(5 stars) Sabaa Tahir delivers another masterpiece of fiction.
Warning: considering this book is the fourth in a series, this post contains spoilers for books one, two, and three.
I was deeply excited to start A Sky Beyond the Storm, the fourth and final book in the An Ember in the Ashes series, having been looking forward to its release for almost a year.
Opening to the first page filled me with intense anticipation, and I was immediately sucked back into the complex, intense world of Sabaa Tahir’s Martial Empire.
Picking up two months after the end of A Reaper at the Gates, A Sky Beyond the Storm follows Laia reckoning with the loss of Elias and trying to stop the Nightbringer, Helene trying to save the war-torn Empire and protect her nephew the Emperor, Elias finding tensions in his role as Soul Catcher, and the Nightbringer causing mass destruction. The plot seems to have grown ever more complicated as the series continues, resulting in this kind of quadruple-storyline.
With chapters from the perspectives of five different characters—Laia, Elias (the Soul Catcher), Helene (the Blood Shrike), Keris (the Commandant), and the Nightbringer—Sabaa Tahir carefully pulls together the threads of the diverse characters her readers have come to know and love (or hate, in some cases). Interestingly, Tahir allows each character to follow their own story, which leads to the characters being apart for much of the book. Despite the huge potential for this format to be incredibly confusing, Tahir masters the art of keeping her readers oriented. I ended up really enjoying this unique split storyline—her characters each have a clear motivation and goal, so it makes sense for their exploits to be differentiated as well.
While I generally loved the plot, my main issues with the book also arose in this realm. First, at the beginning of A Sky Beyond the Storm, Helene and Laia suddenly seem to be best friends. Considering their interactions in the past three books—which include multiple murder attempts—and the state of their extremely reluctant alliance at the end of the third book, this simply didn’t make sense to me as a reader. Something amazing must have happened in those two months for two women with such violent, dark history to be able to tease and joke together with such easy dynamics. I was confused (and maybe a little bit annoyed) at the plot hole here, yet I ultimately enjoyed reading about Laia and Helene’s friendship. Even though this particular inconsistency bothered me, Tahir is generally very good at tying up her loose ends and making everything interconnected—essentially, I could forgive her.
Something else Tahir does very well is considering the passage of time in her books.
The right moments are slowed down, and when she does give weight to every glance, clash of a scim, and snippet of dialogue, she creates a masterpiece.
However, especially in this book, there were some places where I felt she skipped over too much time, and I was left wanting more detail. There were a few times where she essentially said, “we spent two weeks at the city” or “we spent a month riding” and I wanted to hear more about the characters’ experiences during those time periods. Again, this is a plot issue that bothered me yet was easy to forgive considering the quality of the book.
One of Tahir’s greatest strengths is her worldbuilding. The Martial Empire and surrounding areas are very well planned and developed, culturally and politically. Her world is complex and beautiful, exciting and immaculate. Her setting, combined with her masterful prose, breeds gems such as, “Eerie rock formations rise into the sky, each a hundred wind-blasted shades of the sun. Purple rain clouds lay heavy on the horizon, and the freezing wind carries the sharp, almost medicinal smell of creosote.” Here, her vivid descriptive language oozes with dark mystery, tension between heat and cold, and the suspense of an imminent electric storm. This description perfectly compliments Laia’s situation at this moment, demonstrating Tahir’s masterful marriage of plot and setting.
Another place Tahir’s writing skills shine is in her romance. Although I sometimes found assorted characters’ impassioned speeches a little bit stereotypical and dramatic, I think it is understandable considering the entire series’ hyper-saturated nature—that is, Tahir seems to write everything at 110% percent, so why shouldn’t her romances reside in that range as well? The slightly untimely proclamations of love aside, I appreciate how being in a relationship meant something different for each character, whether that is hope, freedom, confusion, heartbreak, or self-discovery. Again, this speaks to Tahir’s strong character development and differentiation. And it means that the prose for each romance and each perspective is individualized, and we get to read lines like these: “Or perhaps she’s simply beautiful, and looking at her feels like sunlight flowing into a room lost to the darkness for too long.”
Tahir’s writing is equally powerful in its complexity and simplicity—the line above is an example of a long line, yet Tahir’s writing has an impact in even fewer words. With simple, meaningful sentences such as “the stew tastes like memories,” Tahir uses her skills as a poetic writer to develop her characters and plot into a gorgeous, multi-dimensional story.
I also deeply appreciated the ties to previous books Tahir weaved into her prose.
Each time she mentions an ember is a lovely little treat for her reader—a delicious reference tucked carefully into the fast-paced plot.
One of my favorite such lines is, “A thick layer of cloud rests atop the eastern horizon, and the sky pales, the deep orange glow of an ember breathed into life.” The significant placement of this line in the book and the beautiful descriptive language add an entirely new layer of self-referential reflection to the characters’ stories.
Ultimately, Sabaa Tahir’s A Sky Beyond the Storm begins with a proverbial knot of different characters’ plots, which are slowly interwoven into a cohesive climax. The book builds upon Tahir’s three equally-wonderful previous novels to cleanly tie the series together. It’s beautiful and complex, encapsulating and heartbreaking, and capitalizes upon Tahir’s years of wonderful storytelling.
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