【Painful Man And Woman】

When A Torch Against The Painful Man And WomanNight — the second and most recent book in Sabaa Tahir's An Ember In The Ashes series — ended, it left fans with one big mystery: What's next?

Though Tahir told the Associated Pressthere would be two more books in the series, nobody knew what battles our hero Laia would have to face next. Even the followup book's title, cover, release date, and summary were kept a secret ... until now.

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Mashablecan exclusively reveal that the next book in the An Ember In The Ashes series is ... A Reaper at the Gates, which is due to hit bookstores on April 10, 2018.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

If the cover looks intriguing, wait until you the summary of A Reaper at the Gates:

Beyond the Empire and within it, the threat of war looms ever larger.

The Blood Shrike, Helene Aquilla, is assailed on all sides. Emperor Marcus, haunted by his past, grows increasingly unstable, while the Commandant capitalizes on his madness to bolster her own power. As Helene searches for a way to hold back the approaching darkness, her sister’s life and the lives of all those in the Empire hang in the balance.

Far to the east, Laia of Serra knows the fate of the world lies not in the machinations of the Martial court, but in stopping the Nightbringer. But while hunting for a way to bring him down, Laia faces unexpected threats from those she hoped would aid her, and is drawn into a battle she never thought she’d have to fight.

And in the land between the living and the dead, Elias Veturius has given up his freedom to serve as Soul Catcher. But in doing so, he has vowed himself to an ancient power that will stop at nothing to ensure Elias’s devotion—even at the cost of his humanity.

A Reaper at the Gate isn't the only new release that Tahir has lined up: Tahir's first two novels in the Emberseries — An Ember In The Ashes and A Torch Against The Night— are getting redesigns with new paperback covers, out Aug. 29.

Check out the new covers below.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Mashablecaught up with Tahir to learn more about the redesigns and what to expect from the upcoming A Reaper at the Gates.

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Q&A with Sabaa Tahir

What inspired the cover designs?

We had been talking about re-jacketing the covers to match how the story has developed and I will be blunt, I really wanted a to see a brown girl on these covers. And I wanted her in a position of power. How often have I seen book covers with a hero dead center? All the time. But how often is that hero a POC? Not often enough. I wanted this beautiful brown girl to be in that classic hero’s pose — center stage, looking right at you, like a badass. And I wanted a brown man beside her, because that’s how I imagined the characters in my head.

So that’s where we started. I’ve always seen Laia as South Asian and Elias as a Middle Eastern/South Asian Mix. The cover artist sought out models who would fit those descriptions. As for the aesthetic, it makes me think of my favorite game — Assassin’s Creed. I play ACreligiously and I’ve always loved the game’s covers: that stark white background with a hero gazing out at you.

Last, I hoped we could depict the drama and violence and romance of the book through poses, weaponry, colors and the title font. So really, the books themselves were the inspiration. The cover artist, Shane Rebenschied, and the cover designer, Kristin Smith-Boyle, just knocked it out of the park. These covers are everything I could have hoped for — everything I wanted to see as a kid in my fantasy book covers — but never did.

You've mentioned that as aSouth Asian-Americanauthor, it was important to feature brown girls on the cover of your books. Do you think there is a new dimension to that importance in 2017? 

Absolutely. My books are inspired by news stories from around the world: extrajudicial jailings, child soldiers, sectarian warfare and, most recently, the refugee crisis. My characters deal with similar issues. In telling their fictional story, my hope is that readers will look at the real-world victims of such horrors with compassion. The same goes for the cover. I hope that in seeing POC faces on the cover, readers might see the humanity in all those people at home or in faraway places who are suffering the terrors of war or violence or oppression, instead of just seeing a mass of faces that blend together. And with both the story and the cover, I hope that those of us who feel invisible, who feel like the stories of our families or our people or our struggles don’t matter — I hope those readers feel seen and represented.

Without any spoilers, as a teaser, can you give us a hint about any twists or surprises that may be hiding in A Reaper at the Gates?

There are quite a few, but there’s one I’ve been holding on to for about 10 years now. I thought of it back in 2007, when I first came up with the idea for Ember. But that’s all I can say!

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