A review by roseandivy
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

adventurous dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

okay so. i really wanted to love this book. i really did. i'd heard so many good things about it from so many people that i was sure coming in that this would be a 3.5 or higher. unfortunately, there were a myriad of things that i absolutely couldn't stand.

the first was elias as a character. listen, i like a morally gray mc, i like complicated people, i like characters rebelling against the systems they were raised in, but everything about this man fell so flat for me. he was boring, and the attempts at making him seem complicated were lackluster, and i couldn't buy the fact that despite being raised in blackcliff for the majority of his life, he somehow clung to the values he was taught as a five year old and became the sole mask to want to oppose the empire. he felt stilted and unrealistic, and i couldn't stand the way he talked about both laia and helene. his constant objectification of the both of them (especially when laia was enslaved) grossed me out so much,
as well as his insistence upon "protecting" helene from marcus by having his classmates follow her, and acting like he knew better than her when she told him to stop
. he's posited as the "good" man, but i feel like he still falls into the same misogyny as all the other male characters, just in less violent way, which would make sense if we had an arc of him unlearning the misogyny he's been taught, but his actions aren't ever really recognized as wrong or something he needs to change, just part of his "protective: and "dominant" character.

which leads me into the handling of misogyny and rape in this book. it feels like rape is used as a plot device or for shock value so much. every other chapter one of the female characters is being threatened with rape, or is scared of being raped, or a male character is joking about rape. as a survivor i think having depictions of and discussions of rape culture in books is important, but this felt less like a genuine attempt to engage with the weight of rape as an atrocity and more like the author was just using it as a tool to demonstrate that certain people were villains, and the fact that this is a young adult novel just makes it more uncomfortable. i certainly could've done with mature and meaningful discussions of rape in books as a child and teen, given that that aligned with my experience, but i've seen this book recommended as for ages 12+, and i think reading this book that young would've been more damaging than helpful for me.

there are a lot of other things in this book i could critique-- the one-dimensional villains, the fact that i found laia so boring, the lack of care given to the inclusion of magical elements (so many things just come out of absolutely nowhere with no warning or explanation seemingly just because it's convenient, especially
helene's magical singing
)-- but the one thing i did like was helene herself. i've seen mixed opinions on her amongst various people who've read this book, but i actually found her far more nuanced and interesting than i ever found elias or laia, given her unique position within blackcliff as the only female mask. if the two main characters had been helene and laia (with or without the romance component) i would've been much more excited to see their interactions and watch the two of their stories intertwine, as well as the arc helene would've gotten.

unfortunately, my love for helene only made the end of this book even more disappointing.
i cannot stand how illogical and ridiculous elias' decision during the final trial was-- if he's motivated by a desire to minimize the damage the empire does, wouldn't it make more sense to ensure that he or helene won, therefore giving him a chance to enact change? wouldn't letting helene kill laia and then going on to save the rest of the scholars from further brutality and oppression be more in line with his goals? why does he condemn his lifelong best friend to servitude to a man who's threatened to rape her multiple times in order to save a girl he's known for a fraction of that time? wouldn't letting marcus become emperor and continue to slaughter thousands of scholars be doing far more damage than sacrificing one life for the sake of an entire population?
throughout the entire book, helene is presented as an accessory to elias, there to support him rather than to have her own autonomy or wants and goals--
her being in love with him really only hammers this in. and why can we never have a man and a woman be best friends without one of them being in love or wanting to have sex with the other?
i found this so incredibly frustrating, because it felt like such a waste of a character with so much potential.

overall, very disappointed, but it gets one star for helene. i considered reading the next book just to get her pov, and i might still do it, but at the moment it doesn't seem worth my time.

edit: i forgot laia is seventeen and elias is 20. yikes.
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