Year: 2016
Pages: 454
Series: Ember Quarter #2
Genre: Fantasy
Blurb:
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 Scholar's 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 end the Scholar slave who helped him escape . . . and kill them both.
Review:
We are picking up right off the cliffhanger of An Ember in the Ashes, a book I absolutely love! Straight out of the action and into the escape. Laia and Elias don't have a chance to catch their breath as they're hunted out of Blackliff and Serra. Not with Marcus setting bounties for their capture and his new Blood Shrike, Helene set to find them.
We continue to have Laia and Elias guide us through their narratives in this book and we have Helene's point of view added. It's an eye in to the working of the Empire and what further work is at play whilst Laia and Elia try to hide themselves from the world.
As we travel with Laia and Elias we experience a wonderful amount of world building, we experience new settings and learn a little more of what was hinted at in the first book. The magical elements of this world still have a lot to reveal and I'm excited to see it all unfold. Our three main characters are impacted by this in different ways and I can only imagine how glorious it's going to be!
Elias is suffering with the choices he made in the Trials of An Ember in the Ashes and the consequences of the fighting he had to do to get himself and Laia out of Serra. There's a lot of development for Elias in that book. Not in the way of empathy, I feel he had a lot of that in the first book but the journey he goes on is intense and changing in a very different way. No idea what role he's going to play from this point on, it's going to be very interesting.
Laia is much the same as the first book, perhaps a little more determined to find her brother now she's made her way out of Blackliff. She's gained strength and is exploring more about herself and the world she lives in. She has to take charge of the situation at some points but is generally still getting rescued, that subtly starts to change towards the end of the book and I see so much more to come from her.
Helene is a point of view that is very interesting to see. Being given this insight in to the Empire and the horrors she suffers at the hand of Marcus and the Commandant whilst there is quite shocking. I have a lot more empathy for her than I did in the first book and I began really rooting for her. She has some fantastic interactions with Cook and a whole new character I'm quite interested in, Harper, is introduced through her narrative. I like him.
We're in for a few shocks and a quickly developing plot in this one. There's a lot going on in the Empire and without Helene's narrative we wouldn't have a clue so it's a really necessary addition. This is becoming a complex story and there's so much unfolding yet to happen. It's going to be fantastic!
No comments:
Post a Comment