The long wait for Sabaa Tahir’s A Sky Beyond the Storm has ended! If you enjoyed the other books in her An Ember in the Ashes series, then you don’t want to miss this finale. This is definitely one of my favorite books this year. Expect to see it on my top 10 list coming January 1st.
Because this review is of the fourth book in a tetralogy, it may contain spoilers from previous books.
At the beginning of this book, it seems like almost all is lost. Cities have been decimated, plus the Nightbringer received all the pieces of the star. Keris Veturius has outplayed the Blood Shrike at almost every turn. Laia found and then lost her mother again. And Elias has taken on the role of the Soul Catcher and seems to have discarded his humanity. Is all lost?
Laia is convinced she needs to take down the Nightbringer. The Blood Shrike feels she needs to protect her nephew, the new Emperor, at all costs. Much of this book covers their journeys. Since this is a book, it’s going to get worse before anything gets better. We also see the Soul Catcher and The Nightbringer as they go through their journeys. And one chapter from Keris’s point of view.
This book was so good. It wraps up the past with a beautiful red bow. All the prophecies we’ve seen will make sense. I did cry–for maybe the last 50 pages? But in the end, I was satisfying. It brought joy instead of the desire to throw my book across the room or write fix-it fanfiction. Yes, Ms. Tahir has taken us on a long journey and destroyed our favorite characters–but there is a Sky Beyond the Storm.
A Sky Beyond the Storm is full of lifelike characters. The villains aren’t just cookie-cutter evil people who give monologues–they have a past, hurts, and people that loved them. There are so many memorable quotes in here, I’m looking for the next Top Ten Tuesday where the topic is book quotes. I started writing in my book journal again, where I write down quotes, and I’m so glad I did this for this book.
This was one of the highlights in my reading year. In a year where I’ve been struggling to complete my Goodreads Reading Challenge, I finished this 500-page book in three days. If you’ve read the first three books in this series and loved them, I recommend finishing the series. If you haven’t started, now’s a good time to start.
If you’re interested in my other reviews in this series, they are here: