A Sky Beyond the Storm: An Ember in the Ashes Novel: 4

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This book made me feel a lot of things: anger, fury, rage, disappointment and an impending urge to pretend this book never existed. I know that in this book she is 'blushing' and acting a bit different from her cool, calculated manner, BUT I loved it. People who died in previous books aren’t just forgotten about, they’re spoken about and you can see the impact they’ve left on other characters, I like that they’re still remembered because they were part of the journey.

Life can get in the way like that but it was a great idea to reread the books before the finale, I wish I did that actually. I was waiting for that moment and it was so satisfying when it happened and he finally made that switch again.

Emperor Marcus; haunted by his past; grows increasingly unstable; while the Commandant capitalizes on his madness to bolster her own power. I've learned of holding on and how you can never let go, you can never stop fighting, you can never give up on the people you love, because if it was them, they would never stop fighting for you. So much suffering, so much pain, so much hurt that he’d carried for centuries, and all because of those Augurs.

Sky was one of my highest anticipated books of the year, and I’m thrilled to say that it lived up to my expectations! Laia of Serra, now allied with the Blood Shrike, struggles to recover from the loss of the two people most important to her.

Most of the romance is about Laia and Elais and how much they lOvE each other but I wanted more Harper- Helene content. It kind of touched on how the world doesn’t protect or shield children and how it lead to her becoming who she was.

The theme here is that, despite sometimes wishing her chapters didn’t interrupt me reading about Laia and Elias, the girl really grew on me.If there is one thing I know I will always remember about this book, it is that I will take Laia's courage, I will take Helene's intelligence and endurance, I will take Elias' strength and forgiveness. This is one of those books that doesn’t pull its punches with the ending and everything the characters have to do to get to the end and “win” (aka, not everyone miraculously survives) but also was really slow and tough to get through to that ending. Those rare few lines in between the chapters and a chapter didn't do much I repeat 😭 Are you bleeding kidding me? All of the little flashbacks from the last books, they were never actually told to us in the previous books (I think? I think to add to that, Laia also explicitly says that she loved Keenan and I like that she doesn��t pretend that it never happened because once again that was what was needed for the story.

It did look like everything was going well during the first half of the book, and the next quarter wasn't that bad either (may be aside from the pace being a little two slow). The romantic tension between these two and Elias’ tendency to nope out of literally every conversation because he couldn’t handle his own feelings… oh my god. It demanded I shut up and take the pain like a woman, like Helene, or Laia, or Afya, or Livvy, or Mamie Rila, or Mirra, or as any woman in this series would. I’m surprised she wasn’t in the finale more as she was the cause of a lot of the clashes previously. I never thought too much on her father but you are right, he was a surprising character at times and looking into his relationship with his daughter would be interesting!

I personally find the enemies/villains of the ember quartet to be a really strong point for this series. Harper’s death wasn’t needed and if you were going to do a death like that, I feel like more time should have been dedicated to it. Whatever the subtle romance or spark that was there before, it all turned into something cheesy so much so that I just couldn't bear it. How do I even conclude this review, these books are literally ingrained in to me, like in every which way, I am so so so thankful to Sabaa for writing this series, because it genuinely means so much to me.