A review by roryalan
The Ember Blade by Chris Wooding

adventurous hopeful sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I enjoyed the book, however I found it to be more negative than I had expected. There were constant themes of betrayal and jealousy when I had hoped for more camaraderie. Although people describe this as modern lord of the rings, don’t expect a Frodo and Sam plus the rest of the fellowship situation. 

<b>Book Summary: </b> 
Aren and Cade are Ossians living in the country of Ossia that was conquered by the Krodens about 30 years ago. The Krodens offer Ossians protection, and a reasonable quality of life, but even noble Ossians are treated as beneath Krodens. Aren is born into a wealthy family, while his best friend Cade isn’t. Aren is trying to court a Kroden girl, despite warnings from her family not to. Kroden guards arrest Aren’s father calling him a traitor, and then they arrest Aren too. Aren’s father tries to stop them and is killed, and Cade intervenes since he believes Aren to be innocent, so he is arrested too. 

Aren and Cade are in a prison camp working for months. Cade is mad at Aren since Aren still believes in the Krodens and that they will realize their mistake and free them. Over time, Aren starts to realize they will not be freed and that the Krodens aren’t the benevolent rulers he was raised to believe. They meet a bully-type name Grub, who’s people tattoo their deeds on their body so that they can be judged by the bone god after they die, and the three of them decide to escape. 

Aren, Cade, and Grub do escape but are cornered by guards hunting them, when a group of people led by “Garric” rescue them. Garric has a scar across his neck, so Aren knows him to be the “Hollow Man”, which his father told him that if he should ever meet the hollow man then he must run because the hollow man has come to kill him. Garric seems to hate Aren yet is following an oath to protect him.

Garric, his crew, Aren, Cade, and Grub all travel to safety while being pursued by Dreadknights (kind of like ringwraiths) which are seemingly human-like (but ostensibly not human) agents of the Kroden. The dread knights kill about half of Garrics party. The crew eventually meet up with a druid woman named Vika, who can brew very helpful potions, cast magic with her staff, and interpret signs from the aspects. Together they venture into a deadly, magic-filled area to escape the dread knights.

In this area, they fight shadow creatures and some unspeakable horror, which kills another of Garric’s crew, while trying to find a way out. They eventually escape and they are able to briefly return to safety. 

Garric’s best friend, Keel, returns home to find a very unhappy wife and potentially dying son. He struggles with an ultimatum to stay home or lose his family forever. 

Krodens attack the farm killing Keel’s brother and interrogating Keel’s family. To keep her son safe, Keel’s wife tells the Krodens where to find him. 

The group plot to steal the ember blade, the mcguffin, from the Kroden prince’s castle, while Garric believes that is impossible to steal so he secretly just plans to blow the whole castle up including the sword. Aren is caught by Krodens trying prevent Keel from getting caught and he is offered the opportunity to go free in exchange for betraying Garric, to which Aren agrees. 

Aren struggles with the upcoming betrayal, believing it’s the only way to prevent Cade and the rest of the crew from getting tortured and killed in the event that they fail, which they think is likely. At the last minute, Aren decides to warn Garric. Garric suspected treachery, appreciates Aren’s decision, and makes Aren a Dawnwarden, part of an ancient order that protects the ember blade. Before this, Garric was the last one.

Garric reveals that his hatred for Aren’s father (and Aren himself) was because Aren’s father was a dawnwarden too that betrayed them to the Krodens. Aren’s father was Garric’s best friend, but cut his throat while the rest of the dawn wardens were killed by Krodens. Aren’s father, and thus Aren, were given a cushy life under the Kroden rule due to this betrayal, at least until their arrest. 

Garric goes to execute his plan but Keel betrays him in exchange for treatment for his son, his wife being given his brother’s farm, and pardoning them for any crimes. Keel then hangs himself. Aren and the crew form a new plan to steal the ember blade without Garric, not knowing his true intentions. 

