Late to the Party Review: AN EMBER IN THE ASHES

An Ember in the Ashes has been on my TBR for a while, and since it's a couple years old, I'm calling this a "Late to the Party" review because I'm obviously a little late on reading and reviewing it. I didn't really plan to write a review, originally. I didn't think I'd have much to say. But boy, oh boy, I do.

Alright everybody. Books like this one are the reason I call myself Angry Book Lady. Because this book made me angry. Long review warning, everybody!

The sad thing is, I really expected to like this book. If you look on Goodreads, there's practically nothing but positive reviews for it. I expected that it would quickly go on my fantasy favorites shelf, but it missed the mark. Though An Ember in the Ashes has some virtues, it suffers from too many clichés, an annoying romance, and a lack of original ideas.

This book is a high fantasy that takes place in an ancient Rome-inspired world. A brutal race called the Martials conquered the peaceful Scholars, now ruling over their huge empire with an iron fist. The Martials are warriors, and the Scholars are, well, scholars. The Martials (like most evil empires in books) are cruel and oppressive. 

I had high hopes for the worldbuilding, but it fell short of my expectations. The general order of the world is established, with the system of classes and a bit of lore, but it doesn't go much beyond that. There were only touches of history, culture, and politics. I liked the ancient Rome inspiration, but to be honest, most of the worldbuilding concepts in the book are very similar to concepts found in many other fantasy series: An evil empire, a class system, a resistance, as well as bits of mythology thrown in...how is this any different from the world of Throne of Glass or Red Queen?

The one aspect of the worldbuilding that I did like was the Middle-Eastern lore. Creatures like jinn, ghuls, and efrits play a small role in the story, but I felt the author failed to capitalize on them. If they had played a bigger role in the story, I think I would have been a lot more impressed with the worldbuilding.

There are two main characters: Laia, a poor scholar girl, and Elias, a high-ranking Martial at the brutal Martial military academy. When Laia's brother is taken by the Masks (super duper evil Martial warriors), she joins the Scholar Resistance to get them back. But to convince the Resistance to help her, she has to undertake an impossible mission: become a slave in order to spy on the military academy. Meanwhile, Elias is hiding the fact that he actually hates the Martial Empire. 

In my opinion, both Laia and Elias were weak characters. Laia was a cookie-cutter YA female character--except even less compelling than most others. Her personality felt threadbare. She has no skills or passions, and hardly any convictions other than saving her brother. There is nothing remarkable or even particularly likable about her. She's kind of like if you took all the YA female protagonists from popular books, stripped them of all the things that made them cool, and then mashed them together into one bland character.

Elias was slightly more bearable. Unlike Laia, he has actual skills, as a highly-trained warrior. He faces a lot of moral conflictions over the evil things his people do. At the same time, I also got to feeling like he was too perfect. He rarely makes questionable decisions, but when he does, he immediately regrets them. His moral compass is never off. It would have been nice for him to have some flaws.

However, Elias's  personality also got bogged down by the dumb romance plotline. Besides how morally conflicted he is, the only thing Elias really thinks about is women; specifically, which woman he should get with. The moment he meets Laia, all he can think about is how attractive she is. At the same time, he's suddenly getting overwhelming feelings of attraction for his female best friend. He was extremely clueless about how to deal with women, instead getting caught up in pondering how the "female brain" really works and losing his mind about how attractive his two love interests are. 

 Now that we're getting into the romance, lemme just say that it was love triangle heaven. Folks, gather round, gather round, because here I present to you an ingenious concept that this author has introduced: The DOUBLE love triangle.

Maybe it should be more like a love...square? Yeah...

The entire romantic situation was so, so contrived. It did nothing but create useless drama, to the point that I felt like the two characters who were eventually rejected were created solely to be players in the clichéd romantic drama, rather than being actual characters.

I really, really, wanted to like Helene. The only female warrior at an all male military academy? That's pretty kickass. The idea of her character is very appealing. However, I absolutely hated the way she was treated throughout the entire book. I felt she was horribly shortchanged by the author just to advance the romance plotline between Laia and Elias. Again, I feel like she was created solely to be a romantic rival for Laia, rather than actually be an interesting character.

As for Keenan? Don't even talk to me about that dude. If Helene was bad, he was worse. So much worse. To be honest, who even is this guy? And why am I supposed to care about him? He's Laia's mission handler. He's a resistance fighter. That's all I know, but somehow, I'm supposed to believe that he and Laia are "in love"? After meeting like, what...five times? After having maybe one real conversation?

Enough said.

Despite the character and romance issues, I didn't have any problems with the quality of writing. The plot was reasonably interesting, with lots of action to keep things going. There's nothing wrong with the author's writing style; in fact, I liked it and I felt engaged in the book from the beginning.

Now, there is one problematic aspect of this book that I want to discuss: (there may be small spoilers ahead) I was concerned about the fact that throughout the entire book, the female characters were constantly under the threat of rape. The amount of times that rape was mentioned in this book was just ridiculous and frankly, gratuitous.

Both of the major female characters were subjected to sexual assault, sexual harassment, and threats of rape throughout the entire book. Rape is mentioned casually in conversations constantly. Multiple instances of sexual assault and attempted rape are presented as major plot points, like one where a female character is nearly beaten to death by a male character trying to rape her; and later, being "given" to a male character as a "prize" for winning a challenge. There was even a scene in which a male character had to pretend to be raping a female character to "protect her" from a villain. Oh, most disgustingly, at the end of the book, a female character is forced to become bound to a man who sexually assaulted her and threatened to rape her, all to save another male character. And supposedly she "chose" this freely, because she "loves" this character so much.

Not to mention, there were many instances in which female characters were told to cover up their bodies, or even disfigure themselves in order to prevent from being raped. I am not kidding, the first time Elias sees Laia (when he's struck by her mind-blowing beauty), he immediately advises her to cover up, or else she might get raped. Yeah, well you know what? Please stop the victim-blaming BS. Let's not pretend that only attractive women who dress provocatively get raped or sexually assaulted. Women who cover their entire bodies get raped. Women who are not "attractive" get raped. Women with disabilities get raped. Let's stop pretending that a woman's appearance is what causes rape. Rape is a crime that is caused by disgusting, sadistic criminals who seek to dominate, abuse, and hurt women. Not beauty or provacative clothes.

I'm not saying at all that this book romanticized or glorified rape, but the fact that there was so much of it is alarming to me.

Sure, it's realistic to include the threats of rape and sexual assault when you're writing about a male-dominated society, but is it really necessary to build so much of the plot and character development around it? There are ways to discuss the oppression of women in a book besides including excessive rape, and I don't feel this book really addressed the female oppression at all. I do not understand why so many authors think that the way to send a message of female empowerment in a book is to treat women badly.

Yikes. This was a long review. It turned out a lot more rant-y than I thought it would.

Well, I guess I should say that An Ember in the Ashes isn't the worst book I've read, nor the most problematic. It reminded me a bit of Throne of Glass (except ToG has better characters, and no excessive rape), so I guess if you enjoyed that series, you may like this one. However, it's going to be staying far away from my favorites shelf.