That may sound like a small nit to pick, but world-building in fantasy novels is important, and an entire race being known as 'the Scholars' is just, well, goofy. In the meantime, I wish Tahir had come up with better names for the Empire and its member ethnicities than 'the Martials,' 'the Scholars,' and 'the Mariners,' etc. The first-person narration of a slave trying to just stay alive instead of purposefully overthrow an Empire was new the first-person narration of Elias brings to mind the Kingslayer in some regards, but because he's also still essentially a college student, there is a nice amount of self-doubt and confusion that freshens things up.

Whether this is because of or in spite of the well-worn template that Ashes follows, it was definitely an interesting read. It's hard to establish a wholly creative and new fantasy word, and Tahir writes a gripping yarn that makes the 450 pages go really really quickly. That paragraph sounds much more negative than the book actually deserves. (I wouldn't make a point of the super-hot, but it's brought up more than twice in the book.) Elias quickly finds himself involved in the Tri-wizard Tournament to see who gets to be the new Emperor, while Queen Cersei tries to rig the outcome to make sure he doesn't win. Elias, in the meantime, has a super-hot and super-awesome best friend gladiator-ess named Helene, attends Blackcliff, and is thinking of deserting the empire. In the opening chapters, Laia's family is murdered, she finds the Resistance, and infiltrates Blackcliff, the military academy that Elias is about to graduate from.

The story alternates perspectives between Laia, a slave girl of the Scholar people, and Elias, a gladiator-like warrior from the Martial empire.

An Ember in the Ashes, by Sabaa Tahir came out a few years ago and was evidently a Times bestseller, but I hadn't heard of the series until book 2 made someone's year-end list on the AV Club recently.

Fantasy isn't a genre I normally pick up (I'm assuming the Game of Thrones books are the last fantasy books that I read), but I love a Hobbit as much as the next guy. For the Book Riot Read Harder 2017 Challenge, I needed to read a fantasy book.

An ember in the ashes book 3