Sabaa Tahir: A Torch against the Night

In A Torch Against the Night, Sabaa Tahir continues the story of Elias and Laia, two people with very different pasts struggling against an empire that has become corrupt, violent and cruel.

Elias and Laia, fleeing the destruction of the military complex of Blackcliff, part military training school, part imperial barracks, part prison, have embarked on a desperate mission to free Laia’s brother Darien from the feared prison of Kaur.

The ascent to power of the new Emperor Marcus, a particularly vicious former Mask - a magically augmented Imperial soldier - has brought about political instability, which Elias’s mother, Keris, the ruthless Commandant of the Imperial Academy, seeks to use for her own ambitions. The rebellion of the .scholars, a conquered servant class, has been brutally put down by Marcus and the Commandant, and Helene Aquila, Elias’ former ally, has been appointed Blood Shrike - the leader of the Emperor’s personal military force, the Black Guard - and her first task is to find, torture and execute Elias for his treason.

It’s a non-stop chase across deserts and mountains, with the political terrain as uncertain as the physical. Allies are tested, traitors uncovered, unlikely partnerships formed, and long-laid plots revealed.

Tahir takes her characters in directions I had not expected, and the twists in the story kept me quite fully engaged. Looking forward to the next volume.

Intisar Khanani: Memories of Ash

One of my most distracting first-world problems is the multiple consequences of there being too many books and not enough time. With so many interesting books clamouring for my attention, I often find that I’ve read, and deeply enjoyed, the first one or two books in a series, but then gotten distracted by other equally interesting and enjoyable books, and years go by before I get around to the next in the series.

Some two or three years ago, I read Intisar Khanani’s secondary world fantasy novella Sunbolt, about a young thief and potential mage named Hitomi. And now I am finally reading Memories of Ash, the novel that continues Hitomi’s story.

It has been a year since the events related in Sunbolt. Hitomi, has survived the desperate awakening of her magic in the casting of the sunbolt that killed the monster threatening her and the breather Valerius - a kind of vampire who feeds, not on blood but on the breath and life force of others, but at great cost. Near death, and with much of her memory burned away, Valerius brought her to the healing mage Stormwind and persuaded her to help Hitomi.

Now, she is healthy, and has regained some of her memories, though it is likely that she will never completely regain her past. More, Stormwind has been teaching her magic, for her own protection and that of those around her, even though she is a rogue mage, one who was never tested and enrolled in the mage academy.

But her old enemy, the dark mage Blackflame, is about to cause more devastation for Hitomi. He holds an old grudge against Stormwind, and has persuaded the Mage Council that she is guilty of crimes against the Council. At Stormwind’s insistence, Hitomi hides her true abilities from the mage sent to bring Stormwind to trial, but once she discovers that Stormwind has been betrayed and will be found guilty, Hitomi sets out to rescue her teacher and mentor.

Hitomi dares much, and risks everything, to save Stormwind in this well-crafted and thoroughly engrossing tale of adventure and intrigue. I am just as enchanted by the lead character as I was in the first installment of these chronicles, and Khanai’s worldbuilding is a delight. And the story is only beginning, with so many different paths and possibilities for Hitomi’s future. I very much hope that Khanani will soon be ready to give us part three of the Sunbolt Chronicles.