An Ember in the Ashes

Title: An Ember in the Ashes

Series: An Ember in the Ashes - book 1

Author: Sabaa Tahir

Rating: 4.5 stars

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Number of Pages: 448

Publication Date: 2015

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Summary: For years Laia has lived in fear. Fear of the Empire, fear of the Martials, fear of truly living at all. Born as a Scholar, she's never had much of a choice.

For Elias it's the opposite. He has seen too much on his path to becoming a Mask, one of the Empire's elite soldiers. With the Masks' help the Empire has conquered a continent and enslaved thousands of Scholars, all in the name of power.

When Laia's brother is taken she must force herself to help the Resistance, the only people who have a chance of saving him. She must spy on the Commandant, ruthless overseer of Blackcliff Academy. Blackcliff is the training ground for Masks, and the very place that Elias is planning to escape. If he succeeds, he will be named deserter. If found, the punishment will be death.

But once Laia and Elias meet, they find that their destinies are intertwined and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire.

I absolutely loved this book. The premise, the world building, the whole thing. This book is set in a Roman Empire type world with magic, betrayals and death around every corner. Everything about this book worked. In fact I found this book so good, I read it all in one sitting. There was always something happening that meant I couldn't put the book down, I just had to keep reading.

Despite the fact that this book is set in a fantasy world with magic and supernatural creatures, you don't get thrust into a new world that is confusing and distant. Sabaa Tahir mixed this strange and magical place in with a Roman Empire feel making it easy to get drawn into.

I loved the idea of the Masks, the soldiers of the Empire, trained from the age of six to twenty, who are taught one thing: obey. Obeying usually involves a horrible death of those that are considered a threat to the Empire. So much detail has been clearly put into creating the Masks and in no way can they be confused as anything other than deadly and dangerous.

This book is told from the perspective of the two main characters Laia and Elias, with alternating perspectives given for each new chapter. At no point in this story did it not work. Despite the constant perspective change, the story flowed in a way that it never would have been able to if only one of them had been narrating.

The characters also contained an unbelievable amount of back story and depth. Just when you think you have the characters all worked out, they get infinitely more complex and well thought out. The pain, the fear and the anger that these two characters feel is so real at times you will feel like its your own. Both Laia and Elias go through an incredible amount of character development. Both, despite being two very different characters, learn to stop letting the world go by and to stand up and fight for what they believe in. 

This book ends at the cusps of a new and dangerous era and I can't wait for the next book to be released in April 2016.