Monday, January 16

Blodeuedd's Monday Review: A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir

Elias and Laia are running for their lives. After the events of the Fourth Trial, Martial soldiers hunt the two fugitives as they flee the city of Serra and undertake a perilous journey through the heart of the Empire.

Laia is determined to break into Kauf—the Empire’s most secure and dangerous prison—to save her brother, who is the key to the Scholars’ survival. And Elias is determined to help Laia succeed, even if it means giving up his last chance at freedom.

But dark forces, human and otherworldly, work against Laia and Elias. The pair must fight every step of the way to outsmart their enemies: the bloodthirsty Emperor Marcus, the merciless Commandant, the sadistic Warden of Kauf, and, most heartbreaking of all, Helene—Elias’s former friend and the Empire’s newest Blood Shrike.

Bound to Marcus’s will, Helene faces a torturous mission of her own—one that might destroy her: find the traitor Elias Veturius and the Scholar slave who helped him escape…and kill them both. 

My thoughts:
Two days later, as always...I also want to make this short cos I am 2 reviews behind...

It was good, but nope, not AS good as the first one. That one was darker, and even if this one was dark, it felt...YA dark (that is not a good thing.)

Elias was a ghost of himself and did not do a lot. Sure I wanted him to live, but at the same time meh.

I think I did not really care for Laia in book 1? I can not remember, but here I sure did not. What a forgettable boring girl. She is no heroine in my eyes.  And that whole guy thing, *eyeroll*

Helen, hmm, I do not really want a happy ending for her, because she is killing a lot in this book. I get that she is second to the Emperor now, but sheesh, that guy is insane. Stop killing people. I hope you die, even if you are the most interesting person in the book. Also she was so, oh Elias!

The whole book is about them getting to that prison. It did not have the same edge. It bordered on ok at times.

But I will read more, I want to know what happens. And even if it was good I was disappointed. Nothing was the same as book 1. Not the characters, not the story, not the world.

Cover
boring

Hardcover, 452 pages
Published August 30th 2016 by Razorbill
An Ember in the Ashes #2
Fantasy YA
Library

3 comments:

Carole Rae said...

Isn't this the sequel to the book we read?

Blodeuedd said...

I thought I read it on my own...hmm, dunno

Anachronist said...

Sounds horrible, like most YAs to me nowadays. Thanks for the warning.