Fans of Sabaa Tahir’s Ember in the Ashes series will love this spinoff duology. Full of all the elements which Tahir’s fans are used to (stunning prose, enthralling mythology, and deeply relatable characters) this book easily grabs the readers’ attention and holds on to it.
Set 20 years after the conclusion of the Ember series, this novel follows Quil (the baby Ember fans saw born in that quartet) now as a grown man ready to take the throne of the Martial Empire. A series of events force Quil and his best friends Arelia and Sufiyan (another descendant of characters from the last series) to travel across the continent searching for an asset that could change the tides of war. On their travels they become entangled with Sirsha, another point of view character, who is on a mission to hunt down a killer who burns hearts out of their victim’s chests. In addition to Quil and Sirsha, the novel also has point of view chapters from Aiz and Cero, two characters born far away from the Martial empire and struggling under an oppressive rulership that depends on raiding to keep the people alive. As the novel progresses, the lives of all four characters grow interconnected in a web of romance, politics, and deceit.
In true Tahir fashion, this world is brutal. The descriptions of war and battle are vivid. Tahir doesn’t shy away from showing the inability to protect anyone during war and focuses on the loss of the innocent. However, the cruelness of the world is well balanced by all the love between the characters and by the rich descriptions of the various cultures in the novel. Tahir builds on the fantasy elements that she created in the Ember series and takes the time in this spinoff to add additional elements to the magic systems and to expand on previous communities that weren’t seen much in her last series.
Just as with her first series, Tahir creates characters that are easy to support and understand. She writes them in such a way that even when they’re digging themselves into ever deeper holes, their decisions make sense for the world and the characters. Fans will also be pleasantly surprised to read appearances from beloved characters from the Ember series.
Despite building on the world of a previous series, this book can be read as a standalone and the readers won’t feel lost if they decide to pick up Heir without reading the Ember series beforehand. As a matter of fact, new readers might have an advantage over old fans in that they won’t yet have learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to Tahir’s plot twists.
- Liliana