AN EMBER IN THE ASHES by Sabaa Tahir (Review)

(I did round up. After the first read, I'd give it 4.5 stars, but I was feeling generous.)

STATUS: Initially planned as a stand-alone, but recently plans for a sequel have been announced.

AUTHOR: Sabaa Tahir

GENRE: Young Adult / Fantasy / Ancient History (?) / Dystopia / School Story

PUBLISHER: Penguin

LOVE TRIANGLE: Yes -- or, more accurately, two love triangles which kind of form a love square. 

PAGES: 464

From Public Radio International:

"An Ember in the Ashes could launch Sabaa Tahir into JK Rowling territory…It has the addictive quality of The Hunger Games combined with the fantasy of Harry Potter and the brutality of Game of Thrones."

From MTV.com

“A setting inspired by ancient Rome; a fierce battle for freedom in the face of tyranny; and a villain who makes Cersei Lannister and Dolores Umbridge look like a pair of pathetic amateurs...An Ember in the Ashes is at the top of our must-read list for 2015."

There was a lot of hype around this book – a lot. I kept seeing advertisements for it on social media sites and I knew several people who had read it before I had a chance to pick up a copy at Barnes & Noble. Which is proof enough that I was trusting the hype, because I only buy a physical copy of a book if I’m fairly sure I’m going to like it. But, as with most uber-hyped things, I also get a little skeptical: can a book really be that good, I ask myself?

The answer, in Sabaa Tahir’s case, would seem to be “yes.” I think my rating is more like 4.5/5 – but I had a lot going on and was sometimes forced to put it down, so maybe that’s a bit unfair, so I’m rounding up.

Plot Premise: The novel is clearly set in a fantasy world – whether it’s “ancient” is a little less clear, but not important to the overall plot, just if you’re interested in that from a world-building perspective. Regardless, Tahir’s world is one where jinn, efrits, and wights exist – or did, long ago. The basic premise of the novel is that the race of [human] Scholars rose to power, and since power corrupts (and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the saying goes) were not to be satisfied until they had unlocked the secrets of the jinn. The plan backfired, and the Scholar Empire fell, with the Martial Empire rising in its place. Now, the Scholars are enslaved, and…well, I don’t really know much of what goes on outside, in the larger world of the novel, since Tahir keeps a tight focus. There’s a split narration: we hear the story from two perpsectives: Laia, a Scholar slave and Elias a student at the martial academy (Blackcliff). There is an Emperor, but I’m not exactly sure what he’s in charge of, aside from the obvious “the empire.”

The novel as a whole seems a lot more character driven than focused on plot – as evidenced from the lack of details outside the narrative arena.

Laia, for instance, is a strong, resilient, determined female character (YAY), motivated by her fear for and her desire to save her brother, Darrin, who has been captured and imprisoned for[possible] treasonous actions. Laia has a rich family backstory, involving The Resistance (because there’s always a corrupt government and a rebellious faction in YA novels these days) – and she eventually starts spying for them, working in the house of The Commandant, the head of Blackcliff and also Elias’s mother. I love the element of complexity that her “fear” brings to her character: it’s very realistic, in a way that some “pure badass” heroines sometimes aren’t . (No one can have that much courage and bravery!)

Elias is an interesting male character, and I like that he doesn’t adhere to strictly defined gender roles. Yes, he’s the best fighter in the school, but he also has a “softer” side – he also has a rich backstory, and he’s haunted and disturbed by the martial regime of which he is a part. He seems to have a strong moral compass and can’t seem to understand why other people don’t see the pervasive horror in his world.

Much of the novel centers on Laia and Elias’s parallel character arcs and journeys as they each work to find their own freedom – and, admittedly, each other. While I liked and appreciated how their paths overlapped just enough to be believable (there weren’t really any overwhelming coincidences or forced contrivances), I could have done with a little less romance and mooning around. I know it's a YA novel, but not every YA novel has to have a love triangle. Or square, considering we have four major players in our romance game. If I was going to give this book a 4.5, it’d be because I felt like it ran a bit long – that there was a bit too much of midnight meetings, clandestine escapades, and romance angst. However, I will freely admit that during those chapters I was reading only a few pages a night, so it may have seemed longer than it actually was – like how in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows it feels like Harry, Ron, and Hermione are spending forever traipsing around the woods, bickering, and looking for Horcruxes. But when you go back and re-read it, it’s actually not that much space.

