William Ray reviewed Ajiwiak by D. P. Woolliscroft
Review of 'Ajiwiak' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Another great entry into Woolliscroft's Wildfire Cycle!
Kingshold had the peculiar effect of being way more interesting retrospectively than it was at the time. It was a fun fantasy adventure, but I found I liked it much more weeks after finishing it, as the ideas continued to percolate with me, and I think Woolliscroft's clever approach of weaving collections of short stories between the main entries in his series has dramatically broadened the fantasy world he offers. The short story collections majorly impacted my appreciation of the 'third' volume, and so if you've been skipping them to get to the meat of the action, I encourage you to go back and give them a read. While they're not strictly necessary to understand the plot, I think that Ajiwiak would have been a lot less exciting of a read without having perused all the interstitial material from those collections.
Ajiwiak continues …
Another great entry into Woolliscroft's Wildfire Cycle!
Kingshold had the peculiar effect of being way more interesting retrospectively than it was at the time. It was a fun fantasy adventure, but I found I liked it much more weeks after finishing it, as the ideas continued to percolate with me, and I think Woolliscroft's clever approach of weaving collections of short stories between the main entries in his series has dramatically broadened the fantasy world he offers. The short story collections majorly impacted my appreciation of the 'third' volume, and so if you've been skipping them to get to the meat of the action, I encourage you to go back and give them a read. While they're not strictly necessary to understand the plot, I think that Ajiwiak would have been a lot less exciting of a read without having perused all the interstitial material from those collections.
Ajiwiak continues the gradual ramping of tensions and breadth of conflict. While Kingshold was mostly about the one kingdom (and really mostly the one city within that one kingdom), and Ioth expanded to international and religious politics, in Ajiwiak things grow into spiritual and cosmological levels. The spiritual aspects parallel nicely with the themes of colonialism, particularly with split perspectives offered from both the locals and their invaders.
Ajiwiak was a magnetic story, pulling me back in with new questions and new twists. New magic, new monsters, and new layers built atop Woolliscroft's already inventive world.