An Ember In The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir is a dystopian, fantasy story about two characters with very different perspective, Laia and Elias. Laia is a Scholar living under the barbarous rule of the Martial Empire, Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. Most of her people have been enslaved, are poor and treated badly by the Martials. For Elias, it’s the opposite. He has seen and endured monstrous and cruel trainings and acts, he is one of the empire’s elite soldiers, but secretly he is desperate to be freed from the tyranny he is being trained to enforce and find meaning to his own life. However, the paths of these two characters intertwine when Laia’s brother