The Final Strife: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller: Book 1 (The Ending Fire)

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Full of rich, vivid world-building with political intrigue and characters you can't help but root for. YA giant Clare makes her adult debut with a whirlwind epic fantasy featuring secret plots, ancient magic, and hidden identities. I loved the character of Sylah, she was just so beautifully flawed, hard, edgy, and suffering from extreme loss and addiction.

Hassa was such an interesting character, and I longed to hear from her perspective more, as a Ghostling who had so many secrets of her own. Plus the cherry on the icing on the cake, morally grey characters, plots within plots and sapphic love.The Final Strife, is an epic fantasy based around three POVs, Sylah a red-blooded Ember, stolen as a child by the fabled Sandstorm, to help bring down the empire. Anoor is a rarity, having reached young adulthood after being left in another child’s place on the Night of the Stolen. There are trans characters, non-binary characters, lesbian, bisexual, and gay characters and they are interwoven into the story without being made a big deal of and are not punished for their sexualities. the balance between the magic system and the fantasy aspects of this story is just right and so allows the other themes of the book to come through and encourage a deeper connection with the story and characters.

Anoor turns out to be not such a weak, entitled milksop as Sylah had expected, and imprisons Sylah, forcing her to go cold-turkey. Although The Final Strife is mainly set in the capital of an empire with only 13 cities, it seems vast and epic due to rich history and storytelling that makes it feel real and lived in.As the first book is epic in the truest sense of the word, I can only imagine the places the series will go. That said, it did seem a bit short-sighted that there didn’t seem to be any runners-up in training just in case the next Warden has some sort of accident like being wiped out by a tidewind before starting their term. The pacing, worldbuilding, story, and oral tales were all wonderful, and the only reason I’m not giving it a 10 is simply there are books and characters that I personally love more. Thank you for letting me read the advance copy of this book, it really was worth the time I took to read. While The Final Strife is high fantasy, it takes place in a world rooted in Arab and African storytelling traditions.

Then we have Hassa, a Ghosting servant and friend of Sylah, who’s status renders her all but invisible to Embers. multi dimensional characters that truly develop as people as the story goes on, Sylah's battle with addiction, and Anoor's struggle to prove herself are just the main points of the personal journeys both characters go on.Therefore we don’t’ get any of the fun moments of Sylah and Anoor’s developing relationship, nor Sylah and Hassa’s friendship. Sylah’s snarkiness is irresistible, Hassa’s devotion to her people is admirable, and Anoor’s character development is perfect.