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Review: A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir

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A Sky Beyond the Storm by Saaba Tahir

A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4)
Sabaa Tahir
Razorbill
Published December 1, 2020

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About A Sky Beyond the Storm

Picking up just a few months after A REAPER AT THE GATES left off…

The long-imprisoned jinn are on the attack, wreaking bloody havoc in villages and cities alike. But for the Nightbringer, vengeance on his human foes is just the beginning.

At his side, Commandant Keris Veturia declares herself Empress, and calls for the heads of any and all who defy her rule. At the top of the list? The Blood Shrike and her remaining family.

Laia of Serra, now allied with the Blood Shrike, struggles to recover from the loss of the two people most important to her. Determined to stop the approaching apocalypse, she throws herself into the destruction of the Nightbringer. In the process, she awakens an ancient power that could lead her to victory–or to an unimaginable doom.

And deep in the Waiting Place, the Soul Catcher seeks only to forget the life–and love–he left behind. Yet doing so means ignoring the trail of murder left by the Nightbringer and his jinn. To uphold his oath and protect the human world from the supernatural, the Soul Catcher must look beyond the borders of his own land. He must take on a mission that could save–or destroy–all that he knows.

My Review

Normally, I really struggle with longer books, but I pretty much tore through this one. There were so many things on my list of things I needed to see happen. Romances that needed to be faced. Villains I wanted destroyed. So many things.

I am going to do my absolute best not to give anything away in this review, since I know a lot of people are still reading or haven’t been able to start reading yet. So bear with me if I sound cryptic.

The author has pretty much already stated that there are some heartbreaks coming in the book. There are. Some of them were really tough. There were some big surprises that had me cheering, too. Lots of things unfolded in ways that weren’t quite what I expected, and often I was like wait, wow!

Ultimately, I will say that I loved getting to follow the story to its conclusion. I think one of my favorite things about the series as a whole is Laia’s evolution from the girl too afraid to do anything but run to the girl who not only learns combat from the Blood Shrike, but who’s like, “Hey the Nightbringer has an awesome weapon which I believe I will try to steal right off his back.”

I also love, love, LOVE Helene. She’s 100% my favorite character, though I did not like her at all at first. I think the fact that she is so committed to protect her family and so committed to her people– and so committed to doing what’s right, even if it doesn’t follow traditions or what people in power want her to do– made it impossible for me not to love her.

There are so many complex, amazing characters in the book, though. I loved that over and over one of the things that Laia and Elias and Helene have to do is learn the story of their enemies. Learn what makes them who they are. I thought that exploration made the story a lot deeper and changed how I felt about certain characters.

On the whole, I feel like this is one of those books that you’re either already planning to read or you haven’t followed the series this far or at all. This isn’t the book you’d want to start with, if you’re unfamiliar with the series. Definitely start with AN EMBER IN THE ASHES if you haven’t read it yet.

I think this one was worth the wait. I’m super glad it came out before the end of the year so that I had something to look forward to reading this month.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Tribes and Scholar people are oppressed by the Empire. Scholars have been enslaved for many years. Both have bronze skin and dark hair. Elias’ father was a Scholar, and he was raised in a tribe. Laia is a Scholar.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used fairly infrequently. Most swears are things like, “Skies.”

Romance/Sexual Content
Several scenes show couples being intimate. There are enough details to let you know what’s happening. Most are descriptions of kissing and undressing, but some brief descriptions beyond that.

Spiritual Content
Elias is the Soul Catcher who serves Mauth, or death. He is responsible to help human ghosts make peace with their deaths and pass on. Mauth first created the Jinn to serve this purpose, but they’ve rebelled against him. There are other spirit creatures like efrits who have elemental abilities and ghuls that feed on grief and wights which spy for a character.

The tribes also have a spiritual leader who passes on stories. There’s a spiritual component to how the stories are kept and discovered. There is also a leader who performs burial rites for tribe members to help them pass on peacefully.

Violent Content
Many depictions of battle violence, some pretty graphic.

Drug Content
None.

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Review: A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes #2)
Sabaa Tahir
Razorbill
Published August 30, 2016

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About A Torch Against the Night

Elias and Laia are running for their lives. After the events of the Fourth Trial, Martial soldiers hunt the two fugitives as they flee the city of Serra and undertake a perilous journey through the heart of the Empire.

