Once Upon a Twilight!: Blog Tour: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Welcome to our stop on An Ember in the Ashes tour for Sabaa Tahir. This tour is hosted by PenguinTeen.

An Ember in the Ashes
Author: Sabaa Tahir
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Released: April 28th 2015
Review Source: Razorbill

Set in a terrifyingly brutal Rome-like world, An Ember in the Ashes is an epic fantasy debut about an orphan fighting for her family and a soldier fighting for his freedom. It’s a story that’s literally burning to be told.

LAIA is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire’s greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution.

ELIAS is the academy’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias is considering deserting the military, but before he can, he’s ordered to participate in a ruthless contest to choose the next Martial emperor.

When Laia and Elias’s paths cross at the academy, they find that their destinies are more intertwined than either could have imagined and that their choices will change the future of the empire itself.

Top 5: Favorite Moments

There are my favorite “non-obvious” moments from the publishing process, in no particular order.

1. Meeting so many awesome people at Comic Con.

Credit is Scott Seraydarian

2. Overhearing my then two-year-old tunelessly singing a song in which the only lyrics were “An Emba in da AAAshes! And Emba in da AAAshes!”

3. The first time I met the Penguin and Razorbill team in New York.

4. Two fan letters I got at ALA Mid-Winter from awesome teenagers in California. Whoa waterworks.

5. My parents reaction when I told them I sold my book, which was a very casual “Well yes, of course you did. Now to more important things. How are our grandbabies?”

Click the image below to PRE-ORDER!

Spent my childhood in the Mojave Desert, where I didn’t have cable and thus chose to entertain myself with books and radio. My parents assured me that I wanted to become a doctor, but a brief stint working in a hospital changed my mind.

I left the desert for university at 17, graduated from UCLA a few years later, and went to work for The Washington Post directly after. Five years later, I left the Post and started working on a book.

If I could be anything, I’d be a space explorer, but a cool one, like Jean-Luc Picard.