REVIEW: Ghosts and Ashes by F. T. Lukens (March 9, 2017); 258 pages. Available from Interlude Press here.
Ghosts and Ashes is the second book in the Broken Moon series, and continues the story of Ren and Asher from the first book (The Star Host). Quick rundown: Ren is a “star host”, which essentially means he’s got powers beyond normal, but he’s sometimes at the behest of the star that occupies him and gives him those powers. (There are many different kinds of powers that people can have this way, but Ren has the ability to control and manipulate any kind of computer-based technology; he can make taser guns fall apart in the hands of their users, for instance.) Asher is a member of the Phoenix corps, a military organization which seems to be an arm of the repressive regime currently sweeping the universe. (They seem, also, to have implanted the current US with a very orange representative, too, somehow.)
In The Star Host, Ren and Asher had fallen in love, but now, in Ghosts and Ashes, they’ve fallen apart and there’s a chilly-but-desire-laden, mournful, tenuous relationship left in shreds. Ren and Asher, along with a crew of rebels aboard the Star Stream space ship, try to unravel the despotism and help Ren flee the Phoenix corps that wants to snag him for his powers.
The plot weaves nicely between the tense interpersonal relationships and the grander universal problems, between character-driven moments and action, in good balance. This isn’t speculative fiction that relies on gadgets and strangeness for its effects—certainly the gadgets and strangeness are there (I think particularly of a visit to an Earth-like overpopulated, stinking world in which everyone must live ass-to-elbow underground to avoid pollution), but they aren’t the point, and the story achieves its magnetism through good character development and plot-plotting, not through strangeness.
Readers who liked the first book will be happy to get more; those who are new to the Broken Moon series can start here without having read the first book (it does stand alone), but will enjoy it a lot more by reading The Star Host first. There’s a third and final book coming in this series, but it looks like we’ll have to wait for that one, since books don’t just pop up into existence at our demand (gosh, I wish they did).
Alysia Constantine 