Heir
by Sabaa Tahir
read by Vidish Athavale, Esme Lonsdale, Joe Pitts, Marco Young, and Rachel Petladwala
Listening Library, 2024. 17 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written April 24, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Epic fantasy is how Sabaa Tahir started out as an author. Her only book I’ve read is the incredibly good multiple-award-winning All My Rage, so when she started a new fantasy series that is wildly popular, I decided to check it out.
I have to say this book was great for a little road trip I did – keeping me intent on the story for the whole drive. It starts out with three main characters, narrated by three different voice actors. (The two additional narrators get some time, but they are voicing side characters.) At the start, we don’t know how the three characters will come together, and we’re a good way in before we realize the story of one of the characters is being told on a different timeline.
Aiz is the first character we meet. She grew up in an orphanage and plans to assassinate the ruler – who set the orphanage on fire ten years ago and killed many of her friends. She prays to Mother Div for help for her people, the Kegar, who live on a barren island and have to raid other lands using their magic to even be able to eat.
Next up is Quil, the Crown Prince of the Martial Empire, being trained by his Aunt to replace her as ruler. But when he’s in a foreign city, there’s a horrible attack on children, with their hearts torn out and dried up.
Sirsha is next. She has the magic of tracking, but has been cast out of her tribe and ordered never to use magic again. But when a man offers her enough money to escape the empire and never work again, she can’t refuse. The man asks her to track a monstrous creature who has been killing children horribly.
And yes, the characters’ lives end up intertwining, some sooner than others. There are attacks on the Empire – and the monster killing the children is hard to defeat.
It all adds up to an epic story – which, fair warning, is not finished when the book is done. In fact, something awful happens at the end, and the author just better straighten that out in the next book!
There is much suffering and many horrible deaths in this book, and some sex as well, not always consensual, so this isn’t one of the sweet fantasy tales I prefer. But it is an epic tale with skillfully interwoven storylines, about politics, power, magic, and deciding what you’ll do to help your people.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/heir.html
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