Book Review: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Good morning bookworms! I have started too many series this month. Let me just say that. I need to read the rest of the Daevabad trilogy after finishing City of Brass and now I need to read the rest of this series. I also am on book 4 of 7 of the Throne of Glass Series. Later in the month I’ll also be reading Touch of Darkness which is the first book in a series…. at least some of my books this month are the second books in a series.

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An Ember in the Ashes is set in a fictional world where it’s basically The Scholars vs. The Martials. Laia is a young scholar woman who has lost her whole family and is now trying to get her brother out of prison. She is working as a spy for the rebels in exchange for them breaking her brother out. She is a spy at Blackcliff, the school where young martials are taken as 6-year-olds and taught to be warriors. Once they are fully trained they become masks, basically the highest level of law enforcement. It was a mask that killed Laia’s family and took her brother to prison. She is spying on the commandant of the whole place who is extremely evil. She’s so evil she’s actively trying to secretly kill her own son. Her son is the other narrator, Elias, a mask that hates being a mask and thinks their treatment of the Scholars is wrong. He wants nothing to do with his mother or the profession he was forced into but leaving is a death sentence. When he meets Laia, working as a slave, there’s an immediate connection but they should be mortal enemies.

I loved this book. I loved the world, even though it was extremely violent, trigger warnings for assault, beatings, rape, torture and disfigurement. The world building happened pretty ffast and was easy to follow. So I got into the story very quickly. I liked that Laia and Elias had possible love interests from the beginning with other people and then something sparked with them. It’s an enemies to lovers sort of but it’s more like “we should be enemies but you make my heart race…” The ending was so intense and amazing, Laia really steps into her strong female role, despite being terrified to defy the Martials. And the cliffhanger end had me ordering the rest of the series immediately. So now I’m trying to figure out when I can read the rest of these. They should be arriving next week…

Happy reading!

Angie