Book Review: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

I feel a bit late to the party with this series—I’ve known about it for years but hadn’t gotten to it until now—but better late than never. An Ember in the Ashes was an excellent book full of excitement, action, and darkness, yet full of hope.

If you’re like me and haven’t read this series, I would highly recommend the first book at least (I’m still reading the rest).

So without further ado, let’s get into my spoiler-free review of An Ember in the Ashes.

An Ember in the Ashes Review Breakdown

Characters: 5 Stars

I really liked both of the POV characters, Laia and Elias, and the back-and-forth POVs worked really well. There wasn’t ever a time when I didn’t want to read one of the POVs, which is always the risk of having multiple viewpoints.

Laia is very interesting because she thinks so little of herself at first, but it is clear to readers that those thoughts are unwarranted.

I loved reading about Elias too. Trained to be a soldier—a killing machine really—but with a strong moral compass. I have a character in my current WIP who’s very similar, so it was fascinating to see how Tahir handled Elias’ struggle.

Both Laia and Elias had great character arcs. They were set up well from the beginning, explored nicely throughout, and came to satisfying conclusions in the end while leaving more for the characters to explore in later books.

Helene is perhaps one of the most interesting characters in the book—torn between love and duty. I’m very excited to see how Tahir continues to explore her character.

I love Izzi and Cook, and I would love to know more about Cook’s past too.

Cain and all the augers are so interesting, pulling on all the strings that they do. Cain is almost like a mentor character but not really, which is a fun twist on that character type. I get the feeling the augers know way more than they let on and have their own agenda that we haven’t even scratched the surface of.

The Commandant is so ruthless. I wonder what happened to her to make her so. In this book, we don’t learn too much about her, but I hope the rest of the books explore her character more. Right now, it feels like she’s evil for evil’s sake, but I hope there’s more to it than that.

Plot: 4.5 Stars

I was hooked right from the beginning with this one, immediately invested in the characters and what was happening to them.

There was never a dull moment throughout, and so much of the story had me on the edge of my seat, waiting to see how the characters would get out of the seemingly impossible situations they were in. I love that Tahir wasn’t afraid to have the characters make hard decisions or go through hard things. She didn’t “rescue” them from those situations, which some authors tend to do, and it was great—and sad. I’m particularly thinking of the third trial.

The end did slow down for me a bit, but I think that was my own fault because I started reading another book that grabbed my attention. It was still an excellent ending, and I’m excited to read the rest of the series. Honestly, I should have read this series years ago. I think I would have loved it even more when I was younger.

Prose: 4.5 Stars

The book had beautiful writing throughout that was still easy to read. I mostly listened to the audiobook for this, and I really liked both the narrators as well. They’ve become new favorites of mine.

Worldbuilding/Setting: 5 Stars

The world of An Ember in the Ashes is brutal, raw, and not pretty but so fascinating. It makes me very grateful that I didn’t live in Ancient Rome.

The worldbuilding is excellent—the kind of excellence that makes you not even notice it because it just feels real. There isn’t a lot of magic in this book, but there are hints of it and I can tell it’s going to be further developed in later books, so I’m excited to see that.

Thanks for reading my review of An Ember in the Ashes. I did a mini first chapter analysis for this book in this article, so check that out if you’d like. You can read more reviews here. Let me know in the comments if you’ve read this book and what you thought of it.