’t know there was an issue with grain shipments.

“We have lived with these feuds all our lives. There are scores being kept that have been kept since long before we were born, and if we don’t do something to change it, they’ll keep going long after we die. We can tally them all up, measure whose loss hurts the most, find out who is owed the most in repentance. A point here, a point there. Weigh the missing grain, count the parents taken from their children. Gather up all the blood, sweat, and tears and see whose make the deeper ocean. But to what end? Where does it stop? Are we doomed to repeat this pattern for all eternity?”

Alchemy & Ashes, Location 1851

Meanwhile, Adria and Larus have secured the navy of Felix March of the Enez islands, the Admiral of the Third Navy. He is more of a pirate than a head of any official land and they have promised him a cut of Selaran gold production if they win the war in exchange for his help. Larus has to go to the Enez islands though to visit his mother to finish negotiating their ships and backing for the war that they plan to start.

Slyvie sneaks out to the market again to see Soren and he tells her that another shadow-born missing, named Marcella. Soren has a lead, so him and Sylvie go to a warehouse to try to find Marcella. When they get there, they see people loading large crates from a dock and when Sylvie and Soren investigate what it is, they see that is powerful ingredients for alchemy. Then Soren realizes that the person in charge of this operation is Marcella herself. They get into a fight with her and the guards and Soren accidentally calls Sylvie by her real name (not the fake one she gave him), so she knows he is actually Ronan. While Sylvie is fighting Marcella, she starts to have shadows that are like arms or extensions of her body to fight with. Ronan lifts the mask he was able to create with his light magic that turned him into “Soren” and calls for his guards, who he had on standby but wouldn’t tell exactly where or what he was doing because he is worried about a spy among his close group of people.

Shortly after, Sylvie qualifies for the archery trial and then has her first sword-fighting trial. She is winning, when all of a sudden, the guy she is fighting uses his earth-born powers (against the rules of a duel) to throw her off and then pins her down and chokes her. Sylvie is able to use her shadow powers to kick him off before he kills her (killing is against the rules in these fights). Zara rushes over and heals Sylvie.

Ronan and Sylvie talk and discover that instead of her shadows weakening his light, her shadows specifically seem to amplify his light powers. She also starts to realize that Ronan has lost a lot of faith in the gods and doesn’t necessarily believe the sacred texts of the Codex that lay out the aspects of the schools of magic. This is ironic because he is technically the leader of the national religion which holds him to be the reincarnation of a god on earth.

Slyvie keeps her distance from Ronan for a while and finally gets knocked out of the sword trial to Titus, the heir of the house of Faber. Zara and Sylvie become closer and soon it is the archery final. Sylvie is against two others. But when everyone releases their arrow, Sylvie makes a bullseye and turns to see that one competitor is on the ground with an arrow in his ear and another is running away. Sylvie quickly realizes that the motivation to kill someone in front of an arena doesn’t make any sense unless it is actually to serve as a distraction for something else. She looks up at the royal box to see someone hidden in the shadows in the box, creeping up to Ronan. Everyone in the box is unaware of this man because they are not shadow-born, but Sylvie sees him and shoots the man with an arrow. Guards think that Sylvie was trying to kill Ronan with the arrow and take her to prison. Quinn breaks her out and does a 180 on her attitude toward Sylvie as she recognizes that she saved Ronan’s life. Ronan heals Sylvie and once everyone else is gone, he admits to her that he couldn’t feel the assassin in the box with him and that he is losing his ,magic. His weakened magic comes and goes and he cannot predict when or why. Sylvie begins to realize that she really doesn’t want Ronan to die and she is having serious issues with the idea of waging war, but she doesn’t feel like she can tell Adria because that would make her a traitor to her people and her sister.

Ronan (posing as Soren) and Sylvie go back out into the market to visit a safe house to follow a lead about Vesper. He claims that he saw her being led against her will through a door by some men and one of them was wearing brown robes like that the alchemists wear. When Ronan and Sylvie go to investigate the alley and door, it is completely empty.

Sylvie and Ronan fight about gold production and he tells her that he has been trying to find a solution for some time, but gold is the only main export that Selara has, so they basically have no choice but to keep making it. And then he tells her that he looked into the grain shipments and that there shouldn’t be anyone going without. He had been sending more to make sure no one would go hungry. Sylvie starts to suspect that maybe Adria is lying to her and the people of Nithyria about the grain in an effort to to starve them to make them more willing to rise up against Selara.

