She took an internship at the Washington Post in college and would go on to take a job there after her graduation. Sabaa would attend UCLA where she studied journalism. She did a brief stint working in a hospital before deciding that was not for her and instead went on to study journalism. However, her parents tried to push her into a more responsible career and led her towards medicine. She had a creative mind as a youngster and had dreams of becoming a sea pirate. When she grew up sje felt feeling voiceless and powerless, but fantasy books helped to give her comfort and as she grew up she realized she could find that sense of power and voice if she simply started writing. She has said that reading changed her life.

Literature has kept a solid presence in Tahir’s life ever since. As a child, Sabaa Tahir often felt like an outcast and that she didn’t quite belong to the world in which she lived. She also would raid her brother’s comic book stash and played guitar.

As a child she enjoyed reading fantasy from a young age. She was raised in Ridgecrest, California in the Mojave Desert region. Tahir’s parents emigrated from Pakistan to the United Kingdom and then moved to the United States. The book has since been named one of the 100 best fantasy books of all time by TIME Magazine, along with its follow-up A Torch Against the Night. The novel was a big hit and made it all the way to number two on the New York Times bestseller list.

She made her debut in 2015 with the release of the first book in the series, An Ember in the Ashes. When Laia and Elias' 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.Sabaa Tahir is the author of the An Ember in the Ashes series. 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 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 they will help to save her brother from execution.Įlias is the academy's finest soldier - and secretly its most unwilling. Laia is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire.

It's a story that's literally burning to be told. 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.

An ember in the ashes series