From The Ashes is one of the handful of paperlegends I've managed to read so far and it was highly enjoyable. For one thing, the art for it is, hands down, THE most gorgeous I've seen in possibly the whole Merlin fandom thus far? EVER? Yeah. But also, the fic is great. Warning: MAJOR character death, but it's got a happy ending. It surprised me, because it was chock full of cliches that normally go reeeeeaaally wrong, including (but not limited to!) Morgana never having been evols, Arthur very quickly being okay with Merlin being magic, soul bonding (looooove soulbond fic, blame Snarry if you must but it's such a pleasure when done right, which I feel it was here), resorting to the Druids for help, Uther being fairly ineffectual, Arthur getting Merlin's magic, etc etc etc. But worry not! IT WAS ALL REALLY GOOD. But the best part was that it, shockingly, portrayed the process of mourning in a really solid way. Arthur's emotions were never heavy-handed but they were all quite... true feeling, and they were unpredictable enough to keep me interested.
There were some bits I didn't care for, namely the author's repeated use of the epithet "the smaller man" to refer to Merlin (protip: Merlin is TALLER, aaaargh, and even if Arthur is heavier and bulkier with deft writing one can write two men in the same scene together without confusion or overuse of names) and the lack of denouement. HOWEVER, I thought that the interesting plot progression and structure (starting with Merlin's death is... not your average romance fic) and the non-standard concentration on aspects of the story and characters that normally would be dealt with only partially, with excellent worldbuilding notes and insights, absolutely made up for any mistakes.
GO READ IT OKAY
