A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir: A review

**QUICK MENTION: THIS POST WAS WRITTEN LAST WEEK, BUT DUE TO SOME PROBLEMS WITH MY GOOGLE ACCOUNT, I WAS ONLY ABLE TO PUT IT UP THIS WEEK PLEASE NO ONE KILL ME **

Week 10 of 13

Look at me, getting all review-ey, week after week...



Well, I've only got three more weeks to do, and I thought about continuing it afterwards, but to be honest, what with school and all that crap I probably won't. I doubt my absence will break the internet. I know it won't, actually. I've seen the page views.



So anyway, I meant to read this earlier, and at first, when it came out, I was really excited and eager for it, but then I couldn't get it due to a series of unfortunate events



and then my enthusiasm kind of lost momentum, and then Empire of Storms came out and I started reading a whole host of other shit, and yeah...

But then I came across it recently, sent up a prayer of thanks for the fortuitous circumstance, and started reading it.

Rating: 4.00 out of 5 stars

I must admit, I did prefer the first one, because to me, it just felt much more tightly packed together and was faster paced too. In all honesty, I haven't reread An Ember in the Ashes in a really long time- I was planning on it, I swear, but Life got in the bloody way as usual.

I really enjoyed this one! If I'm honest, it was a bit boring at first, continuing pretty much straight on from the previous book, with Elias and Laia trying to get out of the city. There wasn't really a lot going on, and when I put it down, I was half tempted to leave it, but I am SO glad I picked it up.

Elias and Laia, though

I'm not entirely sure why I shipped them together so much, because in all honesty, I didn't feel that their relationship was portrayed very well in this book. Perhaps it was the circumstance and desperation that both characters were facing in the first book which made the sparks fly so much, but the chemistry did fizzle out a little bit, I thought. Nevertheless, I just shipped them like crazy.

Even though I didn't mind Keenan all too much in the first book, he got on my nerves quite a bit in this book. Just brooding all the time and being a dick to Elias, I couldn't understand for the life of me why Laia was making such moony eyes at him all the time. I won't spoil it, especially for the Keenan fans out there, but with what happened to him...

It was such a good twist, though! Again, won't say what happened, but I'm really excited to see how the whole thing will play out. I feel that they shouldn't have ended that matter the way it was in ATATN, it felt really unfinished to me, but it's good, it means the next book will be all the juicier.

I really loved the bits when Elias ended up running into his family, especially his dynamic with Mamie Rila. It would have been so much better if we were shown the rest of his family too, especially to see his relationship with his foster brother, which I'm sure would have been really interesting to read. Just all those scenes where he's amongst the tribes were fantastic, especially the riot scenes and buildup to them, so deliciously fast paced and written.

Shout out to Afya as well, for being such a fantastic, strong, female character. I loved that she didn't really take any shit when Elias turned up like "Bruh, you owe me". At first she was just like

And what was good about her is that Tahir didn't try to make her some good, noble character, who gave and did Elias the favour out of the goodness of her heart. She only gave him the favour because she thought he was going to become Emperor and she wanted to get in with him, and the only reason she went ahead and did the favour was because honour compelled her to, and she wasn't ashamed of it.

Let's move on to our two main females, Laia and Helene.

I didn't actually feel any particular kinship to Laia in this book- in the first one, I was so gripped by her chapters and so scared for her, but in this one, she was a bit meh. But Helene man!

You could be forgiven for thinking that the title was referring to Elias or Laia, but no! 'Tis not true!

“But you, Helene Aquilla, are no swift-burning spark.
You are a torch against the night - if you dare to let yourself burn.”

What a woman! In Book 1, I obviously really liked her, but in this one, I felt such a deep sense of empathy for her. Poor girl, she has such a massive responsibility, I actually think someone needs to slap the Augurs round the head or at least pinch them hard, because I don't know what they were thinking, putting such young kids in charge of the Empire. Because I know Helene is twenty (ish) but to me, she didn't feel like a woman in charge, she just felt like a girl way out of her depth.

The thing is, Helene is not a bad person. To be honest, it kind of tells me that Blackcliff can't be all that good at their job when they're failing at their aim of producing merciless, heartless killers but ended up making softies like Helene and Elias but whatevs.

And because Helene does still have a heart, a conscience, and has an issue with the things that Marcus and the Commandant are doing, it made it all the more gripping being inside her head and reading about her turmoil. Her character development is so strong, the way she grapples with different ideologies, how she's not sure who she ought to be more loyal to, the way she's almost broken and remade (which will make book 3 all the more awesome!) the way she's torn between protecting her family and doing her duty to the the Empire, the way she's torn about choosing between Elias' safety and that of her family... it was all portrayed so well. Speaking of, I'm not a big fan of Helene and Elias together. Yeah, she's pining over him now, but I think that they're both characters that are much too strong and similar in temperament to ever live together harmoniously.

You know who I do ship though? Helene and Harper.

Like, I get that he tortured her for days, was originally a spy planted by the Commandant, his loyalties are a bit fishy... but come on! All the best romances start like that! I was feeling some sexual tension there though, but that's perhaps because I was looking for it indecently hard. I'm just a tad irritated that Tahir didn't provide a more comprehensive physical description for him, because now I can't judge whether he is fit enough for her.

I'm not sure how to get this across without spoiling it for the people who haven't read it, but that thing that Marcus does at the end when he's getting his back on Helene...



I actually may have shed a tear or fifty at that.

And jeez, what can I say about the Commandant that hasn't already been said?



She is actually psychotically evil. Honestly, how messed up do you have to be to actually detest your own offspring to such a level that you want to kill them? Like, this woman is almost at an Umbridge or Ramsay Bolton level despicable.




'Tis not a claim I make lightly.

But the stuff she does in this book... she's such a horrifyingly fascinating character, but at the same time, so, so, so despotic and evil, I really want Tahir to go into her backstory a little bit. I mean, you don't end up as cold-hearted and cruel and mentally deranged as her unless you has some severe childhood trauma, like being forced to endure hours of Mr Blobby. Much as I want to read more about her, I also can't wait for her to have a gruesome, slow death, preferably by Helene's hands. You know, in a Bolton-esque manner.

Have to give a mention to the Warden, who excelled in  being skin-crawling, bile-forming creep of epic proportions in just one book. It's almost a pity (SPOILER!) we won't be seeing him again, because he was a deliciously creepy character and it would be so interesting to see how he would fit in to the future plotline, and his dynamic with the Commandant. But then I slap myself for thinking that because he's a disgusting bastard and it's good that he's dead. (Ooops. Well, TBH, I did provide a (admittedly rather poor) spoiler warning.)

So yeah... overall, it wasn't as good as the first one I felt, mainly because of the pacing of the story, which was quite inconsistent and uneven. But it was still a really, really strong book, all the better because of the new plotlines and threads that are going to crop up in the next book, which I'll definitely be looking out for when it hits the shelves in 2017.