They free garric, but garric still tries to continue with his plan to blow everything up. Aren and the crew then steal the ember blade and escape. The explosion from garric’s plan goes off, though he is dead, and this creates a lot of problems for the rest of the crew. Cade ends up hanging from a support beam on the verge of collapse, Aren tries to save him, but Cade lets go so that they don’t both fall. I hated this part. 

They continue with their escape, one of the dread knights kills another of their party right before the escape, then they use the ember blade to kill the dread knight. The remaining members Aren, Vika, her dog Ruck, Fen, Grub, and Harod all pledge to be the new dawnwardens. 

<b>Dependence: </b>  
This is the first book in a series so nothing needs to be read before it. It kind of acts as a standalone but definitely has room for the story to be continued as they are still under Kroden rule at the end of the first book. 

<b>Characters: </b> 
My favorite character was Grub. He had a unique culture, and interesting backstory and motivations, and he was definitely the funniest character. His choices, both good and bad, always made sense to me and wasn’t there just to drive the plot. Then I really liked Vika and Ruck as they were unique, interesting, and mostly created positive emotions. 

I liked how Garric and some of the other characters were morally grey, conflicted, and no one was purely good or bad. 

I do think some of the characters were a bit bland like Fen, and some of the other characters were more negative than I would expect. For example, Aren was fairly standoffish for the vast majority of the book, and there was more negativity between Aren and Cade than I would have liked. It kept circling back to jealousy between them even though they kept getting over it and saying they were BFFs. I had hoped for more of a Frodo and Sam situation. 

<b>Plot: </b>  
The plot was somewhat original, though it seemed to be inspired by lord of the rings in many ways. It told a very interesting story but I had some problems with the plot:

First, there was an almost constant tension between Aren and Cade, a lot of it centered around jealousy, and I don’t really care for that. 

Next, I didn’t care for Keel’s relationship drama. Some of it was weird and unrealistic, such as his wife saying that she’s lonely, their son is dying, and she needs him to stay home with her and he responds by kissing her and grabbing her boob. Not really the time for that, and I don’t believe she would go with that rather than demanding an answer. Then there was the whole thing about his younger brother being in love with his wife and wanting Keel to leave and never come back so he could have her. The end of his story was depressing but made sense at least. All in all, his story had too much sad relationship drama which just isn’t the reason I read fantasy novels. 

Also, I did not like the death of Cade at the end. I kept reading thinking surely not, I mean maybe there was water at the bottom, but there was no indication of anything like that. Then I tried to see if he returned in the sequel and nope, it seems he’s just dead. He was like a teenage Samwise Gamgee, I thought the camaraderie between Aren and Cade would be a major part of the subsequent books, but he just falls to his death right at the end of the book. 

Finally, the end was very abrupt, they just escape after losing multiple members of their party, they swear to protect the ember blade, then the book is over. We literally get no time to hangout with the characters. 

<b>Magic System: </b>  
The magic system was soft. Vika is basically Gandalph, having a literal “none shall pass” moment in the book, though even she doesn’t know how she did it. We don’t know if the dreadknights are actually immortal or just powerful humans. There are magical shadow creatures that the don’t understand the capabilities or limitations of. Etc. Really anything could happen. 

<b>World: </b>  
The world is mostly a typical medieval European fantasy world. Swords, magic, potions, etc. It has some interesting elements with the shadow realm and the specific gods of this world but nothing too unique. 

<b>Pacing: </b> 
The book is long but I don’t think there was much fluff if any. There was a lot of nice character development and alternate perspectives, though it may be a little slow-paced overall. After more than 800 pages, they only just stole the ember blade and haven’t done anything with it yet. 

<b>Writing: </b> 
The prose is straightforward, not flowery at all. It is well-written though. It is kind of like Brandon Sanderson in that you may not find the prose beautiful but you probably won’t have any complaints either. 

<b>Comparisons: </b> 
This book is similar to Lord of the Rings in a lot of ways, e.g. dread knights are basically ringwraights, has a kind of shadow realm, Vika’s staff glows with light and she basically says none shall pass, there is a dramatic moment at the end where on of the two main BFFs are hanging from a ledge though this book takes a different direction with that than LotR, etc.