Review of "An Ember in the Ashes"

"There is nothing out there but the quiet shifting of sand."

     Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes stands out among its YA counterparts. For one, it isn't a romance. For another, the protagonist--or one of the protagonists--is a coward. Meet Laia, seventeen-year-old daughter of resistance leader the Lioness. When a Martial patrol kills her grandparents and takes her brother captive, Laia knows exactly what her mother would do. The only problem is that Laia isn't the Lioness; she's a coward, so she does the only thing a coward can do. She runs. Plagued by guilt, Laia turns to the resistance for help. In exchange for their breaking Darin out of prison, she poses as a slave and infiltrates the infamous Blackcliff Academy, schooling ground for the deadly soldiers known as Masks. There, Laia will be forced to decide just how much she is willing to put on the line for her brother, the consequences of which will teach her the true meaning of courage.

     Laia isn't the only star of Tahir's novel. Elias, top student at Blackcliff, is days away from graduation--and freedom. Before he can desert, however, he's stopped by an Augur, a mysterious prophet who can read minds and predict the future. According to the Augur, Elias will not find freedom in escape from Blackcliff; instead, he will only find bloodshed and torment. However, if he stays he will have a chance at true freedom "of body and soul". Before he can decide, Elias and his best friend, Helene, are thrown head-on into the Trials, a series of challenges designed to weed out the next emperor of the Martial Empire from his fellows. He quickly finds himself battling friend and foe alike, and he can only wonder--is freedom worth it if his life is a living nightmare?

     The characters in An Ember in the Ashes are fascinating. We have Elias and Laia, two remarkably rounded and unique individuals fighting for a future in an uncertain world. Alongside them are Helene, Demetrius, Faris, Cook, and Kitchen-Girl--each a member of Elias' platoon or one of Laia's fellow slaves. Although the protagonists and Helene are beautifully structured and leap right off the page, the secondary characters, particularly those in Elias' platoon, are rather two-dimensional. Despite this, each character has a backstory and a distinct set of traits that set them apart as their own person. And the protagonists, especially Laia, develop on an unbelievable scale. By the end, it's like she's a whole different person.

     If there's one thing this book is not short on, it's action. Throughout the four Trials, Elias and Helene must face horrible tasks that test their morality and threaten their very souls. From the start, they decide to work together. If they win, one will be emperor and the other second-in-command. They face everything as a team, whether it's a nightmare battlefield or a real one with deadly consequences. Meanwhile, Laia faces the impossible task of spying on Blackcliff's commandant, and the growing feeling that something isn't right. Although one of the major plot twists can be spotted from a distance, it's buried under a thousand other scenes and foreshadowed nicely. The others are more startling, and lend a nice feeling of surprise to the book.

     This is not a book for the faint of heart. Blackcliff is the training ground for the elite of the elite, the soldiers who can do things no mortal being should be able to consider, much less pull off. Therefore, it follows that the training is brutal--incredibly so. But worse than the fights and the duels and the beatings are the Trials, in which some major character deaths occur and many "feels" await. One scene in particular may send involved readers into a downward spiral, but fear not! All is resolved, and nothing in this book is as its seems. Laia also goes through her fair share of pain, as the commandant is far from kind to her slaves. Our heroine is beaten and scarred in the most unpleasant manner, which is, sadly, not balanced out very much by the rest of the book.

     However, although the book is violent, there is little to no gore. There is one potential "trigger" scene, in which a male student tries to take advantage of Laia, and it is implied that similar situations occur often at the academy. Characters don't, as a rule, cuss, but their insult of choice is "son of a prostitute", although it isn't put so nicely. And although there isn't much in the way of romance, some of the characters are attracted to each other, and there is one brief kissing scene.

     I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a YA novel about courage and loyalty. Though the Trials are brutal and some of Laia's punishment scenes are a little intense, the characters are beautifully crafted and set in a world of fantasy made real through storytelling. Tahir obviously understands her characters on a fundamental level, a trait which gives readers the same ability. Such a connection lends the story a captivating air that earns it five golden stars.