Book Review: The Ember Blade, by Chris Wooding
A Farmboy of Destiny, a rebellion against an Evil Empire, a Heroic Sword, a Party of Adventurers.... Read it!
Gollancz, 2018, 824 pages
A land under occupation. A legendary sword. A young man's journey to find his destiny.
Aren has lived by the rules all his life. He's never questioned it; that's just the way things are. But then his father is executed for treason, and he and his best friend, Cade, are thrown into a prison mine, doomed to work until they drop. Unless they can somehow break free....
But what lies beyond the prison walls is more terrifying still. Rescued by a man who hates him yet is oath-bound to protect him, pursued by inhuman forces, Aren slowly accepts that everything he knew about his world was a lie. The rules are not there to protect him or his people but to enslave them. A revolution is brewing, and Aren is being drawn into it, whether he likes it or not.
The key to the revolution is the Ember Blade. The sword of kings, the Excalibur of his people. Only with the Ember Blade in hand can their people be inspired to rise up...but it's locked in an impenetrable vault in the most heavily guarded fortress in the land.
All they have to do now is steal it....
I'm not sure where I saw this book recommended, but I had a long, long drive so I went ahead and downloaded this as an audiobook. And it made the miles fly by.
I am going to try to persuade you to read a big doorstopper epic fantasy that has hardly an original story beat or trope in its 800+ pages and yet executes them all so exceptionally well that I sometimes wanted to keep driving in order to keep listening. The Ember Blade is just exceptionally well-written and epic and fun and full of action, twists, thrills, betrayals, characters, cultures, and history. It's clearly written by someone with a video game or screenwriting background, and heavily influenced by fantasy roleplaying games (every character has a unique package of attributes, personality traits, skills, and flaws that all manifest in plot-appropriate ways), and yet it's done so well that unlike some other writers who play in this space (yes, I'm looking at you, Brandon Sanderson) you can't hear the GM paging through rulebooks in the background. The characters all seem fully realized, the plot takes twists and turns that are as satisfying when they are predictable as when they aren't, and man, I just enjoyed the hell out of this book.
That said, if "big doorstopper epic fantasy" with all the above tropes just isn't your thing, then this book probably won't convert you.
The Ember Blade is set in a low-fantasy world - there is magic, but rarely of the "cast fireballs" kind, and there are non-humans and demons, but they're rare and considered mythical by most. There are also gods, who may or may not actually exist - one of the characters is an atheist.
The main protagonists are childhood friends Aren and Cade. Both are Ossians, living in a once-independent kingdom conquered by the Krodan Empire twenty years ago. The Krodans are authoritarian rulers but they have brought civilization and order to fractious Ossians - or so they say. Aren is the son of an Ossian noble who collaborated with the Krodans when they arrived and now enjoys a fairly privileged life with just the occasional reminder that the Krodan nobility still considers him little more than a peasant with airs. His best friend is Cade, a commoner, who's a little less enamored of their Krodan overlords, but nonetheless, their friendship is the heart of the story.
The first part of the book goes on for quite a while. There are many chapters establishing Aren and Cade's life, how they met as children, Aren's hapless wooing of the local Krodan governor's daughter, the histories of Ossia and Krodan, and their very different religions. If The Ember Blade has a flaw it's that the author sometimes got a little too indulgent in padding out all the details of the world and the characters. I knew some big Thing was due to happen to disrupt this idyllic little bildungsroman, but it took a while to arrive. That said, I was never actually bored, just a little impatient for the "real" story to start.
So Aren's father is suddenly arrested for treason by the Krodan secret police. Aren, outraged, knows it must all be a mistake. In the ensuing kerfuffle, Aren's father is killed, Aren and Cade both get beat-downs, and for their trouble, are sent to a Krodan prison camp.
The next part of the book also goes on for a bit too long - I knew eventually the two of them have to get out of the prison camp, but we spend many, many chapters on their life in a Krodan mine, reinforcing just how much the Krodans actually suck, before the escape happens.
And once again, despite it perhaps going on longer than it needed to, it was never boring. We spend a lot of time in Aren and Cade's heads. Aren, despite everything that has happened to him, just cannot shake his Krodan-loyalist ways. He's still convinced that any day now, Krodan justice, which is always fair and reliable, will figure out that Aren's father was innocent and he and Cade being sent to a brutal mining camp was all just a big mistake. This puts a strain on his friendship with Cade, who is not so naive. In the meantime, we meet several other interesting characters, including Grub, a sort of Barbarian/Thief from a northern kinda-sorta Viking/Finnish culture, who starts as a crude bully and eventually becomes one of the secondary characters with more and more history added.
