An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir Review
Hello Again!
It's time to review our third buddy read of all time and our first buddy read with a larger group. This month we read An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir and I was excited to read this novel because I had heard so many good things about it. While I wasn't as thrilled about this novel as the rest of our book club, I still enjoyed it. Read on to see my thoughts. Enjoy!
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. -GoodReads
Review
This book has won numerous awards and I have heard so many good things that I was really looking forward to reading it. That being said, as I was reading it I found that it left some things to be desired and I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Don't get me wrong, it was still a good book overall, but it wasn't as good as I think it could have been. Here are the finer details of what I did and didn't like.
One of the unique features of this novel was its point of view shifting between the two main characters, Elias and Laia. While I usually enjoy point of view shifting in my books, I think it was to the detriment of this novel. While Laias' character development was pretty well rounded and progressed in a linear fashion, Elias' devlopment was all over the place and a hot mess. In his sections, we also got to see another important character, Helene, who I think will become important in the other books, and this took away from Elias's development.
Consequently, the shifting point of views for each character came with inner dialogue. This made it feel like nothing was happening in the novel plot wise to me and was pretty anti- climactic. There was such a focus on what the character was feeling and thinking that it felt like we were missing out on key plot points and details. This left something to be desired and I wish the author would have spent more time on the actions than the feelings.
As far as romance goes, there are two that both develop and don't develop in a sense (which sounds ridiculous but makes sense once you read the book). Elias has a pseudo romantic relationship with both of the main female characters in this novel, Helene and Laia, creating a love triangle in a very predictable way. This felt so predictable to me that I really hated it to be honest. By the end of the book, the relationship between the three of them still hasn't really developed at all beyond things being said in the inner dialogue and it feels like sloppy writing on the author's part. There was alot of potential here to develop a unique romance or even a well written romance or the beginnings of one since this is a series, but the author failed to do so.
This being said, this book was an easy read and I read it quite fast for its 450 page length. Although it stayed rather dull to me throughout the book due to its inner dialogue based story, it really picked up in excitement in the last 50 pages and I was enthralled for that portion. I will most likely read the second book in this series but I am definitely not in any hurry at this point.
Conclusion
Overall, I thought most of this book was kind of slow and spent too much time in the protagonist's heads. It got more exciting in the last 50 pages but not enough to redeem the book. I may read the second book but I haven't decided yet.
Length: Felt like it went on forever, could have been 100 pages shorter if there weren't so many useless details
Story Development: Aimless and slow throughout with a burst at the end
Romance: Underdeveloped love triangle
Protagonist Strength: Average
Re-readable? Maybe
I give this book 3 out of 5 stars
