A professional author since 2015 and a journalist before that, Sabaa’s books have sold more than a million copies, are New York Times and international bestsellers, and were named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Best Fiction Books of All Time. Her book All My Rage won the 2022 National Book Award, the Prince Medal, and the Boston Globe Horn Book Award. Her work has appeared on many best-of lists, including: Amazon, Buzzfeed, The New York Public Library, Indigo, Barnes & Noble, Hypable, Paste, Bustle, LA Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, and Entertainment Weekly.
In the Military Empire, disobedience is met with death. Those who do not pledge their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk having their loved ones executed and everything they hold dear destroyed.
It is in this cruel world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laya lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family lives in the poor streets of the Empire. They do not challenge the Empire. They have seen what happens to those who do.
But when Laya’s brother is arrested for treason, Laya is forced to make a decision. In exchange for the help of the rebels who promise to save her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from the Empire’s largest military academy.
There, Laya meets Elias, the best soldier in the school-and secretly the most reluctant. Elias only wants to be free from the tyranny he is trained to enforce. Soon he and Laya realize that their fates are intertwined-and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.
The first book in this bestselling series (which includes Torch Against the Night, Reaper at the Gate, and The Sky Beyond the Storm) follows rebel Laya as she secretly becomes a slave at a renowned military academy to rescue her captive older brother, only to join forces with Elias, a reluctant elite soldier who wants to escape a life of violence.