An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Ember in the Ashes #1

Two years ago I attended BookCon in NYC and I’m so excited to be going back for the booksellers part, BookExpo, in just two short weeks! When I attended back in 2015, I attended a panel on which Marie Lu, Renee Ahdieh and Sabaa Tahir discussed the need for diverse books and I decided there and then that I needed to read at least one book by each of them. An Ember in the Ashes was the first I purchased, but the last I read, because for some reason, I couldn’t get into reading it, but, the audiobook really changed my impression of Sabaa Tahir’s storytelling.

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Synopsis

Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.

It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.

But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.

There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier – and secretly, it’s most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined – and that their choice will change the fate of the Empire itself.

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Review

At the bookstore, I’ve become sort of the go-to YA fantasy expert, but I haven’t had the heart to tell all of my little “book-groupies” (as my coworkers call them) that my heart hasn’t really been in the genre lately and that half the recommendations I’ve been giving them are books that I haven’t actually read yet. An Ember in the Ashes was one of those books – one I had heard very good things about, but had not actually managed to read.

And to be honest, it took me three tries before I really found myself enthralled by the story. The first to times were “traditional” reading attempts, and thankfully, I still persisted after those two failed and I checked the audiobook out of my local library and, thankfully, was instantly hooked. So this review is equal parts story review and audiobook reader review.

As a story, Sabaa Tahir weaves together two characters from completely different worlds, making their paths cross occasionally, but without unnecessarily intersecting – a real challenge of writing in multiple perspectives. Laia and Elias’ stories join at important plot points, but without complicating the timeline or narrative. Both are strong narrators on their own which means that while one character is narrating, the reader/listener is fully immersed in that part of the story, not anxiously reading through to get to the other narrator, as is wont to happen in some multiple perspective plots. The two readers also do an exceptional job of conveying the urgency and emotion felt by both Laia and Elias in their individual and joint circumstances.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

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