A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance Three Stars (out of five) Elias is an elite Martial soldier who wants to escape his destiny, Laia a naïve Scholar slave who wants to rescue her brother. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon realize that they are both embers in the ashes, waiting to burst into flame and transform their world. And that world could stand some improvement. Five hundred years ago the Martial Empire conquered the Scholar Empire and has ever since brutally oppressed the Scholars, enslaving them and crushing their culture thanks to their superior weapons and ruthless Masks, elite soldiers who, after having martial skills trained in to them and humanity trained out, don silver masks that permanently bond with their faces. And "mythical fey"--ghuls, jinn, ghosts, efrits, wraiths, and wights--are suddenly active. Perhaps the most interesting device of Sabaa Tahir's Young Adult epic fantasy novel An Ember in the Ashes (2015) is its alternation between chapters narrated by two young members of the rival cultures, 17-year-old Laia and 20-year-old Elias. Some time ago Laia's Resistance-leader parents were betrayed and killed, and in the beginning of the novel her house is raided by Martial soldiers, her grandparents butchered, and her older brother Darin arrested, forcing her to contact the Resistance to make a deal to rescue her brother. Elias is the bastard scion of a powerful Martial family and is the best trainee of Blackcliff Military Academy, but he yearns to be free from the brutality and violence of his apparent destiny and has been plotting to escape it on the eve of his and graduation to the ranks of the Masks. Although he doesn't know his father, he sure knows his mother, the sadistic Blackcliff Commandant. Far from showing any favoritism for her son, she hates him and tries to get him killed. When the Resistance leader makes Laia become a slave to spy on the Commandant in return for promising to spring her brother from prison and the Martial Augurs (a council of immortals with prophetic, telepathic, and other powers) announce that it's time to choose a new emperor via the series of physical and mental tests known as the Trials, and that Elias will be one of the four Aspirants, Tahir's novel becomes page-turning. In addition to the first person, present tense narration, Tahir's novel shares many traits with the current crop of popular young adult fantasy and sf novels:
But her book feels rather fresh because of the notion that the Scholar Empire was not completely beneficent (their pursuit of knowledge and power by exploiting jinn led to their downfall), the fact that the Masks are abused as well as abusing, the possibility that Laia's mother was not a great Resistance leader, the suspicion that Elias' mother has a legitimate beef against his father (and grandfather), and the devastating and unglorified violence throughout: floggings, mutilations, executions, murders, death matches, near-rapes, etc., mostly directed at powerless victims or friends. Also, Tahir writes more main characters of color than usual YA fantasy books: Elias' skin is "golden brown," Laia's "warm honey." Although the dual narration is promising, however, Tahir doesn't differentiate Laia and Elias' voices enough. The style with which she writes both their story strands is nearly identical, down to their misusing "lay" (e.g., Laia: "I lay uselessly, unsure of what to do, when the Augur decides for me." And Elias: "a vast body of water lays shimmering like a mirage."). At times during the climax when the chapters become quite short I sometimes forgot for a moment if I was reading Elias or Laia. And sometimes Elias says things that I can't picture a rather humble young man saying, like revealing that he's "broad-shouldered and well over six feet" and "the best student Blackcliff has seen in two decades" or that I can't imagine a 20-year-old soldier trained only in the arts of war saying, like noting that Laia's "high-necked dress . . . clings to her body in ways I find painfully unfair." More flaws. I don't get why many names from our world (Marcus, Helene, Cain, etc.) appear in a fantasy world with no connection to ours alongside exotic names (Sana, Teluman, etc.). And I suspect that after 500 years a conquered culture would be more assimilated into the conquering culture. The Roman Empire, which inspires Tahir's Martial Empire, was quick to assimilate new peoples. And the climax is, if pleasing, rather unbelievable. But I do like the themes about violence, guilt, knowledge, destiny, and freedom, and I am curious to find out what happens to Elias and Laia and their world, which presumably will develop the supernatural beings and other cultures like the black Mariners and the Tribal Bedouin-like nomads and, so I will probably read the sequel, A Torch in the Night (2016) (but I hope Tahir will conclude her story with the second book!) Readers who like hard-edged epic YA fantasy with plenty of romance (without sex) should like the novel.
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
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