Quinn and Adria finally have their final sword match and after an angry match, Adria wins. Finally, after Sylvie makes him jealous on the dance floor with Titus, Ronan expresses how into Sylvie her is.

“I’m desperate for you,” he whispers.

Alchemy & Ashes, Loc 3973

But he admits that he knows she has been pretending and that its not pretending for him. But he cannot keep going on flirting and sharing stolen touches if Sylvie is still pretending at all to him. She realizes that Ronan is probably not lying to her about the things going on in the kingdom, but that maybe her family are the ones lying to her. But revealing their original plot to kill Ronan would get them all killed for being traitors, so Sylvie decides she is going to try to convince Larus and Adria to cancel the plan. She has to know what Larus has to say about the grain situation before she can commit fully to Ronan, because it otherwise feels like a betrayal to her family and her people. They do have a steamy make-out though and Sylvie and Ronan realize that Ronan can sometimes share his emotions through a mental line with Sylvie.

Afterwards, Sylvie sees Hermes, the Alchemist from Nithyria, sneaking through the palace, so she and a palace guard, Stella, follow him. He goes to the alley and door that Sylvie and Ronan had previously investigated. They go in to follow them but no one is inside and they realize there must be some kind of trap door that they cannot find. When Sylvie gets back to her room, Adria is drunk and she realizes she can get some info out of her. She is able to get Adria to admit that she had been messing with the grain shipments by hiring bandits to steal it and letting water into the storage to ruin it, so that she could blame it all on Ronan and radicalize Nithyria.

The next day is the hunt, and Ronan announces tat they have located a griffin that they intend to hunt Everyone is divided into hunting parties. Ronan’s cousin, Lucas, approaches Sylvie and tells her that he is watching her because he believes she intended to shoot Ronan the night she saved his life. Eventually, some of the other people in their hunting party give up, leaving Ronan, Sylvie, and Taran. The three of them locate the griffin and Ronan is able to feel that Sylvie really doesn’t want to kill the griffin. He also feels the griffin’s curiosity and (against Taran and Sylvie’s better judgement) is able to approach it, mount it, and Ronan and Sylvie ride and fly on it.

When I found out I was meant to kill Ronan, I imagined it would a difficult undertaking. A dangerous game of cat and mouse, racing to keep one step ahead of him, searching high and low for a weakness, for any opportunity to strike. If I’d known he would voluntarily put himself in situations in which he could be killed repeatedly, even against my strongest urging, I wouldn’t have worried so much.

Alchemy & Ashes, Loc 4472

They land by some cliffs and talk a bit deeper.

“What drew you to me in the beginning?” I ask. He’d said he’d felt me before he even came into the room the first time. That he’d known me even then. What did he feel?

“Loneliness. Not mine, yours.”

I turn to look at him. He meets my eye this time, and it’s like he sees right through me. Right through whatever walls I’ve tried to build, right down to the core of who I am.

“I could feel the way you felt standing there with your family. With them, but apart from them. The way you were trying so desperately hard to be something that you’re just not. The fear of them finding out. And the deep, heartbreaking knowledge that no one will ever truly understand you or love you for who you are. I recognized the feeling because I’ve felt it every single day since your father died.”

Alchemy & Ashes, Loc 4602

Sylvie finally asks him about the duel in which Ronan killed her father. Their armies had been at a stalemate and so Sylvie’s father challenged Ronan to a duel with the agreement that whoever won, would win the war. Ronan had fantasized about killing Sylvie’s father, because Sylvie’s father had killed Ronan’s. But when Ronan had beat Sylvie’s father to his knees, he was unable to finish it and kill him. Finally, Taran stepped in and killed Sylvie’s father and his general accompanying him. Although Ronan HAD defeated her father, his mercy was like a forfeit and cost him the technical victory. Meaning: Adria is actually the one with a claim to the throne. No one else knows about this lie other than Taran, and Sylvie realizes that Adria cannot be queen.

