Sabaa Tahir and Renée Ahdieh - a podcast by Barnes & Noble

Renée Ahdieh and Sabaa Tahir have been shaping the landscape of YA fantasy since the release of their debut novels in 2015. Ahdieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn folded elements of the Thousand and One Nights and Beauty and the Beast into a lush, sensuous love story, about a girl who’s more than she seems telling stories to her husband, a murderous caliph, to stay alive. Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes kicked off a bloody, addictive fantasy epic set against the brutal backdrop of the Martial Empire, built on the backs of the oppressed Scholar people. Their work explores, among other things, magic dark and light, fascinating villains, oppression and colonialism, and moral rot. Recently Tahir released A Reaper at the Gates, the third book in the Ember quartet, and Ahdieh released Smoke in the Sun, her fourth book and the second in her Flame in the Mist duology, set in a magic-infused version of Feudal Japan. We spoke to them about their books, their teen years, and the fast friendship that started with a two-hour phone call and has been going strong ever since.

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