Review: A ​Sky Beyond the Storm

A ​Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sabaa Tahir's back with the fourth and final book of her Ember in the Ashes series, and after more than two years since its predecessor came out, it's a pretty long Endgame to the Infinity War that was Reaper. 

Some time has passed since that book ended on such a devastating note, with the promise of a truly apocalyptic war in the finale. Now, while Tahir takes a little time getting there - I mean, the book isn't really that much longer than its predecessors, only a shade over 500 pages this time - the book also runs a little slow in general in its first half, and even its first three-fifths. Maybe that comes from our three main POV characters being in unusually close proximity after spending a good chunk of Books 2 and 3 pretty far apart, spread out in such a way that the reader needs to keep flipping the pages just to stand a chance at seeing where they'll go next.

But it's the back half of the book - and especially the final fifty pages or so, as Tahir promised in her virtual launch hosted by Kepler's Books - that validates the tickets of every passenger on her hype train. A nightmarish final battle, but then the ending proves to be (extremely shocking, given Tahir's nature as one of the most brutal authors in all of YA) actually pretty damn hopeful and uplifting. A repudiation of everything the Nightbringer would have us endure. Or Keris Veturia, the bleeding Commandant, who unexpectedly gets a single - but powerful - POV chapter in this one. 

To the Ember Quartet, I now bid a much-deserved ave atque vale, and hope to see a bigger Emberling fandom over time. Especially if, one day, this series gets the TV or film adaptation it very much deserves.

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