(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.
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.
