Born of Ash Books in Order

Born of Ash is Marc Alan Edelheit in science fiction mode, but it carries over a lot of the things his fantasy readers already like: broken worlds, military pressure, old loyalties, and characters forced to keep moving when the odds say they should quit. The series opens after catastrophe. The First Galactic Empire has fallen, whole systems have been wrecked, and what should have been liberation has turned into scarcity, fear, and smaller brutal powers trying to survive the wreckage.

At the center is Keira Kane. She grows up on Asherho, a ruined world whose climate and infrastructure are both failing after the war. She is not a chosen ruler or a fleet commander. She is a mechanic and technician, raised and protected by former Imperial Marines, and that grounded start helps the series work. Keira understands broken systems because she lives inside one. She knows how machines fail, how people hold on, and how thin the line can be between order and collapse.

Then the story widens.

In Fallen Empire, Keira is trying to stay alive under a harsh regime. By Infinity Control, she is hunted, rescued, and thrown aboard the hidden imperial starship Seringapatam, where her strange ability to interact with ancient machinery starts to matter in ways she cannot explain. By Phoenix Rising, the trilogy leans fully into buried technology, larger galactic stakes, and the question of whether power from the past can save humanity or finish destroying it.

The feel here is part post collapse survival story, part military science fiction, part mystery about old machines and older plans. Edelheit likes command structure and pressure, so even when the focus is personal, the books keep one eye on the bigger war and the systems that shape it. Keira is important, but she is never floating free from the world around her.

It is a tight trilogy with a clear through line.

If you want battered planets, hidden ships, Imperial leftovers, and a protagonist who has to grow into her role while the galaxy burns around her, this is a solid place to start with Edelheit's sci-fi.