Ascendant by Michael R. Miller [SPFBO]

The Blurb:

Holt Cook was never meant to be a dragon rider. He has always served the Order Hall of the Crag dutifully, keeping their kitchen pots clean.

Until he discovers a dark secret: dragons do not tolerate weakness among their kin, killing the young they deem flawed. Moved by pity, Holt defies the Order, rescues a doomed egg and vows to protect the blind dragon within.

But the Scourge is rising. Undead hordes roam the land, spreading the blight and leaving destruction in their wake. The dragon riders are being slaughtered and betrayal lurks in the shadows.

Holt has one chance to survive. He must cultivate the mysterious power of his dragon’s magical core. A unique energy which may tip the balance in the battles to come, and prove to the world that a servant is worthy after all.

Devin’s Review

Note: Unfortunately, this is a cut.

Before we get started I’m going to address the proverbial elephant (or dragon?) in the room here. I was surprised to find this book in my SPFBO batch because this book is… kinda not actually self published. It was published by Monolith Books, an imprint of Portal Books, a digital publishing house that specialises in LITRPG. The loophole here, I guess, is that as one of the co-founders of Portal Books, Michael R. Miller is publishing himself… for a given value of publishing himself. Whether that’s the same as self-publishing I’m not going to venture an opinion on, but having gotten that out of the way, I shall now talk about the actual book.

So! Dragons! Farm—I mean pot boys! Elemental magic and a plague of inhuman baddies from which our pot boy has to save everyone! Grumpy mentor character. Tense class-based relationship between our MC and the main female character as she learns to accept he is kinda neat despite being low born (Garion and Ce’Nedra anyone?) I could go on. This book hits pretty much every ye olde traditional fantasy trope there is, and if that’s what you’re in the mood for, it’s not at all a bad thing. Tropes are popular for a reason and for the most part I don’t find my enjoyment of a book impaired when authors lean into them. There is a lot of lean-in here mind you—you could probably mark 90% of the plot on a checklist of traditional fantasy tropes, so if you’re looking for something new and different this isn’t the book for you. If you’re looking for a nostalgic (and less problematic!) romp through the sort of book you read in your teens then read on!

Despite its length, Ascendant is a light and easy read (and there’s a really good audiobook!) with a plot that, for the most part, ticks along nicely. There are, however, a few extended patches of explanation that slowed everything down, some repetition to be sure you ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY KNOW THIS IMPORTANT FACT, and a lot of slowly journeying from point A to point B to allow our dragon time to grow up and our pot boy time to learn all the many things he, and us, need to know. Dragons aside, it continued to remind me of The Belgariad in that way, from the slow journey and learning process right down to the traitor character.

In some ways this is quite a difficult book to review because there is value in comfort reads that walk well-worn paths and characters that fit perfectly into their archetypes with little additional depth, and I don’t want to suggest otherwise, but at the same time books that do so don’t tend to blow one away and that about sums up how I feel about Ascendant. While it does nothing wrong and is an enjoyable read, it is vanilla in a market that’s full of salted caramel swirl and orange choc chip. Of the things that usually elevate a book (let’s call them the chocolate sauce or sprinkles that make the vanilla ice cream more interesting… are we sick of my ice cream metaphor yet?) there is little here. The characters, as I said, are fantasy archetypes—the pot boy, the grumpy but caring mentor, the princess who looks down on our pot boy now but is totally going to fall in love with him at some point—and none of them deepen from this into anything more nuanced I could latch on to and care about. I didn’t dislike any of them, but I didn’t love them either. They were just there. The prose is serviceable but neither eloquent nor poetic, there’s little narrative voice, and the world-building exists only when it serves the plot.

Actually, I’ll take a moment to comment on the world building, because I admit I had numerous fridge-logic moments where I’d be totally immersed in what was happening only to walk away and think “hey wait, how would that even work?” A good example is the naming system. Holt’s last name is “Cook” and he’s a cook. The fishmonger is Mr Monger. The blacksmith is Mr Smith. You get the point. While this how we got names like Cooper, Thatcher, Fletcher etc in our world, the text seems to suggest that they aren’t called that because it’s their job but it’s their job because they’re called that, like your name predestines you to a particular profession (and why it’s not ok for Holt to want to be a dragon rider), and I went down quite a rabbit hole wondering what would happen if the blacksmith didn’t have a son, or if he had eight of them and suddenly the town was overwhelmed with blacksmiths, and what happens to the daughters? Actually apart from the princess-probably-future-love-interest, there aren’t really any women so who knows.

All in all, Ascendant is an enjoyable book and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a classic fantasy adventure with a pot boy possessing magical hidden depths. And dragons. Unfortunately for the purposes of SPFBO, this book is a cut. Highly competent, but there are other books in our batch with more chunks of caramel and sprinkles and choc chips. Damnit, now I want some ice cream.

To check out our other SPFBO 7 reviews and keep up to date on which books are still in the running, check out our SPFBO 7 Hub page here.