A Torch Against the Night: 2 (Ember in the Ashes)

Product Information

Ladies and gentlemen, mesdams et messieurs, signore e signori, I welcome you to the cliché fair –with quotes. Normally the start of a second book is so slow but this one literally pulls you right in and I was so stressed reading the first few chapters.

Tahir's most recent novel, All My Rage, won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, was an instant New York Times bestseller, received eight starred reviews and won the 2022 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry. The first book in the series was very good, and although it did replicate many of the tropes we keep seeing across the young adult genre, it did have a fair bit of originality. This sequel painted him in true hero colors, highlighting his altruism, his devotion, his intensity and, most of all, his fairness. And watching the way Elias and Laia both help each other become the better version of themselves was the highlight of the book for me. this one is certainly not lacking in action or worldbuilding or interesting characters - there's plenty for them to do, and the stakes are sky-high, but it just didn't seem as well-constructed as An Ember in the Ashes.This series has such strong characters, you easily fall in love with them and hope for there happiness. I cannot wait to see how this colder, broken, hollowed Helene is going to enact her revenge and show the world her wrath. I can’t help but repeat that she succeeds in combining beautiful moments and sentiments with savage murders, raw brutality, loss of innocence and despair. It’s what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air. Overall this is a great sequel with a fun adventure but even though this book is thick, I wish we had more Helene.

While I think An Ember in the Ashes is the stronger novel overall, A Torch Against the Night was still a fantastic follow up.BUT, after I passed the 150 page mark and got over the map snubbing I got that same thrill I did when reading Embers. In the city of Serra, Helene Aquilla finds herself bound to the will of the Empire’s twisted new leader, Marcus.

I appreciated this element, however if you prefer a more laid-back sort of pace, then you might not. there's a rushed quality to the plotting here - many instances where it comes across like a breathless, "we need to do this oh now we are doing it, good! 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. He reminds me of Jack in Bridget Jones' Baby, a film I watched recently - very try hard, and a bit of a douche, who (to me) has relatively little reason to be there (at least for most of the book). It happened to me before that I became very attached to a certain character, but in the next book she/he changed a bit, and the connection broke off.The story is told from three perspectives: Laia, Elias and Helene and I love them all so damn much, it hurts.

Last time round it didn’t matter when they switched; their stories were in different places, but when two people who are travelling together swap back and forth it becomes slightly redundant. She forgot how Keenan belittled her or suffocated her because he was so warm and familiar and I couldn’t help but shout YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HIM DARN IT, GET OVER HIS WARMTH! They are a plague that makes good stories turn sour, and characters you once respected insufferable.

This is also allowed a further understanding of her feelings towards Elias, which was much appreciated. It didn't feel like it was bridging a gap - the story moves along, many important and awful things happen, secrets are revealed and Tahir rounds off this installment well, whilst still promising so much more from the next book. Laia and Elias are determined to break into the Empire's most secure and dangerous prison to save Laia's brother, even if for Elias it means giving up his last chance at freedom. In some ways, Helene’s character growth reminded me a lot of Zuko’s from Avatar: The Last Airbender, but in Helen’s case, my patience wears thin, for Zuko was just a teenager while Helene is a twenty-something adult woman. There is nothing, absolutely nothing about him that can be considered unexpected or unpredictable, nothing that isn’t perfectly in line with the type of person it was at the beginning of book one.