Book Review : An Ember In The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Official Book Synopsis :

Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.

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, its 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 choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

Review(no spoilers):

As you can already tell in this novel we follow two main protagonists,Laia and Elias. Both feel traped. Laia is used by the rebels as a spy in order to save her brother who was arrested. Elias is ready to leave the Empire and be free until The Trials are announced and decides that it is better to stay.Will they finally get their freedom?Read the book to find out.

I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars. I really enjoyed it. I basically finished it in 2 days! The story and the main characters are so well written!Sabaa Tahir's writting skills are truly amazing. I could not put this book down. It has become one of my favorite book series and I recommend it to everyone,hands down!

[SPOILERS AHEAD!]

Okay,so now I am gonna move into more details so if you don't wanna get spoiled leave!

Let's talk about the characters.

First of all Laia. I loved her so much, I can easily say that she is my favorite character in the series. Although she does not know how to fight, she is really strong mentally. Everything that she went through in the first book were really awful and harsh. Being tortured by Keris Veturia is really painful. Yet she never gave up in order to save her brother, she even managed to escape Keris and save Elias. I believe she is one of the strongest charactes in the series.

Then there is Elias. Elias is not like the rest of the Masks, he does not even want to be one and so he always takes of his Mask when he is alone. He is one of the most caring characters and he always defends other people no matter their status (for example the slaves when everyone treats them like rubbish). Elias only wants his freedom, he desires to leave the Empire which is the reason why he did not leave and he took place in the Trials.

Now let's talk about Helene. I actually do not have much to say about her cause I did not really like her in this book. It looked like she was always doing everything to make Elias like her. She does not do the right thing because it IS the right thing but because she does not want Elias to be angry at her. For example, when Laia was dying she did not want to heal her with her powers because she believed that ''she is just a slave''.

I really liked Izzi but I always felt that something bad was going to happen to her cause she is so innocent, but likely it didn't.

I have mixed feelings about Keenan though. I did not like him at the beggining and then when I started to like him because he was being kind to Laia, I felt like he was doing everything to win her over and make her trust him. But I don't know.

Now let's talk about the story.

This book grabbed me right from the start when things started to go down, like when Laia's brother was arrested and Elias was ready to leave The Empire. I already knew that it was not gonna be easy for Elias to leave, which turned out to be true.

When the first trial began I was like ''hmm okay'', same thing about the second one. But when the third one started the whole time I was like ''No, this is definitely not true they are all alive''. BUT THE WERE NOT. IT WAS T R U E , which made me really sad. I knew it was going to hunt Elias for the rest of his life. As for the forth one, when Laia ''died'' I already knew it could not be true.

Elias was about to get executed when Laia appeared and saved the day! I really loved that scene, among with all the other scenes that were about Laia and Elias like the one at the festival or the one in his room. As you can tell, I ship them really hard.

In the end we see that Marcus becomes the Emperor which is not good at all. I kind of expected that, especially when Elias denyed to kill Laia. Helene is now the Blood Shrike and I am really scared that Marcus will make her do really nasty things.

Sooooo there are all my thoughts about this amazing novel! I hope you liked my review and I will be doing another one soon about A Torch Against The Night. Goodbye!

Written by : Anna