Was fully prepared to give this book between a 3 and 3.5 but the ending blew my socks off 👀

This is my least favourite book of the main series so far. It truly started to grip me at the 70% mark. The plot in this book was pretty weak. I thought the series was going to soar after the end of the previous book, but this is not at all what I was expecting, most of the book felt like filler. God this breaks my heart honestly, I can be hyper critical of things but I really wish I didn't feel this way. 

This picks up after the end of Kingdom of Death and sees Hadrian returning to Imperial Society after his captivity. There were some nice story character development at the beginning with the Emperor, and some awesome lore reveals, but it still felt like nothing was happening.

Hadrian has been completely neutered, I'm not even talking about his powers, I mean completely. And it wasn't even done in an interesting way. Hadrian can't sword fight for shit anymore, he's no longer brave, he can't reach for his second sight anymore, the only power he has left is plot armour. So many times in the book was Hadrian put in positions he should have been killed or executed or maimed, but even without his powers to protect him, lady luck, or should I say plot armor, smiled upon him.

I don't know what was done to Valka, this strong, hard-headed, intelligent and daring woman was neutered in a completely different fashion. She became an example of the worst kinds of stereotypical depiction of women, she was overly emotional and always worried about Hadrian and grabbing his arm being near him, I understand she's been though her own crucible with the damage from the virus in her head, and she hadn't seen Hadrian in so long and he's suffered so much, so perhaps it's reasonable to say she's become more vulnerable, and that would have been great, if it didn't sacrifice her core character completely. God it annoyed me, it just wasn't Valka.

I loved Lorian and Bassanders character's in this! And a return of an old character too! The last 25% of this book was amazing, so much happened and so much so it has changed everything.
There was a moment at the end that really broke my heart and had me emotional, and Hadrian's change was so real and raw and powerful and I cannot wait to see how he evolves from here.

But I really wish Ruocchio made the useless parts of this book more useful, either expanding the world building, developing the characters or changing our perspective on something. Instead it felt like smoke, formless, pointless, a whole war was waged for a good chunk of this book and I cared about nobody at all and there felt like there was zero stakes, all of which was made worse and compounded by Hadrian's neutered state. I thought it was gonna pull a Spider-Man 2 and have him come back better than ever and we'd see more of the great man he'll soon be remembered for. There was one flicker of such a moment that lasted a couple of pages, and then he went back to being useless, this time understandably so given what happened.

If you've read the Lightbringer books by Brent Weeks, it became clear around the 3rd and 4fh books that something changed, the flow of the story changed, and it became obvious that the story originally planned was expanded to make more books, thus diluting the story and making it convoluted and full of plot holes.
I had the very same feeling reading Ashes of Man, this felt like a filler book, it felt directionless and like it was there just for exposition purposes with some awesome lore dumps at the beginning and some shocking events at the end, changing the direction of the story entirely.

Maybe my feelings towards this will soften with time, mellow, or mature, and I'll appreciate it more.
I'm just disappointed, and there's two side books to read now until I reach Disquiet Gods, book 7.
I hope it improves, I really do 🙏