But. Here’s the thing that I liked the most about this book. It’s been compared to Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Games of Thrones, which is a bold claim to make – and I don’t usually like those comparisons since they’re (1) limiting (they usually only make comparisons to BIG series, and sometimes the comparisons are forced) and (2) unfair (it’s nice to say something is like Harry Potter because Harry Potter was awesome, but I don’t want to read another Harry Potter).  And I don’t even really see the Harry Potter comparison here – the two are wildly different.

If anything, I would say that the Hunger Games and the Game of Thrones comparisons are apt. But again, here’s the thing: when I read The Hunger Games (and I came a little late to the party, not reading it until all three books had been published) I was never really worried about Katniss. Maybe it was the first person narration or maybe it was the fact that I knew there were three books about her but…at the end of The Hunger Games, when it was just Katniss and Peeta left standing, I was not surprised or ever in doubt that that would be the end result. But that assurance, that security, was missing in this book – and it was wonderful. Since the story was told through a dual narration, it was entirely possible that either Laia or Elias wouldn’t make it – because the other narrator would just pick up. And there were moments when it was pretty touch-and-go—when I wasn’t sure if one was alive or dead. (And the great thing about the dual narration is that, with a “is-he-dead” cliffhanger at the end of the chapter, you have to wait two chapters to find out.) And Sabaa Tahir isn’t afraid to get rid of some characters.

Which brings me to another unique part of this book: I’m not 100% sure I’d classify it as YA or, if I did, it would definitely be on the upper end of the YA spectrum. As in, even though I believe readers should self-censor, I’m not sure how I’d feel about a tween “reading up” with this book. There’s a lot going on – and Tahir isn’t one to sugar-coat or soften things. This is a world which is caught in a brutal cycle of martial law, and that brings a lot of violence and cruelty with it. There’s murder, physical abuse, threats of rape and sexual power struggles – and while Tahir isn’t explicit, it’s powerful nonetheless.

This cruelty is essentially encapsulated in the leaders of the book – Mazen (on the Resistance side) and Marcus and The Commandant (on the Martial side). And I have to say, The Commandant, as a character, is a powerful, sadistic, corrupt figurehead who is evil incarnate. As in, pure evil, no doubt about it. No misunderstood character, no tragic backstory, no qualifications – just evil. I’ve read a few reviews which view this as a fault with the novel – that she’s a flat character in a relatively nuanced and complex world. But I don’t think that’s accurate – she has a little bit of a reason for being the way she is, since her father refuses to view her as a legitimate heir since she’s a woman, but is it enough to excuse her behavior? But even if it is accurate, I think that, in an age of having misunderstood villains and Byronic heroes, it’s kind of refreshing to have a purely evil villain. One of the things I disagreed with about the Maleficent movie is that, in the animated movie, Maleficent was a purely evil bad-ass who got insanely angry over things like not getting an invitation to a Christening. And I kinda feel like that’s who The Commandant is – a strong woman, trying to make it in a man’s world, who hasn’t gotten the respect or attention she craves and just….went dark. She does some unspeakably atrocious things, with no remorse or guilt, and that just makes for a villain you love to hate.

I haven’t really talked about the plot or action, because I’m not sure how to do so simply and concisely – I’d rather just encourage you to read the novel yourself! A lot of the complaints stemmed from the fact that it was originally hyped as a stand-alone novel, but Penguin has since announced plans for a sequel, and I knew that going in. I can imagine being frustrated if I had read it immediately after its release, since while loose ends are tied up, there are still quite a few unanswered questions. Which will, I assume, be answered/addressed in the sequel. So that’s not an issue for me and I can happily await the sequel.