An Ember in the Ashes

An Ember in the Ashes is a fantasy novel by the American writer Sabaa Tahir, published on 28 April 2015 by Razorbill. It is the first book of the series of the same name, followed by A Torch Against the Night.

The world is inspired by ancient Rome and rests on the rule of the Martial Empire over the conquered Scholars, who are forbidden their language, their books and their own names. Laia's brother is taken for treason, and the only people offering to help her get him out are the rebel Scholars, who will do it in exchange for information from inside the empire's greatest military academy, so she enters it as a slave. Elias is a student at that academy, trained to be one of the empire's enforcers and planning to desert. Tahir tells the story in alternating first-person chapters, so the two of them describe the same institution from opposite ends of it, and the brutality of the training is the setting for both accounts.

The series ran to four books, and Tahir built the empire from Roman models while keeping the politics of an occupied people at the front of the story.