Book Report: King of Ashes

19. S. A. Cosby, King of Ashes (2025) (8/30/25)

This is the fourth book of Cosby's that I've read, and although it delivered in the dark-underbelly-of-criminal-activity realm—i.e., it's a decent thriller—I was really disappointed in the writing. The metaphors were laughable—so much so that I started keeping a running list. I know, most readers probably won't care about this, but every time one popped up I was thrown completely out of the story. Didn't Cosby have an editor? (Never mind a proofreader: the book is also riddled with sloppy errors.) Here is the list—which I started compiling only halfway through the book, so there are more examples:

The dusk-to-dawn security lights were just coming alive one by one like fireflies.
He plucked up his glass like it was a brittle rose.
Roman stared at the crowd over the roof of the car, breathing in the cool night like a locomotive.
Roman’s eyelids shot up like a pair of roller shades. . . . A gentle silence fell over them like a plush blanket.
In the distance he heard a train cutting through the dark like a scimitar.
Recognition bloomed in Roman’s mind like a moonflower unfurling its petals. Slowly at first, then as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.
That was the far horizon he had to focus on, even as bodies fell all around him like falling stars.
The window rolled down and a telephoto lens emerged like a viper from a hole in the ground.
He laughed. It was a bitter sound like the rattle of bones in a graveyard.
Wiz’s body dropped like a bag of wet laundry. . . . He fell face down, half in the freezer, half out, moaning like a wounded deer. . . . Eddie cut off his giggle like he’d shut off a water faucet. 
He was sealing the second bag and putting it in the urn when an epiphany hit him like a cinder block to the face.
Rain, quiet as a secret promise, began to fall. [Okay. This one isn't execrable.]
The scotch began to warm his body slowly, like the pilot light in an oven igniting a burner.
“She ran upstairs like a scalded dog” [says one character who throughout the book is either drunk or high on serious drugs, or both, and who certainly doesn't think in similes . . .]
Traffic zipped by him as he grabbed on to the steering wheel like it was a life preserver.
He had dived into a life of casual connections or professional companionship because the idea that he was worthy of love was a notion that was slipping through his fingers as the years flew by like sand sifting through a sieve. Bit by bit, grain of sand by grain of sand, it had waned from his soul.
As his hand gripped the weathered brass handle, his heart jumped up into his throat like a startled rabbit.
He didn’t feel angry, but resentment like hot steam from a kettle rose through his body from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head.
Neveah sat at the foot of her father’s hospital bed in a chair that was about as comfortable as she was at a formal dinner for the Jefferson Run Chamber of Commerce.
A discordance that ripped through the atmosphere like a bag of nails in a washing machine.
Her long hair draped down over her shoulders like a tidal wave of black water.
The full moon shown down [through the skylight] like a beacon from a distant ship. 
Roman fired up the Challenger and peeled out of the parking lot, roaring through the night like a rider on a steed that had never known defeat.
The last streetlight blinked out like a lantern being extinguished as shots rang out through the night.
They had met at Trout’s, then driven out here to the Skids in a caravan that sliced through the night like a dagger.
In between them were a couple of piles of trash and debris like small yurts.
Chauncey’s smile faded away like a ghost in the morning light.
Chauncey collapsed like a bag of laundry tossed on the floor.
Dishes broke and shattered and spilled across the floor like confetti.

Every single one of those similes could have been dispensed with—they added absolutely nothing. On the contrary: they're plain bad.

As for the plot and the main protagonist—as in Cosby's other books, we find the hero pulled into unspeakable acts all in the name of "family," and so far I've appreciated that conflictedness. Though this time part of me also wanted him to just say, "Screw it, brother, sister, dad, I'm getting you out of here"—and not descend into the depths of criminality at all. And the way the story ends? Really? I'd say it's completely unbelievable, but then, in sum, the entire story is.

And if Cosby hit us over the head one more time with an "ashes" metaphor (the protagonist is the son of a crematorium operator), well, I don't know what . . . Maybe I would have had to burn the book? It actually ends with the oft-repeated phrase (in case we didn't get it the first time), "Everything burns."

I've enjoyed Cosby before, but this will be the last one I read. My other reports can be found here, here and here, if you're interested. In one of them I call the writing "great," so I don't know if Cosby has just gotten lazy, if the editing has gotten lazy, or if I was simply overlooking all the laziness in the past, caught up in the story instead. But this time? This time I'm simply disappointed and, yes, burnt out.