An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
Published by Razorbill (4.28.2015)
Genres: High Fantasy, Young Adult
Format: Audiobook, 443 pages
Length: 15 hours, 22 min
Narrator: Fiona Hardingham, Steve West
Source: Borrowed
LAIA is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire’s greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution.
ELIAS is the academy’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias is considering deserting the military, but before he can, he’s ordered to participate in a ruthless contest to choose the next Martial emperor.
When Laia and Elias’s paths cross at the academy, they find that their destinies are more intertwined than either could have imagined and that their choices will change the future of the empire itself.
I actually kind of regret re-reading this book. I absolutely LOVED it back in 2015 when I read it. And while I enjoyed the narration – Steve West and Fiona Hardingham are two of my faves – I was a little bit bummed that I didn’t enjoy the story as much the second time around. I ended up bumping it from a 5/5 down to like a 3.5/5. I remember raving about how unique the book was, and maybe in 2015 it was, but now that there’s so much YA fantasy it doesn’t really stand out anymore. It felt a lot more generic the second time around, which makes me sad. (But, in the book’s defense, it was one of the first! So it’s not really the book’s fault that YA fantasy is so saturated nowadays. I just read too much fantasy.)
I re-read this so I could finish the series, but I honestly kind of lost the desire to. I’ll probably get to the audiobook of the second book eventually, but I feel zero rush to read it any time soon. Whomp, whomp.
Audio re-reads of favorites
I loved jumping back into ALL of these worlds! So many amazing stories! I adore re-reading favorites via audio. And these are some of my favorite narrators – Erin Spencer, Steve West, Fiona Hardingham….highly, highly recommend all of these!
Original reviews
- Daughter of Smoke and Bone
- DEV1AT3
- TRUEL1F3
- The Ten Thousand Doors of January
- We Hunt the Flame
- Aurora Rising
- Aurora Burning
- Night of the Dragon
- Red Rising
- Golden Son
- Stain
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