The Light Of Kasaban by Thomas Howard Ridley

Blurb:

In the brutal desert city of Kasaban, the old gods have had their statues crushed to powder by invading Priests, with magick forbidden to anyone but themselves. Merely being born as one of the magi makes even infants into fugitives, and the Priests and their spies are always watching, ready to toss their enemies into the purifying flames of execution.

Saya Ani Anai is the last of her family, dedicating her life to being a teacher of magick for little orphaned children. From within her hidden home, she provides the closest thing to a normal life these children may ever know. They help each other like family, working for what they can and stealing the rest to scrape by, forced to live every day under the yoke of oppression.

When the warren-boss who keeps their domain a secret suddenly demands a higher price to keep his silence, they must race to find a way to meet the demand or they will lose their home and their lives. But for the poor living in Kasaban, simply surviving is anything but easy.

With the Priests and their magick-hunters scouring the city for magi to burn, and the catastrophes of daily life intervening to crush her plans at every turn, Saya must risk everything to save her home and keep the children safe. But Kasaban is unforgiving. Its fires rage bright. If she fails, all her hopes will burn.

Review:

Well, this is another review that is long overdue, especially since I received a physical copy of “The Light of Kasaban”, and with a long amount of time with minimal interruptions, I brought a Bluetooth keyboard onto a flight and have decided to hammer my thoughts about this book out after making some notes. Now, considering this is a book I read last year, I might have forgotten some minute details, like some character names, however that shouldn’t impact much. 

Where to start to explain this short but weighty novel? If I had to quickly convince someone to read this book, I’d give them this:

“Kasaban is a city with high demands, wanting more from everyone sans invaders, with a new God in play. So when too much is demanded, people snap.”,

alongside a question about whether they’d like more, which is where the rest of this review comes in.

To start this off, we have Saya Ani Anai, a magick user who wants to protect the children of the city who use also use magick from the inquisitors, who brutally and without a shred of mercy execute those who dare touch the light without their permission. In order to do so, she starts a hidden school/ward for them where they can be safeish from the Inquisition as long as they pay the appropiate rent, From her actions throughout the novel, she proves time and time again that she cares for the kids, and she is driven to make sure they prosper in a time of hardship. However, the warren-boss, the mob, wants to raise the rent on the land they are on. So she has to find new creative ways to gain enough to keep the place. What makes it even harder is that the new leadership of the city is after her group specifically, since they’ve been around longer than most, and a high officer of the inquisition takes interest in her. What her struggles throughout the book show is that she is creative enough and resourceful enough to survive in Kasaban as a magicka user. 

From there, we have the plot, the story within the book. Basically a city wide game cooked up in a fantasy set Saw movie and Saya Ani Anai and her wards are the victims. They have a somewhat normal life, and then the Warren boss starts demanding more money; which leads to drastic measures by her and the rest of the group. Shenanigans ensue and it ends even more depressing than some novels that I’ve read.

After that, there is the world building, and by extension to that, the magic system. In Kasaban, there used to be many gods. But ever since the Priests decided to make Kasaban an outpost of theirs in their evergrowing needs of conquest, the amount of gods worshipped in public dropped to one. And magic performances were only permitted to the Priests and their magic sniffer dogs (humans that are so poorly treated by the priests whose only goal in life is to find those who use magic without authorization from the priesthood). The magick used by Saya Ani Anai and her wards have varying degrees of usefulness to them, and the taint left behind by their usage of their abilities can be purged through quartz and other rocks. Which brings up more issues because one might not be able fully clean off their use of a spell… causing the trackers to pick up on them and then that could lead to death.

Finally, if there was something that I didn’t particularly like about “The Light of Kasaban” was that it was too short. If the book continued onwards for another 100 or so pages, I wouldn’t mind it.

So in conclusion, if you like magick, desert and some torture, this novel is for you.

As always, If you’ve made it this far into this long overdo review, and I hope I’ve helped add another book to the tbr pile. If not, don’t fret, for here is a random link to a review on the SFF Insiders site, for a book that could be in any kind of genre.

Wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night.