A Dangerous World Grows Darker in A Reaper at the Gates

Now, in the third book of the Ember quartet, A Reaper at the Gates, things seem more desperate than ever before.
Why, then, is this series so compulsively readable? Everything is terrible—so why can we just not get enough? Blame their addictive qualities on Tahir’s compelling writing and rich worldbuilding, of course, but also on the three young characters carrying the burdens of this world on their shoulders.
Laia, the former Scholar slave; Elias, the Martial golden child-turned-outlaw; and Helene, the newest Blood Shrike enforcer, each carry their own significant, unwieldy weight. As they struggle with their individual quests, their paths crisscross, putting each character in the others’ crosshairs and forcing new, unexpected alliances.
But it’s not simply the struggles of Laia, Elias, and Helene that fascinate or compel you to keep reading. It’s the unique way each bears their load, exhibiting different kinds of strength. Never has there been more physical or emotional distance between the characters, with the chessboard Tahir has laid out expanding into new territories and realms. The “screen time” is once again split among alternating POV chapters from Laia, Helene, and Elias, each altered for better and worse by what they’ve experienced so far.

Each of the core characters has experienced a unique set of traumas, but Laia of Serra is the only one among them fighting systemic oppression. From Ember to Reaper, she has harbored the hopes of the subjugated Scholars, and in this third installment, she rises to the ranks of a symbolic savior—a brainier Katniss Everdeen in a setting with magic run amok.
At the outset of Reaper, Laia is torn. Her path to thwart the mythic Nightbringer, the shadow creature wrecking ball formerly known as Resistance fighter Keenan, promises to take her not only toward further danger but farther away from Elias. Laia’s ache at their separation coupled with the nagging questions about her and her family’s role in the current nightmare haunt every choice she makes. The very fact that she endures—as both hunter and hunted—lends her chapters a particular poignancy.
As the only character left on the inside of the Martial ranks, the Blood Shrike has her own tightrope to walk. Marcus Farrar has gone from cruel classmate to deranged emperor, an office he used in Torch to slaughter most of Helene’s family. Now married to Helene’s one surviving sister, Marcus has created a particularly hostile workplace for his right-hand woman.

As Blood Shrike, Helene, of course, is an enemy to Laia and to Elias, even as her affectionate history with the latter complicates her every move. Unlike Laia, who can embrace her hurts and her emotions—use them for fuel, even—Helene must stuff her feelings beneath the surface, her armor, and the glimmering mask that hides her face.
That inner struggle to master herself is met by the twin challenges of besting the tyrant who holds her sister and rooting out the malignant scheme of Keris Veturia, Elias’s murderous mother. Helene’s steely exterior is a defense mechanism, one we see slip several times in Reaper.
Elias’s trajectory in Reaper is tied to one of the most intriguing places revealed in Torch: the Waiting Place. Wraiths, efrits, djinn, and ghuls—all the supernatural plagues of this world are somehow tied to the Waiting Place, where souls linger and a weary Soul Catcher must pass them through to the next life. In Reaper, Elias proves a distracted pupil, slowly learning from the Soul Catcher while resisting giving himself over to the magic she wields.
His feelings for Laia, his concern for Helene, his interest in the goings-on of the living—all prevent him from performing fully the job he must now do. Both Laia and Helene are moving pieces on Tahir’s chessboard in Reaper, but it is Elias and the disaster that lurks in the Waiting Place that roots the story and drives the plot.
That the place of the dead can anchor a story of the living is a testament to the sensitive and complex Elias, the member of the central threesome who has undergone the most personal transformation.
There is a lot happening in the world of the Ember series, and that it all hangs together—that it jells so perfectly into a compulsively readable story—is a credit to the three characters fighting to hold that world together, and to their creator. Can they set their world to rights in their story’s fourth, closing chapter? We can’t wait to find out.
A Reaper at the Gates hits shelves June 12, and is available for preorder now.