An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

An awesome and engrossing series is unfolding here. 

You will just love the brave young heroes and heroines in Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes, who fight for love, family and freedom in an empire at war. I am still waiting to get my hands on book three - iiin the meantime let me tell you about the first book in the series, An Ember in the Ashes. 

Laia and Elias live within an empire built on corruption, oppression and class domination. Laia is from the underclasses, the peasants, who work for the empire as slaves or servants. Elias is an elite soldier in the Blackcliff Military Academy, privileged but trained to do the biding of the emperor, trained to kill. 

Recently Elias has become disillusioned with the destiny bestowed on him. He has had enough of the violence and tyranny of his calling and has been planning an escape through the many tunnels under the ancient city.

On the very evening that Elias has planned to escape, Laia’s home is raided and her brother Darin is arrested for treason. In the scuffle to stop the soldiers taking Darin away, Laia’s grandparents are brutally murdered before their eyes. Laia runs from the aggressors but vows to find Darin and help him escape.

In the depths of the ancient city’s catacombs Laia seeks out and enlists the help of rebel insurgents. They arrange for her to stand in as a servant to the cruel and malicious ‘Commandant’ - leader of the empire’s armies and the Blackcliff Academy. The Commandant just happens to be Elias’s birth mother.

Laia believes that if she can survive the cruelties dished out by the abusive Commandant she will find information about where Darin is being kept. But the paths of Elias and Laia are about to cross and it seems like their destinies may be inextricably connected.  

   

But before either of them are able to achieve their missions, Elias and his best friend and combat partner Helene are given an even greater set of challenges; they must go to battle in a series of mystical and merciless trials … unto to the death.   

An Ember in the Ashes is part of a (so far!) series of three. The following books in this series are:

A Torch Against the Night & Reaper at the Gates.                               Zinga Rating *****

https://www.sabaatahir.com/books/an-ember-in-the-ashes  

    

                                   

An Uninterrupted View of the Sky by Melanie Crowder

It is wonderful to see more young adult books about diverse cultures and communities making it to publication and receiving the promotion and recognition they deserve. We need well written stories that give us the opportunity to step into new cultures and view life through someone else’s eyes. Diverse books give us understanding and compassion and allow us see ourselves, in all our otherness, reflected in the stories we read.

The current attention to diversity titles may be due in part to the campaign called ‘We need diverse books’ which recognises that children’s books don’t always reflect the diversity that can be found in every community and classroom.

Last year, while reading the School Library Journal I came across a review for a terrific new book called An Uninterrupted View of the Sky, set in Bolivia, South America. This book grabbed my interest because it is not only about stepping into another culture, it is about a culture that I actually have stepped into!

In 2014 I travelled to Cochabamba, Bolivia and walked the very streets this book is set in . I wandered the cancha’s (markets) and took the high-altitude, low-oxygen climb above the streets to view the Cristo del Concordia.  While I was there I met many beautiful young people whose lives had also been interrupted by time spent in prison due to their parents' incarceration. These teenagers impressed us with their resilience in such a broken and corrupt society.

*            *          *   

And so to the story.

Francisco's Papa is a poet from the rural Andes. He loved his rural roots but moved to the city of Cochabamba to give his children education and opportunity. When Papa is shockingly arrested on false drug trafficking charges, Francisco’s mother gives up all hope for a better future and abandons her home and family. With no home to go to, Francisco and his sister Pilar must stay at the jail with their father, as is the custom in many South American cities.

Though Papa is in deep despair he hangs on to his belief that Francisco must be the one to break through the poverty cycle. He encourages Francisco to keep working hard on his grades so that he can attend university and acquire the skills to challenge and the change the corrupt legal systems of the city. As the harrowing weeks pass, where they attend school during the day and go home to the prison at night, Francisco and Pilar realise another of their classmates is also living in the prison. Pilar befriends Soledad, a teenage girl who is in grave danger living in the prison cells, but who has nowhere else to go. 

Soledad’s grim situation motivates Francisco to take Pilar and Soledad back to their father’s Andean home. Francisco is astonished to find how beautiful and peaceful it is and he begins to understand his father’s dream for him.  

In the last few pages of the book Francisco, still living in the village, receives a letter. He has been successful in his application to attend San Simon University.  

Melanie Crowder has done a wonderful job of drawing an accurate picture of the realities of life in this harsh country, but like the poetry of Francisco’s father she manages to weave a message of hope and possibility throughout the heart-wrenching imagery.

A wonderfully well-written and engaging story.

Zinga rating: 5 *****

Lauren Wolk

This month I am introducing the work of Lauren Wolk, author of two recently published children's/ young adult titles.
                                                           

In 2016 Lauren Wolk published the rural American post-war novel Wolf Hollow, to great acclaim - and it went on to win a Newbery Honor medal for 2017. In an interview with Denise Mealy, Lauren talks about her inspiration for the setting of Wolf Hollow:

Lauren Wolk: My mother’s stories of her childhood on a small farm in western Pennsylvania inspired Wolf Hollow. So did many, many wonderful visits there, from the time I was a baby right up until my grandmother died at 96, in 2014. Three generations of that farming family taught me about life during World War II—through stories and hundreds of photographs (yes, a picture of my mother and her brothers really did win a camera and a lifetime of film)—but the farm itself taught me about rural life. Not much changed from my mother’s childhood to my own. The farm was the same beautiful place where everyone worked very hard and valued simple things, like gathering on the porch when a storm moved through, or sitting around the kitchen table at night, peeling apples for pies, or picking anything and everything ripe, from peaches and melons to tomatoes and raspberries. It was a hard, magical, unforgettable way of life, and I miss it very much.

www.thechildrensbookreview.com/weblog/2016/10/lauren-wolk-discusses-wolf-hollow.html 

Not long afterwards, in late 2017, the beautiful Beyond the Bright Sea had emerged and was ready for print. This time a sea-wrecked sailor, his adopted daughter and their ramshackle island home create the setting, making for a riveting mystery adventure.

https://www.thechildrensbookreview.com/weblog/2017/05/get-to-know-crow-from-lauren-wolks-beyond-the-bright-sea.html

These novels are wonderful children's stories that evoke the simpler life of days gone by - subtly interlaced with the prejudice that was rife, accepted and unchallenged through this time.

In both stories Wolk's young heroines quietly question those judgements and challenge the beliefs of those around them. Delightful reading!


My Zinga Rating  - Five Stars ✭✭✭✭✭