REVIEW: Empress of Dust – The Bastion Cycle Book 1 – Alex Kingsley

Amazon Link: amazon

There are monsters outside the city walls.

Harvard is small, anxious, and plagued by a constant tremor, which is not an ideal combination for a desert scavenger. He and his crew are under constant threat of desertwalker attacks, and Harvard is nearly useless against them.

When the biggest mistake of Harvard’s life separates him from his crew, he must learn the secrets of the desert beasts in order to survive the dangers of the dusts. Returning to Bastion with a surprising ally, Harvard is forced to choose between saving his crew or allying with the “monsters” who rescued him.

Harvard never saw himself as a hero, but when the beasts of the dusts implore him to aid their rescue mission, he holds the lives of crabs and humans alike in his trembling hands.

Empress of Dust takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have been mostly confined to one last standing city – Bastion. Small groups of unlucky young adults are tasked with heading out into the deserted lands to scavenge for what’s left from past times. This story follows a group of 4, the Ivies, who we meet more in-depth through a series of flashbacks. Along the way they get separated and meet many other nefarious beings out in the dust. They are almost constantly in danger.

I fall soundly into a category of readers that prefer character-driven books. I absolutely loved the Ivies: Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia. The characters are mostly well developed – I think I would have liked more detail in Yale’s case though. Their relationships are also very well elaborated, which leads to many actual chuckles and tears. I loved learning tidbits of information about the Ivies’ past lives through the shifting points of view and flashbacks. I could not put this book down.

You can see that there’s a reason that I am not a writer, but I am an avid reader and wow did this book check every last box for me. I look forward to the rest of the series!