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Molten Flux

Molten Flux 4

Book One of the Flux Catastrophe

by Jonathan Weiss
Paperback
Publication Date: 17/06/2023
5/5 Rating 4 Reviews

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ISBN:
9780645773002
9780645773002
Category:
Fantasy
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
17-06-2023
Language:
English
Publisher:
Helixic Books
Country of origin:
Australia

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Reviews

4.75

Based on 4 reviews

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4 Reviews

I received an advance copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Molten Flux charts the exploits of Ryza and his fellow conscripts on board the floating fortress called Revance. They are tethered remotely by way of a lethal metal collar around their necks.
We are immersed in a future post-apocalyptic event world of tribal humans with specific enhanced capabilities. Molten Flux is the currency of power and control in a very literal sense as the conscripts of Revance travel the droughtlands …… a barren, water deprived, inhospitable landscape of sand, sand and more sand. A power struggle plays out to wrest control of Molten Flux liquid that once injected into a victim's spinal column gives complete control of what is now a re-animated corpse called an Automind.

From the outset our main protagonist Ryza is climbing his way out of a desperate situation and it very much continues at a cracking pace from there as he continues to “climb” into and out of increasingly dangerous, reckless, heroic endeavours that his personal backstory compels him to launch into. He does manage to find connection and romance however, after a series of near-death experiences.

We can interpret this story on different levels of suggestion and possibilities for the future of mankind and our planet. For me it is a fine mix of adaptation (magic), evolutionary force, barbarism, addiction and finally redemption with a lot of sand! On a basic level it is simply a rollicking good yarn however the familiarity of how the characters of this dystopian future world interact is both comforting and highly disturbing. The sands of time may have smothered previous civilisations but the war within us rages on.

For the potential reader that feels they are simply part of a big machine with increasingly limited personal agency, freedoms and the ability to think and experience a fully sentient life you may have some affinity and sympathies with the Autominds, big business would love them.

The character development may, on first blush, appear to be slightly overshadowed by the bold imagination and overall concept of the richly descriptive, evocative droughtlands world and it took me sometime to understand concepts of axioms, runes, pure resonance, smelters, arcanites etc but forgive me I am an older reader! Understanding them was definitely worth the effort though and as I travelled the droughtlands with Ryza the concepts become highly believable and the characters reveal themselves.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Molten Flux Arc and look forward to further adventures in the disturbing but additive concept of the droughtlands. Did I mention there’s a lot of sand!

Recommended
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Contains Spoilers: Keep Reading?

*I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

[SPOILER FREE REVIEW]

Molten Flux is an exceptional debut novel by Jonathan Weiss; an action-packed thriller that will leave your ears ringing and a metallic taste in your mouth at each turn of the page. As a coming of age story, memorable for its exhilarating action scenes and multi-layered plot, it’s suitable for young readers looking for a contemporary take on adored sci fi/fantasy classics such as Howl's Moving Castle or Dune.
Weiss’ strength lies in the immersive battleground scenes, whether it be skirmishes with Smelters amongst the ruins of old cities, heated one-on-ones with comrades in the magic-infused time-warp that is the undercity, or a full blown battle of foot soldiers against the giant floating fortress, his skill in writing action shines. Each sequence of moves are masterfully crafted, making for gripping and skin crawling fight scenes any strategy enthusiast will froth over.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Gore, violence, non-consensual body modification, upper limb amputation with magic fix, slavery themes.