Just when the prison chapters are getting a little bit tedious, Aren comes up with an escape plan. Characteristic of Wooding's writing, it goes wrong in various ways and yet Cade and Aren still make it out, are rescued by a mysterious Aragorn-like figure who it turns out is the putative leader of the Ossian resistance, and a druidess, who gets her own origin and introspective chapters. We also add a bard from a culture known as the Sard, who have characteristics of Gypsies and Jews (the metaphor becoming even more apparent as we learn that the Krodans have been rounding up Sards and shipping them off somewhere sinister), her love-smitten companion, a knight who is a master swordsman, and a feral girl archer. (Probably one of the biggest suspensions of disbelief besides the magic and Aren and Cade's occasional incredible luck is the D&D trope of a skinny girl with a bow being able to mow down Krodan soldiers like Legolas.) Later they conspire with a spinster supergenius chessmaster who's plotting revolution because the Krodans are a bunch of big ol' sexists.
The Ember Blade goes on and on. From prison escape, we go to a Tolkienesque hike through the woods, then a Moria-like dungeon crawl, and eventually our growing party of adventurers winds up in a city planning a revolution, which will wind up being a big battle and assassination attempt at the Ossian capital, with duels, clever schemes that go awry, betrayals, double-crosses, undead "Dreadknights" and dramatic losses.
Every character gets attention, even some of the bad guys. We get to really know Krodan and Ossian culture, and some of the other people like the Sards and the Skalds. Wooding isn't afraid to kill off members of the cast. Almost all of the twists make sense, even if a few are a bit contrived. It was always tense, with another twist coming even in the non-action chapters.
I loved this book so much I already started the second one. No, it's not really original. Yes, it's full of familiar tropes and character archetypes. It wears its influences on its sleeve. And yet, The Ember Blade feels like a breath of fresh air in a saturated genre. It does everything sincerely and without irony, and never really felt derivative. If Tolkien or Jordan or Sanderson or Rothfuss or even (shudder) Brooks or Goodkind or Eddings are your jam, you should give this a try. (Really, Wooding is much better than those last three.)
My complete list of book reviews.
Gollancz, 2018, 824 pages
A land under occupation. A legendary sword. A young man's journey to find his destiny.
Aren has lived by the rules all his life. He's never questioned it; that's just the way things are. But then his father is executed for treason, and he and his best friend, Cade, are thrown into a prison mine, doomed to work until they drop. Unless they can somehow break free....
But what lies beyond the prison walls is more terrifying still. Rescued by a man who hates him yet is oath-bound to protect him, pursued by inhuman forces, Aren slowly accepts that everything he knew about his world was a lie. The rules are not there to protect him or his people but to enslave them. A revolution is brewing, and Aren is being drawn into it, whether he likes it or not.
The key to the revolution is the Ember Blade. The sword of kings, the Excalibur of his people. Only with the Ember Blade in hand can their people be inspired to rise up...but it's locked in an impenetrable vault in the most heavily guarded fortress in the land.
All they have to do now is steal it....
I'm not sure where I saw this book recommended, but I had a long, long drive so I went ahead and downloaded this as an audiobook. And it made the miles fly by.
I am going to try to persuade you to read a big doorstopper epic fantasy that has hardly an original story beat or trope in its 800+ pages and yet executes them all so exceptionally well that I sometimes wanted to keep driving in order to keep listening. The Ember Blade is just exceptionally well-written and epic and fun and full of action, twists, thrills, betrayals, characters, cultures, and history. It's clearly written by someone with a video game or screenwriting background, and heavily influenced by fantasy roleplaying games (every character has a unique package of attributes, personality traits, skills, and flaws that all manifest in plot-appropriate ways), and yet it's done so well that unlike some other writers who play in this space (yes, I'm looking at you, Brandon Sanderson) you can't hear the GM paging through rulebooks in the background. The characters all seem fully realized, the plot takes twists and turns that are as satisfying when they are predictable as when they aren't, and man, I just enjoyed the hell out of this book.
That said, if "big doorstopper epic fantasy" with all the above tropes just isn't your thing, then this book probably won't convert you.
