@cjhannas Ok, check out AN EMBER IN THE ASHES by Sabaa Tahir. I’m 150 pages in and feel like it’s a mutual win.
— Brooke Shelby (@txtingmrdarcy) June 5, 2015
Is it lazy to begin a post with someone else’s tweet? What if I follow that up with another one that suggests I followed through on this recommendation?
@cjhannas i adore that you order a book because i say a thing. #somuchpressure
— Brooke Shelby (@txtingmrdarcy) June 5, 2015
And now you may be thinking that since I read “Dark Places” so long ago, how could I possibly be just writing about “An Ember In The Ashes” now? Well, as sometimes happens, I’m a little behind on the book posts. Get ready for a few in a row!
I connected with the protagonist Elias in a very key way since he and I are both a member of the tall kids club, which he lays out when talking about his longtime friend and emerging love interest Helene:
“She stands two inches shy of six feet — a half-foot shorter than me.”
That actually makes Elias an inch taller than me.
TIL I’m the same height and weight as Steph Curry #importantinfo https://t.co/xZFc4imLtD
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) July 16, 2015
Elias and Helene are graduating from a military academy where they’ve spent basically their whole lives. Suddenly they are chosen to compete for the right to take over the entire empire, but first must make it through a series of mysterious trials.
During one, Elias (whose name I still can’t decide how to pronounce) has to walk through a battlefield filled with the bodies of everyone he’ll supposedly kill in the future.
“How do I make it stop?” he asks a boy. “I have to make it stop.”
“It’s already done,” the boy says. “This is your destiny — it is written.”
Hm, where have I seen that before…oh, right, just to the left of my computer monitor:
Of course with any empire there’s another side with the regular people, and Tahir sets up an interesting dynamic by having the first half of the book alternate between chapters narrated by Elias and ones told by Laia. She is a scholar whose brother is taken by someone just like Elias, and from the start the two of them are on an inevitable collision course. It’s a perfectly done dual narrator setup.
Laia’s ultimate goal is to get her brother Darin freed, and often spends time wondering if she ever will, and what will happen if she fails.
“No more,” she tells herself about the what-ifs. “Nan once said that there’s hope in life. If Darin’s alive, nothing else matters. If I can get him out, the rest can be fixed.”
For the generally optimistic among us, that’s the basis for so much. If you’re still kicking, there’s always a way.
Laia’s pragmatism and loyalty to others clashes at times with Helene’s personality, which helps draw Elias in. Helene is the obvious choice for him, but he can’t help but think about Laia no matter how hard he works to put her out of his mind.
“I try for days not to think about her. In the end, I stop resisting. Life is hard enough without having to avoid entire rooms in my own head.”
Amen, brother.