Sylvie convinces Ronan to double the grain shipment to Nithyria to undermine Seth and Adria. Larus returns and Sylvie tells him about what Adria and Seth have been doing. He admits that he didn’t know and promises to find a way to stop things. Sylvie sees this as a chance to finally get to be with Ronan again, so she surprises him at the opera. We get a ~spicy scene~ and as they leave to go have privacy, someone pulls Ronan aside to ask him a question. Taran is attacked and Sylvie is taken. Sylvie awakens in a room paralyzed with Zara who is draining all of her blood. As it turns out, the alchemists had been trying to find an alternative to phoenix cypress ash to turn lead into gold for export. Zara believed that blood might be the answer, but Ronan shut down that idea for experimenting. Zara discovered that she could suppress light magic with shadow-born blood. The alchemists had been sourcing human blood through Marcella but then Ronan and Sylvie had shut down that operation. Zara was creating candles with shadow-born blood to suppress light born magic in order to take out Ronan so that the alchemists could have the freedom to run whatever experiments that they want. She originally thought she could use Sylvie, but due to Sylvie’s special shadow-born magic and the fact that she is clearly falling in love with Ronan, Zara decided she needed to be eliminated too.

The POV switches to Ronan at this point and goes back to when Ronan gets pulled aside to talk and Sylvie is kidnapped. Ronan feels Sylvie’s energy shift to fear and then finds her gone and Taran on the ground. They run to the alley where they had investigated before and find a secret passage. They know it’s a trap, but Ronan goes anyway. Ronan finds Sylvie laying on a table with her blood draining and starts trying to get the blood back into her. All of a sudden, his ankle is sliced by Zara hiding under the table. Zara tells Ronan that the reason why Ronan’s magic is so different around Sylvie is that they are shadowbound. Meanwhile, Sylvie starts to wake up just enough that she uses her shadows to snuff the candle and pin down Quinn so that Ronan can kill her. Quinn and Taran find the missing shadow born being guarded by alchemists and they are rescued.

Later on after the masquerade ball, Adria confronts Slyvie and tells her to not be like their mother. Their mother was a shadow-born spy with the goal to kill Ronan, but tried to spare his life. King Aurelian killed her instead. The fight to to try to skill Ronan was where Ronan got all of his scars. Once he confesses this story to Sylvie, she decides to confess that they came to Selara to kill Ronan and that Adria and Seth are planning a infiltration and siege by land and sea. Ronan convenes his war council and Sylvie tells them everything she knows. They decide to confine Adria in her quarters under the pretense that treats have been made against her (so she doesn’t suspect that they know and make any sudden moves) and start preparing their armies and navy.

Sylvie returns to her quarters with Adria and tries to pretend like she doesn’t understand why they are confined and that she has no idea what is going on. But after a couple of days, Adria suspects that Sylvie betrayed them and their plan and attacks Sylvie. Ronan bursts in and sends Adria to the dungeons.

At the festival of Night, Selara is attacked. Titus kidnaps Sylvie and takes her to the throne room where Adria is waiting for them. Adria attacks Sylvie with her fire-power so that Ronan will hear her emotion of pain and come into her ambush trap. Adria kills Stella with her flame and Titus throws some kind of smoking poison on the floor, knocking out Quinn and Ronan. Adria tells Sylvie that Larus tried to stop the ships and siege but she saw through him and reminded him that he swore an oath to Adria, not Sylvie, so they had both been lying to Sylvie about their plans recently. Sylvie and Adria have a sword duel, but they stop short when they hear more guards and Adria and Larus run away. They fight everyone off in the city, but they know there is a war on the horizon with oncoming sips and an army incoming. They finally get some rest with Quinn still healing. In the middle of the night, Sylvie gets up and gets knocked out and kidnapped (again).
In the epilogue, it switches again to Ronan’s POV. Ronan looks for her and someone shows him Sylvie’s ring that they found near one of the secret gates out of the city. It ends with Ronan beginning to feel Sylvie’s feelings waking up, so he and Taran get on Mira, the griffin, and head off to search for Sylvie.

Review

I’ve been in a slump with romantasy books lately, and this one reminded me why I love it. It wasn’t even particularly groundbreaking, but it just had a lot of elements and tropes that I loved. I especially loved that it broke the pattern of ~shadow daddy~/*bat boy* MMCs that you often get with popular romantasy books. I love a good bad boy MMC, but Ronan had golden retriever energy from the start that I loved!

Some big questions for book 2:

Is there something going on between Quinn and Adria? This was kind of hinted at in book 1 by Slyvie– I wonder if Amy will do a spin off or elaborate more on it in book 2!

Who took Sylvie? Taran? Ronan’s cousin, Lucas? I feel like it has to be someone close to Ronan that was able to break into his room, but I’m leaning toward it being Lucas or Taran. The interaction with Lucas was otherwise so random and unresolved, so I think it will play into something in book 2!

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