Sabaa Tahir's "An Ember In The Ashes", and Mistborn

[Necessary Eagle she/her]

(minor spoilers for both series, I guess)

For those of you who haven't read AEitA, it's a fantasy YA series. One of the main characters is named Elias Veturius, and of course, me being a Sanderfanatic, I kept misreading it as "Elend Venture".

Then I started to think about it... and I'm beginning to suspect Elias is actually a shout-out to Elend. He's the only son (that he knows of, he has a secret half-brother) of one of the most powerful noble families in the Evil Empire. He meets his love interest, a leader in the slave-class rebellion, when she is undercover in the place where he lives. And he has a parent who is a complete monster, cruel even by Evil Empire standards, who tries to kill him when he rebels.

What do you think? Shout-out or coincidence?

[ROSHtaFARian2.0]

Eh, it's entirely possible, but I'm more inclined to say coincidence. All of those similarities are pretty boiled down in order to show the commonality between them, and when you boil anything down far enough you're going to reduce it to fairly generic elements that could be compared to plenty of other things. It's basically only the similarity in names that makes those elements call Mistborn to mind, IMO, and while I haven't read AEitA yet, I believe the fantasy world in it is based on the Roman Empire, right? And Veturius is a Latin word that means a veteran or expert, someone with lots of experience. If that's in any way applicable to that character's family lineage, I would be very surprised if the author was so desiring to make an homage that she went looking for a Latin word that had significance to her character while still sounding like Venture, you know?

*Shrugs* Not that I'm really invested one way or another, but I do think there's a tendency given our natures as pattern seekers to read into one author's works based on the work or influence of another author, but often times those patterns are just as likely a result of both authors being inspired by similar sources rather than one of those authors being inspired by the other. 

 

 

[+Sorana she/her]

At first: I'm not the only one who got confused about Elias name. Yay!

To be honest I think it's a coincidence.

The whole girl Loves poor Boy// Boy Loves poor girl Story is pretty common. The name is the only thing indicating more, but as @ROSHtaFARian2.0 mentioned: we like to der connections everywhere...

[Ripheus23]

My copy of the book had a blurb-review from Lord Sanderson on/in it, so I'm voting Not a Coincidence

[+Sorana she/her]

Ok that counts. Why didn't mine???

[ladymxdnight she/her]

I too confused Elias's name with Elend's, especially while reading Reaper (which I just finished yesterday!), haha. It's entirely possible that Elias is partially based on Elend, but I also agree with the people above that when you boil down a story, you can find similarities to practically anything. I think though that most of these similarities are unintentional. If I recall correctly Sabaa Tahir spent six years working on the first book, and when you spend that long on a character I feel like even if you began by basing them slightly on someone else by the end of that process they become their own person. Plus, I don't think I would ever have made that kind of connection between Elias and Elend because of how different their personalities and circumstances are, as well as the settings (like, imagine Elend and Blackcliff)  and the way their stories move in completely different directions. 

It's a very interesting observation, though.

Edited July 21, 2018 by ladymxdnight