Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear. Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death.

'Flipping the no vacancy sign was always a really huge deal because it happened so rarely,' Tahir remembers.Laia is a slave. Even though the motel was near a bustling military base, it wasn't the financial success her parents had hoped for. Her parents owned a motel with 18 rooms and a pool they didn't always fill. Tahir grew up in an isolated town in the Mojave Desert. She also appreciates the rich, dense layers of Tahir's fantasy world, which borrows from ancient Sparta, Bedouin culture and the loneliness of the author's own California childhood. 'It felt so strange to be able to see from her perspective because she is so horrible,' Rutkoski says. She says Tahir's book is unlike The Hunger Games because Tahir writes from multiple points of view, showing empathy even with the merciless headmistress of the military school that the main character, Laia, has infiltrated. Marie Rutkoski is an English professor who also writes young adult fiction. I was thinking about my own brothers - I'm very close to them - and the idea that I could live in a place where they could just be taken.'īook Reviews Rome's Might Meets The Arabian Nights In 'Ember In The Ashes'īut at least one critic thinks An Ember in the Ashes is something all its own. 'I remember walking through the Post garage and thinking about it. After work that day, she couldn't get the story out of her head. 'And you know where, through maybe any twist of fate, I could've potentially grown up,' Tahir says.

The story had been filed in Kashmir, near Pakistan, where her family is originally from. 'It's not always clear what the charges are and a lot of these women never find out what's happened to their family member,' Tahir says. She was assigned to edit a haunting news story by Emily Wax about women in India whose husbands, sons and brothers had been disappeared by state police. Tahir says she got the germ of the idea for the story in 2007, when she was working as an editor at The Washington Post. Tahir's young adult fantasy series 'An Ember in the Ashes' follows a teenage girl fighting against the military empire that threatens her family. And according to author Sabaa Tahir - whose new book, A Torch Against the Night, continues that trend - if you look at today's headlines, the genre's popularity makes sense: After all, the news is where she found her inspiration.

There's an insatiable appetite, it seems, for books about young people killing each other in made-up militarized societies. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title A Torch Against the Night Author Sabaa Tahir

An ember in the ashes book