The Ember Blade is set in a low-fantasy world - there is magic, but rarely of the "cast fireballs" kind, and there are non-humans and demons, but they're rare and considered mythical by most. There are also gods, who may or may not actually exist - one of the characters is an atheist.
The main protagonists are childhood friends Aren and Cade. Both are Ossians, living in a once-independent kingdom conquered by the Krodan Empire twenty years ago. The Krodans are authoritarian rulers but they have brought civilization and order to fractious Ossians - or so they say. Aren is the son of an Ossian noble who collaborated with the Krodans when they arrived and now enjoys a fairly privileged life with just the occasional reminder that the Krodan nobility still considers him little more than a peasant with airs. His best friend is Cade, a commoner, who's a little less enamored of their Krodan overlords, but nonetheless, their friendship is the heart of the story.
The first part of the book goes on for quite a while. There are many chapters establishing Aren and Cade's life, how they met as children, Aren's hapless wooing of the local Krodan governor's daughter, the histories of Ossia and Krodan, and their very different religions. If The Ember Blade has a flaw it's that the author sometimes got a little too indulgent in padding out all the details of the world and the characters. I knew some big Thing was due to happen to disrupt this idyllic little bildungsroman, but it took a while to arrive. That said, I was never actually bored, just a little impatient for the "real" story to start.
So Aren's father is suddenly arrested for treason by the Krodan secret police. Aren, outraged, knows it must all be a mistake. In the ensuing kerfuffle, Aren's father is killed, Aren and Cade both get beat-downs, and for their trouble, are sent to a Krodan prison camp.
The next part of the book also goes on for a bit too long - I knew eventually the two of them have to get out of the prison camp, but we spend many, many chapters on their life in a Krodan mine, reinforcing just how much the Krodans actually suck, before the escape happens.
And once again, despite it perhaps going on longer than it needed to, it was never boring. We spend a lot of time in Aren and Cade's heads. Aren, despite everything that has happened to him, just cannot shake his Krodan-loyalist ways. He's still convinced that any day now, Krodan justice, which is always fair and reliable, will figure out that Aren's father was innocent and he and Cade being sent to a brutal mining camp was all just a big mistake. This puts a strain on his friendship with Cade, who is not so naive. In the meantime, we meet several other interesting characters, including Grub, a sort of Barbarian/Thief from a northern kinda-sorta Viking/Finnish culture, who starts as a crude bully and eventually becomes one of the secondary characters with more and more history added.
Just when the prison chapters are getting a little bit tedious, Aren comes up with an escape plan. Characteristic of Wooding's writing, it goes wrong in various ways and yet Cade and Aren still make it out, are rescued by a mysterious Aragorn-like figure who it turns out is the putative leader of the Ossian resistance, and a druidess, who gets her own origin and introspective chapters. We also add a bard from a culture known as the Sard, who have characteristics of Gypsies and Jews (the metaphor becoming even more apparent as we learn that the Krodans have been rounding up Sards and shipping them off somewhere sinister), her love-smitten companion, a knight who is a master swordsman, and a feral girl archer. (Probably one of the biggest suspensions of disbelief besides the magic and Aren and Cade's occasional incredible luck is the D&D trope of a skinny girl with a bow being able to mow down Krodan soldiers like Legolas.) Later they conspire with a spinster supergenius chessmaster who's plotting revolution because the Krodans are a bunch of big ol' sexists.
The Ember Blade goes on and on. From prison escape, we go to a Tolkienesque hike through the woods, then a Moria-like dungeon crawl, and eventually our growing party of adventurers winds up in a city planning a revolution, which will wind up being a big battle and assassination attempt at the Ossian capital, with duels, clever schemes that go awry, betrayals, double-crosses, undead "Dreadknights" and dramatic losses.
Every character gets attention, even some of the bad guys. We get to really know Krodan and Ossian culture, and some of the other people like the Sards and the Skalds. Wooding isn't afraid to kill off members of the cast. Almost all of the twists make sense, even if a few are a bit contrived. It was always tense, with another twist coming even in the non-action chapters.
I loved this book so much I already started the second one. No, it's not really original. Yes, it's full of familiar tropes and character archetypes. It wears its influences on its sleeve. And yet, The Ember Blade feels like a breath of fresh air in a saturated genre. It does everything sincerely and without irony, and never really felt derivative. If Tolkien or Jordan or Sanderson or Rothfuss or even (shudder) Brooks or Goodkind or Eddings are your jam, you should give this a try. (Really, Wooding is much better than those last three.)
My complete list of book reviews.