(Review) An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

My thoughts and what not:

“You are an ember in the ashes, Elias Veturius. You will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.” “You are full, Laia. Full of life and dark and strength and spirit. You are in our dreams. You will burn, for you are an ember in the ashes.”

I've never been a fan of fantasy let alone high fantasy. But this book proved to be a page turner. It was easy to delve into the story.

As a new reader of high fantasy, I thought it would be hard for me to imagine out of this world phenomena such as ghuls and augurs (they can read minds which reminds me of the Silent Brothers), but with Sabaa Tahir's vivid explanations, it wasn't really hard at all. I love that it was told in two perspective, Laia's and Elias.' That way, I get to know more about the things that the Masks and the Resistance do.

I adore the two main characters. Elias is not the typical Mask but when he's with Laia, he's just a quintessential boy—hormonal yet dependable. Laia, on the other hand, was a hybrid of the the original damsel in distress, a waif minus the abandoned part, and the untypical heroine—just a normal person in an uncommon world. While Elias' character was properly matured, Laia, I think, was yet to be developed.

In a classic dystopian world, there should be a romance, specifically, the love interests of the main characters, more specifically, the clichéd love triangles. This book has one or two. The romance here is really weird. The two main characters are hung on two love triangles. To be honest, even without romance this could be great — which is a first for me because I normally liked reading books with romance. But adding complicated love interest would probably make this more interesting, I guess. And yes that's me being sarcastic.

At first, I was glad that this book is a standalone. I've never heard of a standalone high fantasy novel because normally, you need more than one book to cover the world building. This information, together with the fact that: even before this debut novel was published, it was already set for a film adaptation, was enough excite me. But as I was nearing the ending, I decided that I want a sequel. Yes, the ending was unique and great, but a sequel would be nice, too.

I adore Sabaa Tahir's writing style; it was superb. She's pretty good at character development, too. I couldn't really evaluate the world building because I'm a bit stuck between with loving it and hating it. But overall, this is a very enjoyable read.