Torch Against the Night (Tahir)

A Torch Against the Night  (Embers in the Ashes, #2)
Sabaa Tahir, 2016
Penguin Books
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101998878


Summary
Elias and Laia are running for their lives.

Following the events of the Fourth Trial, an army led by Masks hunts the two fugitives as they escape the city of Serra and journey across the vast lands of the Martial Empire.
 
Laia is determined to break int o Kauf—the Empire’s most secure and dangerous prison—and save her brother, whose knowledge of Serric steel is the key to the Scholars' future. And Elias is determined to stay by Laia’s side...even if it means giving up his own chance at freedom.
 
But Elias and Laia will have to fight every step of the way if they’re going 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.

Helene’s mission is horrifying, unwanted, and clear: find the traitor Elias Veturius and the Scholar slave who helped him escape...and kill them both. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981-82
• Raised—London, England (UK)
• Raised—Mojave Desert, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California-Los Angeles
• Currently—lives in Bay Area of San Francisco, California


Sabaa Tahir was born in London, England, but raised in a small outpost in California's Mojave Desert. She is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants who own a small 18-room motel at a U.S. military base. Growing up, Tahir was an outcast among her peers—the butt of bullying and taunts that she and her family should "go back to where they came from." That childhood experience of exclusion had a profound affect on Tahir's worldview.

Tahir left the desert at 17 to attend the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and after graduation took a job as a copy editor at the Washington Post. It was while working at the Post that she came across a news item that inspired her to write. A group of Pakistani women in the Indian-occupied region of Kashmir had lost all the men in their families. Husbands, sons, and fathers—all were taken away by the occupying forces; they disappeared without a clue as to where they were being held or what was happening to them.

That's the world we live in, Tahir realized. There was nothing she could do. Yet in her imagination, she could do something: she could create a world in which the oppressed could fight back. Out of that kernel, and after years writing and rewriting, came her first book, An Ember in the Ashes. The book is the first in a planned series and is already optioned for film. The second book, released in 2016, is A Torch Against the Night.

During the first book's creation, Tahir left the Washington Post, moved back to California with her husband, gave birth to two children, and continued writing. The family now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Adapted from Entertainment Weekly and other sources. Retrieved 9/6/2016.)

Book Reviews
The stakes here are high and the plot runs like a well-oiled machine, ratcheting up the tension with every chapter.
NPR.org
 
 
A Torch Against the Night is an unabashed page-turner that scarcely ever pauses for breath.
Christian Science Monitor
 

Fast-paced, exciting and full of adrenaline, A Torch Against The Night is everything fans of Tahir’s debut could possibly anticipate in a sequel.
Bucks County Courier Times


Delivers in every way.... The stakes have never been higher, and the tension is acutely felt as Elias and Laia run for their lives.
USA Today - Happy Ever After blog


(Starred review.) Tahir’s deft, polished debut alternates between two very different perspectives on the same brutal world, deepening both in the contrast. In a tale brimming with political intrigue and haunted by supernatural forces, the true tension comes from watching Elias and Laia struggle to decide where their loyalties lie.
Publishers Weekly


Told in the alternating voices of Elias, Laia, and Helene, this book is even darker and grimmer than the first, which readers will need to be familiar with in order to follow the twists and turns of the plot. Strong and compelling characters...and a number of action-packed sequences help keep things moving (Grade 9 & up). —Kathleen E. Gruver, Burlington County Library, Westampton, NJ
School Library Journal


(Starred review.) Tahir proves to be a master of suspense and a canny practitioner of the cliffhanger, riveting readers’ attention throughout.…[An] action-packed, breathlessly paced story.
Booklist


Tahir's follow-up to An Ember in the Ashes (2015) picks up right where Volume 1 left off, ratcheting up the tension (military and sexual) as well as the magic, the violence, and the stakes.... An excellent continuation of a series seemingly designed for readers of the political, bloody fantasy style du jour, set apart by an uncommon world (14 & up).
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for A Torch Against the Night...then take off on your own:

1. In what ways have Laia and Eilas changed from An Ember in the Ashes?

2. What about Helene—is there a way in which this second book could be considered her story?

3. What does Tahir reveal about the bloodthirsty emperor, Marcus? What hidden depths to his character do we see in this book, which were not revealed in the first?

4. A new villain is added to the series: the Warden of Kauf prison. What do you make of him?

5. Two plot twists in this story: were you surprised?

6. Care to talk about the sexual tension between Elias and Laia?

(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)

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