An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1) in Pick-a-Shelf

Jul 15, 2015 Lauren⁷ 💜 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-science-fiction, library-has-a-copy, young-adult-teen-new-adult, romance

Hype books. We all know them. The books where there's gargantuan buzz around them before they're even released, the ones where you can almost hear the breathless excitement of those who get to review them before they're released, the ones where the movie rights get snapped up for some exorbitant sum of money (seven figures in the case of this book) either before the book has been released or something like the day after it's released. And most of us have read at least one or two. This is far fro Hype books. We all know them. The books where there's gargantuan buzz around them before they're even released, the ones where you can almost hear the breathless excitement of those who get to review them before they're released, the ones where the movie rights get snapped up for some exorbitant sum of money (seven figures in the case of this book) either before the book has been released or something like the day after it's released. And most of us have read at least one or two. This is far from my first go round with a hype book. And this has been perhaps one of the most heavily hyped books of the past year or so. And do I feel that this book is worth all of the hype? Overall, I do. Though it took me a while to really get into this book, once I did, I was hooked. Sabaa's writing flows smoothly and I found that this book read quite fast. I thought Laia and Elias were well developed characters that I liked a lot, if, on the part of Elias, a tad bit cliched. How many protagonists have been written by now who live under a system of government or in a society where there's obviously something screwed up about it and they secretly hate it? A ton. But Elias was still a very good and likable guy who went through some nice character growth. Laia wasn't quite so cliched and I enjoyed her character a fair amount and I found her character arc interesting. I can't say that I found their romance to be anything spectacular chiefly because they spent most of the novel apart from each other and their romance seemed to be mostly built on longing looks and one dance (view spoiler). But it certainly wasn't instalove and in fact, (view spoiler). The other characters though not as developed as Elias and Laia were good and added to the story nicely. I have seen this book compared to Game Of a Thrones more than a few times and called Game Of Thrones for teens and speaking as somebody who has read the books and watches the show, aside from the fact that this book is set in a very violent and brutal society and it's as violent as anything you'd see on a premium cable show, this book is almost nothing like Game Of Thrones. Anybody who has watched the show or read the books knows that Game Of Thrones is as concerned with political intrigue and machinations and alliances and plotting as it is with war. And there's almost none of that in this book, there's references to the Emperor and (view spoiler). And the reference in the blurb to the Empire being a similar society to Ancient Rome bugged me a lot. Why? Because I found the society of the Empire to be much closer to ancient Sparta than I did Rome. Life in Ancient Rome did not revolve around the military like Empire life does and Rome wasn't such a heavily militarized society either and it wasn't nearly so brutal. Even the names were Greek much more than they were Latin. Some elements such as centurions, legionnaires, augurs, plebeians and a few other things were Roman, but I'd much more categorize this as a book heavily inspired by ancient Sparta with elements of Ancient Rome. The setting itself was quite heavily influenced by the Middle East and I'd call this perhaps a quasi Egypt if it was still part of the Roman Empire some 200-400 years ago. In spite of the usage of some thoroughly modern slang and turns of phrase, the setting is overall quite firmly in the past. There's no electricity or modern technology or cars and the weaponry consists of bladed weapons and bows and arrows. No guns at all. Given the fact that it could be argued that the Empire is a dystopia, I struggled a bit with whether or not this is a dystopian novel, but to me a dystopian society is always one that is set in the future and therefore, I concluded this is fantasy. I found the worldbuilding to be solid if nothing spectacular. Sabaa isn't really rewriting the book on worldbuilding, but the Empire is a unique mishmash that works well, I'll give her that. And of course, I enjoyed the maps in my edition. The Tribes I could tell were influenced by the Bedouins. The fantasy elements were subtle at first and grew stronger as the book went on. They were also mostly Middle Eastern in origin, jinn, efrits, ghouls, etc. And I found them well done and interesting and I look forward to the part they'll play in the sequel. And I appreciated that Sabaa decided to go with them as opposed to vampires, werewolves, ghosts and so on because one seldom sees creatures from Arabic mythology used in fantasy and that's a shame because Arabic mythology is as interesting and rich as the far more widely utilized Greek, Roman, Norse, etc mythology. In conclusion, I found this to be a very good and solid debut with some interesting and original concepts that have me very interested for the next book and I would definitely recommend this book to fantasy fans. Just not young ones because this is quite violent. As I was reading this, I found myself wondering how they'll faithfully adapt it and still hit that PG-13 sweet spot with just how violent this book is. I imagine they'll have to water it down a lot. ...more

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Dec 25, 2014 Tara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, series

I enjoyed this book far more in the end than I thought I would when I began it. Overall I grew to love the characters and their stories. It started off kind of slow though... and there were parts in the middle that seemed drawn out and again I started yawning... It was funny because sometimes I was reading Laia's POV and I felt it was dragging and I wanted to just get back to Elias and then a few chapters later Elias' storyline started slowing down and flip flopped. I guess that is something tha ...more

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