Beneath the Ashen Sky
by T. L. Bellia
When the small town of Drassox is massacred in a sudden, ruthless attack, veteran captain Lothar finds himself thrust into an impossible protector of Kael, a quiet, wide-eyed boy with a mysterious past-and a terrifying future.
Hunted by a ruthless holy order intent on exterminating all the children in the area and haunted by prophetic dreams it becomes clear Kael is no ordinary child. As they flee deeper into the wilderness, Lothar must confront dark forces far beyond mortal reckoning, including whispers of an ancient evil, eager to return to the world.
With allies scarce and dangers rising, Lothar faces a harrowing trust in the rumours of a hidden sanctuary-or forge his own path to keep Kael safe. But the further they travel, the more the line between salvation and damnation begins to blur.
In a land where faith is a weapon and destiny is written in blood, one man's vow could shape the fate of a child-and the world itself.
Before the end,
Lothar's honor and morals will be tested.
And a battle for Kael's innocence and soul will begin.
Beneath the Ashen Sky is a gripping Grimdark tale of sacrifice, honor, and the quiet courage that changes everything.
Keep an eye out for the sequel, due out before the end of 2025!
SPFBOXI – Our Reviews
Noel Cober
“We… are trying… to prevent… HIS… return…” came his reply, his breaths becoming increasingly shorter. He’d nearly bled out, and that was too good a death for a child killer, sadly I wouldn’t get the answers I wanted today.
The story of the grizzled veteran and the child he must protect at all costs is a classic for a reason. It make for an automatically compelling story with high stakes as you worry over the child’s safety, but also wonder why they’re so special.
Beneath the Ashen Sky has a killer premise: a mysterious army is travelling the land, butchering the children of every village and town they find, and massacring everyone else if they resist. In one such attack, two survivors manage to escape and must flee as they are pursued. Lothar, the soldier who led the failed defence of his hometown, and Kael, the nine-year-old boy the child killing army is looking for. They have to find safety, figure out who they can trust, and learn why Kael is so important before it’s too late. But of course, Kael himself might be the reason why it’s about to be too late.
I am a sucker for a story about a weird child with strange magical powers, especially when the child is a PoV character. I love child characters in adult stories, and I love when we get their perspectives and they’re done well, and I think that author T. L. Bellia does a great job with Kael’s voice, which sounds authentically like a little boy. I really enjoyed it every time we got to see Kael’s perspective on things, it was really refreshing and fun. It’s very hard to pull of dual-PoV first person narration without the voices sounding similar, but Bellia does it very effectively. I also found the mystery of what was going on with Kael very cool and was genuinely really invested first in knowing what his deal was, and then once we knew, knowing how it would all turn out. I didn’t personally find Lothar quite as compelling. He was well executed but mostly read to me as a fairly standard determined but tired old soldier, an archetype that populates this kind of story. Lothar didn’t really stand out to me as substantially different from other characters like him in the genre, but his voice was also consistent and a good complement to Kael.
I did however have some quite substantial issues with the writing in Beneath the Ashen Sky. It relies very heavily on single-line paragraphs of one sentence, with a new paragraph for each sentence, but that’s not used consistently, which makes me think it’s not a stylistic choice so much as just overly sparse narration where something more detailed would have helped. There are a lot of awkward turns of phrase and descriptions that feel like either too much or too little, and the dialogue tends to be purely functional and very wooden in a way that made the book hard to keep reading. The book starts with an in media res opening followed by a few chapters of flashbacks leading up to that, followed by an abrupt and unmarked jump back into the present that left me struggling to figure out when things were happening for the first fifth handful of chapters, which I found disorienting.
The other major character in the book is Del, who I find a bit confusing because she occupies all three archetypical roles for a female grimdark character simultaneously. I can’t say a huge amount without spoilers, but she kind of alternates between being the motherly figure, the sexually imperiled maiden, and the dangerously sexual badass, and that could be cool and show a lot of depth of character, but doesn’t really work for me, and mostly made me wish that the book had just had another female character in it. I found her storyline a bit confusing and hard to follow, and I wish she’d been a PoV character so I’d understood what she was doing a bit better.
I really wanted to like Beneath the Ashen Sky way more than I ended up doing. It has a lot of elements that I’m very fond of and a lot of interesting mythological twists in it, but ultimately it had a lot of writing choices that didn’t work for me personally. I think people who are really into the jaded adult/progressively-less-innocent child dynamic (bonus points if you’re a fan of God of War) and who like grimdark with a mythological twist to it will find this one interesting!
Catherine Catcho
(lookma.i.read)
“Please don’t go anywhere, it’s not safe outside tonight.”
Great now she is leaving me alone as well, what is with adults being so busy all the time?
Quick Pitch:
An army of ruthless mercenaries/knights leave no souls left on the search for a boy from a religious prophecy.
But they accidentally leave two souls alive. 1. The boy from the prophecy & 2. A retired captain trying to stop these horrific acts. Both have no idea why they are being hunted but they band together to survive.
When they search out help from other towns, not all agree the innocent boy must be protected.
Just how bad is this prophecy? Only the devil really knows. Literally.
Overall Thoughts:
I’m delighted that I could listen to the audiobook for this. The narrator had kinda a younger Clint Eastwood-like voice.
The first leg of this feels heavy in gritty, horrific tragic scenes and quiet in magic. So much so I was thinking it felt more like medieval fiction than fantasy until we hit the 40% mark. I almost wished the magic was teased stronger and earlier on in the story.
I also like the dual POV- though the verbal whiplash between the two tones overlapped a little more than I expected and it slowed the tension and pacing.
Even though this type of world building feels a little predictable, it was easy to escape into this story.
“Kael” as a major character, the author’s love of AI-generated images (the cover art and plenty more on his book’s Amazon pages), and what you said about the writing style all point to AI slop. The available samples of the book text are not sufficient for me to call it that on its own but I fear for the future of SPFBO. This is the fourth book in this year’s competition I find extremely suspicious for being AI-generated. At least with the judging system, nothing as shitty as the “best” AI book should make it to the top.
Just a note: I’m not the reviewer (they’re not a member of BWGB, but are a member of our SPFBO review team), so this is my reply as team leader (and I do try to at least take a look at all the books, so have a read a small amount of this one).
There have been a disheartening number of entries this year with covers I suspect of being AI (or that have likely used it in some capacity–some much less obviously). However, there was a rather explosive and upsetting incident recently in which a number of SPFBO authors were accused of using AI in their covers, including many who had not. Although I have my own suspicions of a variety of covers, I don’t feel it’s appropriate in my capacity as a judge to speculate on people’s use of AI in their covers (normally, I would just quietly avoid and not review those books). Part of that is because some authors may be falsely accused, which is damaging to the reputations of both the authors and their human cover artists–I don’t want to be part of that.
I will say, RE the writing (and only commenting on the writing) in this one, I would be very surprised if AI had been used at the writing level.
In a personal capacity, I’m opposed to any and all AI use.