BOOK SERIES: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today, I’m reviewing An Ember In The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. In this post, I will talk about all four books of this series and rate it as a whole at the end of the review. This series was published in 2015-2020. Click here for more information.

I DNF’d this series twice before picking it up a third time and actually finishing it. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir was one of the first YA Fantasy books I ever picked up. It is widely popular and considered one of the best series in the genre. I wanted to read something out of my comfort zone and diversify the type of books I usually pick up, a.k.a., historical fiction and classics, so I decided to give it a chance. In fact, most of the recommendations given to me online were YA Fantasy and this series was one of the most popular and highly recommended series in the genre by far.

Here’s why I didn’t finish it on my first two attempts:

I don’t like the female protagonist. And I still don’t like her. I mention this in my review for the first book in the series. I say, “There was just something about Laia that I didn’t like and I instinctively rejected her.” But I also say in that review that I think I might’ve been a bit too harsh on her; after all, she is only 16 years old and in the first chapter of the book she witnesses the death of her grandparents and Darin, her brother, is arrested. It is some traumatic stuff, so I decided to give her another chance and, surprisingly, I actually did enjoy the first book this time around. After reading all four books now, though, I am going back to my original perception of Laia. I don’t like her, and I finally know why. She is a Mary Sue. Maybe not as bad as Diana Bishop from A Discovery of Witches, but she is still a Mary Sue. And this gets really bad in the fourth book.

When I picked up An Ember in the Ashes the first time, I didn’t connect with Laia at all. I wanted to, because she was a young girl who had lost her family and had somehow found the strength to fight back and free her brother from prison. I also understand that she is 16 when this series begins, and teenagers aren’t exactly known for making good decisions. In fact, they make a lot of bad and impulsive decisions. They are just not mature enough and asking them to do so is asking them to do something they just don’t have the capacity to do.  But Laia’s personality irritated me. She just made one stupid decision after another. She is also petulant and thinks she knows more and better than others; disregards sound advice from people who have more experience her and is very childish. It was infuriating. She is also the one everyone loves and protects, even the villain; the one that Rehmat, the Nightbringer’s (dead) wife and magical counterpart, manifests herself in; consequently, she is the only one who can defeat the Nightbringer, with his own scythe no less, which we never see her try to learn how to use. She can just do that out of nowhere. She also has magic powers now. Yeah. A Mary Sue.  

The angst between Laia and Elias also goes on for way too long. And Elias’s tenure as the Soul Catcher doesn’t do him any favors. This storyline goes on for way too long as well, which felt like it was added to maintain that said angst between Laia and Elias throughout four books. Hence, 500 pages of filler. Or at least that’s what it felt like.  But this needed to end at the end of Book 3 or the beginning of Book 4. Instead, it went on well into ¾ of the last book, and it got old fast. At first, I thought that the concept of a Soul Catcher was an interesting one and Mauth’s intent to make Elias forget everything about his human life (including his love for Laia) a way to make him fight back. But he doesn’t fight back, and he spends a lot of pages (more than I thought was necessary, really) in the Waiting Place passing on ghosts.  As a Soul Catcher, he loses everything that made him endearing and worth fighting for and with.

The last character I want to talk about is Helene. In my opinion, she deserved better. First, Elias rejects her and hurts her by choosing someone else. Fine. But then, her entire family is killed and finally the love of her life dies too. And then it is hinted at the end that she will fall in love with the Beekeeper. I liked Avitas Harper, and I was rooting for this couple more than I ever rooted for Elias and Laia. Helene deserved her happy ending too. Yes, she becomes Empress, but why include Harper if she was just going to end up with the Beekeeper? I did not like this ending for Helene. She is Empress, yes, but I still felt cheated. She and Harper were the reason why I finished this series at all and he dies. Helene and Harper’s relationship had its own share of angst, yes, but the way he loved her quietly and wholeheartedly made me like him instantly, and he quickly became a favorite. I don’t think the Beekeeper is a worthy replacement. Sorry but true. I was just not happy Avitas Harper died.

Another thing I didn’t like about this series is that it is full of tropes; Book 1 especially so. It has love triangles galore. In fact, it’s a love dodecahedron. The Beautiful Slave Girl (Laia) trope, a Big Bad Duumvirate (what’s worse than one Big Bad (the Commandant)? Two Big Bads, in collusion with each other (the Commandant and the Nightbringer)), Bonding over Missing Parents (Keenan and Laia), Childhood Friends (Elias and Helene), Two “Luke, I Am Your Father” Moments, The Mole in La Résistance, which itself is also a trope, Elias Secretly Dying after his mother poisons him, Laia being a Targeted Human Sacrifice during the last Trial, and Elias’ and Helene’s most hated enemy, Marcus, winning the Trials and becoming the Emperor, just to mention a few. So, yeah, shock full of tropes.

The series is fast-paced and engrossing. I admit it. And there are some characters that I stuck around for…until the ending happened. I also think that this series was too long. I read A Reaper At The Gates, Book 3 in the series, and forgot what happened in it almost immediately.

This series is classified as a young adult fantasy romance. Okay. I’ve read young adult fantasy romance before. In fact, some of my favorite series are young adult fantasy romances (despite the love triangles, because most YA books have love triangles). But some chapters in this series (especially in Book 4) are not appropriate for teens and early young adults. Descriptions of desire and sex in these chapters are too explicit and not appropriate, like I said, for this target audience.

There is also a lot of death, violence, and gore in this series.

After four books of angst and Laia (because by the end of the series, I just put up with her), the final battle with the Commandant and the Nightbringer was…meh. Lackluster and dull. First, the Commandant. Elias should’ve been the one to kill her, but no. Cook shows up out of nowhere and slits her throat. And then the Nightbringer is defeated with… a talking-to.

Now, I know I said I liked the first book. I did. And if you read my review for the second book, A Torch Against The Night, you’ll find out that I liked that book as well. But things started to change with Book 3. This book focuses a lot on Elias’s storyline as Soul Catcher, and frankly, Elias’s internal Hamlet dilemma (to be or not to be) had become rather boring and exhausting by then. And I quickly got tired of it. That is why I forgot about what happens in this book rather quickly.

Will I ever read this series again? I doubt it. A lot of people love it, but I was not enamored. If it has been on your TBR for a while and you’re on the fence now after reading this review, I don’t discourage you to read it. You might like it. I just didn’t.

Overall Rating: I Didn’t Like It And Will Never Read It Again.