Day 04 - Family #BookReviewBlogChallenge

Find info about this challenge here. Keep up with prompts here.

The fourth prompt for the Book Review Blog Challenge hosted by Ann over at Great New Reads is family. The book I chose for this prompt I actually recently read (ha!) the 13th to the 22nd of this month. I had An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir on my radar for a while, but a friend asking me about it as she'd just started prompted me to see if the library had it available and it did on audiobook!

This book is a lot of things and I had my issues with it (that I won't really get into here) but what little family relationships here were strong.

Laia's relationship with her brother Darin is really the catalyst of this story. They are both Scholars living with their grandparents after their parents were killed when they were little, in Serra under Martial rule. They are treated as second-class citizens. A Mask, basically the elite soldiers of this world, captures her brother and murders her grandparents, thus starting her journey to try and rescue him. She goes through literal hell for him and learns some surprising things about him that really endeared him, to me at least. Her parents leave huge shoes to fill, her constantly told she doesn't live up to her mother's name (Lioness).

There is a sort of love square here with the two characters (Laia and Elias) who alternate POVs. Laia bounces between the Mask, Elias (who's not like other Masks) and a Resistance fighter and her handler, Kenan. While Elias has his old friend Helene that he's unsure if he has feelings for and Laia, who really just throws his whole life out of wack. These emotions, I think, are a little more realistic than most love triangles/squares/whatever.

Helene and Elias have just graduated and are two of four chosen as aspirant, the winner becoming new emperor (even though the current one is still alive) and the second becoming their blood shrike (which is a pretty cool title) while the other two die. These events feel very YA and pull the plot forward for Elias as Laia is tasked by the Resistance to spy on these trials by becoming the Commandant's new slave girl.

I think the opposite side of the coin of Laia's devotion to her brother, is Elias's relationship with his mother, the Commandant (which adds a nice layer of tension). She's cruel, mercilessly so, and loathes her son, even leaving him to die in the desert just after his birth and she actively wants him dead throughout the whole book. It's a little over the top, we get a little feel as to why towards the end, but definitely nothing that spawns sympathy. She's just evil and seeing her end will likely be very satisfying. Elias's grandfather and him have a surprisingly loyal relationship though, which was refreshing.

The other two Aspirants, Marcus and his twin Zac seemed to balance each other out in a way. Marcus is a piece of work while his brother is very subdued. There was a lot going on there.

I don't know, there was just a lot going on here in general! When this first book was published, Sabaa Tahir made it sound as though it was going to be a stand-alone (which with that ending... no!) but it's actually getting it's fourth and final book sometime this year. I've started the 2nd... here's hoping I can get caught up!