Laia is determined to break into Kauf—the Empire’s most secure and dangerous prison—to save her brother, who is the key to the Scholars’ survival. And Elias is determined to help Laia succeed, even if it means giving up his last chance at freedom.

But dark forces, human and otherworldly, work against Laia and Elias. The pair must fight every step of the way to outsmart their enemies: the bloodthirsty Emperor Marcus, the merciless Commandant, the sadistic Warden of Kauf, and, most heartbreaking of all, Helene—Elias’s former friend and the Empire’s newest Blood Shrike.

Bound to Marcus’s will, Helene faces a torturous mission of her own—one that might destroy her: find the traitor Elias Veturius and the Scholar slave who helped him escape…and kill them both.

My Review

Books that show graphic violence are always a struggle for me to read, and this one comes close to the edge for me. That said, I really enjoy the story and can’t stop rooting for the characters. I love the relationships between the major and minor characters so much. The cloaked woman who comes to Helene in the night. The leader of the desert tribe and her flirtatious brother.

I love the ways A TORCH AGAINST THE NIGHT surprised me. I feel like the story world got broader and deeper, and it made the story and the characters so much richer. I like that even though the story got bigger, it also continues to feel like that steady march toward an inevitable clash between good and evil.

Am I going to read the third book? Definitely. It’ll probably take me a little bit to get to it, because I’m worried I’ll read it and then be scrambling desperately for the fourth and final book, which won’t be out until possibly 2021. Long wait!

If you enjoy books like THE WRATH AND THE DAWN or GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS, add this series to your reading list. Also check out my review of book one in the series, AN EMBER IN THE ASHES.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Laia and her brother have bronze skin and dark eyes.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used with moderate frequency.

Romance/Sexual Content
References to sex. Kissing between boy and girl. She invites him to undress her in one scene and indicates that she wants to have sex with him.

Spiritual Content
Laia and Elias face opponents and allies which are mythical beings. Some try to destroy them while others seem to want to help them.

Violent Content
Battle violence and some gore. Some scenes include references to and brief descriptions of torture.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.

Review: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , ,

An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes #1)
Sabaa Tahir
Razorbill Press
Published April 28, 2015

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About An Ember in the Ashes

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.

My Review

I feel like the last person in the world to finally read AN EMBER IN THE ASHES. I’ve had a copy for years, and still, it took me forever. Not for any reason to do with the book. I heard Sabaa Tahir speak in 2016 at YALLFEST, and have been a fan of hers since then. For some reason, it has just taken me FOREVER to read her books. Can I just pretend I’ve been waiting until the fourth book is published before starting the series so I can binge read them? (Actually, no, I can’t, because the fourth one doesn’t come out until next year.)

Anyway, I really enjoyed the setting of AN EMBER IN THE ASHES. I like the desert setting and the complex political landscape. It’s not as simple as the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. I liked that a lot.

And the character development. Laia grows SO much from the first page of the book to the last, and I love that. I found it so easy to identify with her timidity and her commitment to rule-following and staying safe at the beginning of the story, but I cheered for her every step of her journey, too, as she got bolder and more fierce.

I love that the story feels like it has so many layers, too. Laia and Elias each have goals and plans. The resistance has a plan. The emperor has a plan. And the Augers (like fates) have a plan, too. It definitely makes the story feel larger-than-life and like there are so many places it can go.

I think readers who enjoyed the DIVERGENT series by Veronica Roth or THRONE OF GLASS by Sarah J. Mass will like AN EMBER IN THE ASHES.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Laia has bronze skin and dark hair and is from an oppressed and often enslaved people called Scholars.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used very infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. Some references to sex.

Spiritual Content
One character uses magic to heal another. Augers relay prophesies about certain characters.

Violent Content – Trigger Warning
Soldiers execute family members of a suspected traitor and threaten to rape another. Laia becomes a slave to a cruel master who mutilates her slaves. Some graphic descriptions of those instances. A man tries to rape a woman after beating her.

Elias belongs to an elite unit of soldiers which uses extreme methods of discipline as part of training, including making soldiers watch/jeer at a younger trainee being whipped to death for trying to run away. He participates in some violent challenges which pit him against his peers.

Drug Content
None.

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