![]() “It made me really sad it was so disheartening” explained Tahir, who is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants to the U.S. For instance, she said, during the 2019–2020 Jammu and Kashmir lockdown, the Indian government prevented people from entering or leaving this territory adjacent to Pakistan, a bad situation magnified by a complete news and communications blackout. Tahir disclosed that Sky explores how “despotic governments crush populations,” and how a regime “that is seemingly fine” can become oppressive almost overnight, though the rest of the world might not know the extent of it. So I tried to explore that theme in the book.” “However, I heard a lot from readers about how in the past four years, and particularly since the pandemic began, they struggled to find hope. “I didn’t model any characters after anyone in the current administration,” Tahir noted. Meanwhile, the Scholars, who have vacated a city under assault, are fleeing before an army led by Commandant Keris Veturia, who is intent on destroying any who oppose her. ![]() The tale resumes where Reaper left off, with Laia having joined forces with an erstwhile foe against a common enemy. Allying herself with rebels by agreeing to spy for them in exchange for their help rescuing her brother, Laia finds herself a leader in the resistance to the tyranny of the Martial Empire, which has brutally subjugated the Scholars, an ethnic minority to which Laia belongs.Ī few days before Sky arrives in bookstores, Tahir declined to give away any tidbits concerning the denouement of the series, but teased that she is “a great believer in hope” and hope “is a driving force” throughout the series, especially in Sky. Set in a world reminiscent of ancient Rome, the series tells the story of Laia of Serra, a teenaged girl of color who starts out on a quest to save her brother, who has been arrested for treason. And the conflict between Iraq and the Kurds, as well as other wars and the Arab Spring, she says, permeated the plot of the third volume, A Reaper at the Gates (2018). Ember’s sequel, A Torch Against the Night (2016), was prompted by the global refugee crisis, which Tahir recalled having risen to “new levels of insanity” at the time she was writing. ![]() While the first volume, An Ember in the Ashes, was published in 2015, it was conceptualized more than a decade ago while Tahir worked on the international desk at the Washington Post, copy editing heart-rending stories such as one about young Kashmiri males being taken from their families by the military and never returning home. “I knew that the first book would be heavily influenced by world events, but I didn’t necessarily realize that this would continue.” When Laia and Elias' paths cross at the academy, they find that their destinies are more intertwined than either could have imagined and that their choices will change the future of the empire itself.“The story evolved in unexpected ways,” Sabaa Tahir acknowledges of her YA fantasy series An Ember in the Ashes, which concludes today with the release of A Sky Beyond the Storm. Elias is considering deserting the military, but before he can, he's ordered to participate in a ruthless contest to choose the next Martial emperor. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire's greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim they will help to save her brother from execution.Įlias is the academy's finest soldier - and secretly its most unwilling. Laia is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. It's a story that's literally burning to be told. ![]() Set in a terrifyingly brutal Rome-like world, An Ember in the Ashes is an epic fantasy debut about an orphan fighting for her family and a soldier fighting for his freedom.
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