Review- A Torch Against the Night

Stars: 5 stars
Author: Sabaa Tahir
Genre: YA Fantasy
Publisher: Razorbill


Review:

ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I'm happy to report that after a decidedly difficult experience with the first book, An Ember in the Ashes I LOVED this installment. Maybe I loved it because it reads more like traditional adult fantasy than the first one. Tahir doesn't pull any punches with the amount of dark and downright horrible things that happen in this second installment-- and I respected her commitment to the story and the characters.

It took me more than a third of the first book to get into the story largely because it read like most other teen fantasy novels. There were a bunch of love trials and what felt like teenage angst. There were hints that Laia was more than what she seemed, a lot of things that have been done a lot by a lot of people.

However, by the second third of the first book, there were hints of depth and Laia's character had started to fill out. The introductory and development of the secondary characters like Izzi, Cook and Helene started to work and I started to care what happened to them. There were a lot of mysterious elements introduced in that first installment not properly answered and sadly, many of them were again NOT answered in Torch. Like WHO is this Cook person?! (I have my suspicions.)

But, in this installment, Laia is fully formed as a character. She is fierce and tenious-- someone you can really route for. More importantly so is Elias. His demons come front and center in this book and he becomes a character that I really, really connected with. I wanted his and Laia's love story so bad! I did not feel fulfilled! That alone will get me reading book 3.

Even better, we get into Helene's head and find her to be a deeply conflicted, rounded character. Somehow the three head POV rotation works here in a way that it maybe doesn't for me a lot of the time. In the first book, I mostly wanted to brush off Helene because I couldn't really understand her blind allegiance to the empire despite the genuinely shitty things that were happening to and around her. Here, we get to see inside her head, what makes her tick, and understand the truly horrible choices put before her.

The setting reads like Gladiator which is unique, but the newness ends there. Book one introduces relatively little of what would be found in adult fantasy and so the Romanesque setting is really the only novelty from other YA reads in this genre. What I really liked in Torch was the full-on dive into fantasy: wraiths, the Forest of Souls, magical abilities, etc. There are elements of great fantasy here, reminiscent of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. And as I said before, Tahir doesn't shy away from the darkness. People die. There is a genocide. There is torture. These elements make the story incredibly engrossing and much more emotionally relevant than if Tahir had written a lighter, more friendly book. At the end, I was DYING for the next installment (which I will have to wait until next year for!!!! *sighs*)