The Carnival of Ash

Starred review from November 22, 2021
YA author Beckerlegge (the Darkside series, written as Tom Becker) jumps wholeheartedly into adult fantasy with this gorgeous, immersive triumph of Renaissance-flavored worldbuilding. Cadenza, the once flourishing City of Words, governed by poets and home to Italy’s rarest libraries, is in chaos after the sudden death of Artifex Tommaso Cellini and the appointment of an influential bureaucrat rather than the traditional master poet to his role. Beckerlegge structures the novel as a dozen cantos, each taking a different perspective on the city: a hopeful poet returns after his family’s politically driven departure two decades earlier; an ink maid writes bespoke letters indulging her patrons’ sexual fantasies; a pair of poets quarreling over a woman duel through mutually insulting poems; a scholar seeks to read hidden books of the dark arts; and an ink-induced plague spreads through the Printing Quarter. The tale becomes a finely woven tapestry as characters appear in one another’s stories, and readers are fully submerged in Cadenza’s social structures by the time the city’s inevitable fall comes. The plot is dark, punctuated by murder and occasional gore, but the opulence of 16th-century Italy shines through in descriptions of the poet-nobles’ salons and high society gatherings, making for a palpable sense of loss in the city’s demise. The result is sure to linger in readers’ minds. Agent: Sam Copeland, Rogers, Coleridge & White Literary.