[REVIEW WITH SPOILERS]
At its essence, Molten Flux is a story about choices, control and autonomy. Ryza did not get to choose being born as a Kretatic and he did not get to choose whether he took on his father’s business as a molten flux trader, a Smelter. His first autonomous choice was to leave his life under his father’s watch, and every other decision afterwards is driven by the belief that he had no other choice to do the evil he did under his father.
In the early pages, Ryza differentiates himself from other Kretatics who are assumed to easily fall into the Smelter profession by priming himself as a capable Smelter marksman. His attempt to defy the Smelter stereotype and make up for his wrong doings still has the Kretatic-specific slur ‘metal-mouth’ hurled at him, usually by Ditric, a member of his squad. Whichever way he looks, Ryza is a source of suspicion - for his metal-bending abilities, his likelihood of becoming a Smelter, his uncanny ability to survive collar-death and whether he has the good of others in his heart. It’s in taking the life of an innocent by injecting molten flux into their still pumping veins, he succumbs to that self-fulfilling prophecy of once again creating an automind. Though he is wracked with guilt by repeating his mistakes, and haunted by the blood on his hands, he continues to justify his decisions with his naive idea that there is no other way.
Readers, like Origin, the small puppy-like arcanite that follows Ryza around, must silently judge Ryza succumb to his old ways of making autominds. Drawn to the exhilaration of letting loose, his addiction to power sits nicely as an allegory for the cycle of substance abuse, but there are also hints of the cycle of emotional abuse through Ryza’s flashbacks to his childhood under his father’s watch. What his father did to Ryza’s mother, and so carelessly does to create more autominds for profit obviously haunts Ryza but his father’s impact on his psyche is more like a wise-worded spectre subject to a rebellious child’s revulsion than psychological warfare. We are left to watch Ryza run away from a life he did not choose, only to get wrapped up in another life he did not choose.
Underneath his bravado, Ryza is in a vulnerable state, having not yet the chance to create a sense of self separate to his father’s or Revance’s control. It’s Ryza willingly welcoming life as practically an indentured slave on Revance that speaks to his position within the cycle of abuse. He thinks that he has no choice, that killing Smelters is his chance for retribution and relishes the opportunity to dispense the violence that he believes has always been in him. It’s his continual denial of alternate courses of action that pushes him along a no redemption arc of suffering.
The concepts of autonomy and control emerge also in the societal values perpetuated on Revance, on which two of the most compelling examples of the denial of bodily autonomy occur. The first is, obviously, the installation of the life-threatening collar around Ryza’s neck. Upon waking up from what Ryza thought was death by sandstorm, he is informed that he has been conscripted as a soldier on board Revance and that he must not stray from its metallic body for more than 12 hours or risk a gruesome death inflicted by the collar. This plot device is particularly chilling when readers learn that most other collar-wearing conscripts on board are there by their own volition.
The second chilling point of bodily autonomy denial is when Ryza’s arm from his elbow down is cut off. Ryza again wakes up in the Revance infirmary this time with a plate installed against his elbow. Ryza has all of a few minutes of life as an upper arm amputee before he is magically fixed with a metal arm prosthetic. Later, he discovers that Holm, a sketchy Locust member and surprising love interest (in the flavour of enemies-to-lovers), has imbued her resonance into the metal plate against Ryza’s elbow.
In doing this, Holm will always be able to find Ryza. But there are serious issues of consent over Holm imbuing her resonance in a piece of metal literally inside (or attached to) Ryza. It’s incredibly invasive and speaks to Ryza’s concern that he doesn’t know whether Holm is someone who is manipulating him or being manipulated. This is where the issues around autonomy links with the cycle of abuse Ryza is incapable of breaking. The reveal that Holm was actually flirtatious seems like once again a manipulation on her part, gaslighting Ryza into thinking he’d misinterpreted her body language over the course of the novel and priming him to accept her advances. I’m not entirely convinced that Ryza’s susceptibility to abusive behaviour was intentional, but under this lens it does make for a harrowing end to know that despite Ryza’s triumph against Tyrag, no matter where Ryza is, Holm will always be able to find him. An abuser’s dream… We can only hope Holm likes who Ryza has become, or rather, who he has always been.

Recommended
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I received this book for free from the author and agreed to provide an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I really enjoyed reading Molten Flux. The story was unpredictable, and full of fast paced action, set in a well crafted and richly imagined dystopian world. Ryza is a likeable reluctant hero trying to stay alive and make the right decisions in a complex environment, not knowing who might be a friend or enemy.

I had to stop myself from racing through the book to find out what happens next.

Recommended
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