The Ember Blade

This came highly recommended from several sources. As I am already a Chris Wooding fan (The Tales of the Ketty Jay remains my favourite steampunk fantasy). I hoped for a fun adventure story and this did not disappoint.

The starting point of the setting, where our heroes are from a losing culture that has been partially assimilated by an invader gives an interesting edge of conflict right from the start. It is unusual to see heroic fantasy presented from this kind of perspective, and it works well.

This is most definitely heroic fantasy, so it has a few of the classic tropes (a chosen one type main character, a mythical sword of power etc), but when it is written in such an entertaining style it is easy to forgive the more generic elements. This tale lifts it up with some interesting twists though - even though it is trope laden, it does manage to twist them into some interesting directions!

A highly enjoyable romp of a fantasy. As a modern heroic fantasy it work well as an exercise in entertainment. I look forward to continuing the journey!

UPDATE for my reread:
My opinion is still the same. Some ideas were fantastic in this. Some of the character work, impeccable.
But some of it is just... oh no. I have a feeling Chris Wooding is a bit uneasy about writing women here? Or more like, he dares to do much more interesting things with male characters. The women are mostly virtue signalling, “they are the best and smartest, but are oppressed, because women”. Except Vika. Vika is cool.
(Grub is the absolute best. He is so dumb, energetic and just gives zero shits.)

3,5 stars

I did not love this book nearly as much as I expected it and that's kind of sad, as I love Ketty Jay and I was very excited about this book. So why is that?

Ossia is a country taken over by the Krodan empire. If you cooperate you can do quite well, though still being considered second class, but rebellion is not tolerated and everything is heavily regulated. Aren is the son of an Ossian minor lord who fits in so they live a pretty great life, having fun with his best friend, the commoner boy Cade. Up until he starts dating a Krodan girl and so he gets his father in trouble as well, which ends with his whole life going to hell, with both him and Cade ending up in a prison work camp.
From there they get involved with rebels who try to get the artefact symbolic of the Ossian royalty (currently in the hands of the Krodans), the Ember Blade.

If you are writing a long book you have to make it worth being so long. Justify me going through all of that. Here some parts were extremely dynamic and fun, but some others felt like overlong and that was especially annoying when you KNEW this wasn't the end. The characters are in prison for some time at the beginning. Do you believe this is how they die if there are 650 pages left? No. No, you don't. So basically the immense length in a way took away a lot of the initial pressure, because PFFT, you can't kill them off so early. At this point it's inevitable, I guess, but still, personally I would have thought it better to make this book shorter, partly by cutting some things, partly by dividing the story into volumes differently, though we don't have book 2 yet, so I can't speak about that.

Some element returning from the Ketty Jay is the fact we have a ragtag team of individuals with different agendas working for the same end goal, which is a thing I like, though I preferred the kind of more comical people from KJ. Here the comic relief was provided by Cade and Grub, the bragging barbarian they pick up on the way. Sorely needed, really, as many dark things happen and the story itself is very serious. Similar feeling as with the author Sebastien De Castell, whose humour I loved in his first series, but it completely missed from the second. A waste, I feel as for both De Castell and Wooding I feel they do truly have a skill for snappy fun many authors try and fail at realising. Oh well.
Tonally still dark, but another character I need to specifically mention is Vika. Wandering druidess, trying to reconnect with her gods. She is taking part in the main conflict of the story, while also she knows there is an even bigger, supernatural danger coming, which will need the attention of the other people eventually. (Her dog is cute too.)
The other end of the spectrum; Mara. Oh, Mara. She is so much smarter than everyone, wonderful oppressed rich woman. She is doing what she is doing because she wants more glory for herself. Her character is just such an annoyance to me. Cade, the son of a carpenter was sent to a freaking prison camp among abysmal conditions because he dared to speak up and she still believes men have it so much better because women are wives and she herself couldn't become famous. I... okay? I find she embodies the typical rich woman living in way more comfort than she understands. End of my rant.

My big issue is how I felt the ideas and the chapters of the book had some pretty big differences in quality. Some were very interesting and entertaining, some others just the same old and nowhere near as clever as they were sold to me. (Fen, Keel's background story, the whole Mara thing... Just give me more Vika instead.)

There was a big theme I liked as well. Basically just because you like what someone does in the grand scheme of things you won't necessarily get on well with them as people. There is the conflict of what you are willing to take and accept for the bigger pictures vs. what is unacceptable and intolerable to you no matter what the end is. Do you really know people based on personal experiences with them? Does the context of them as people matter? Their past deeds, controversial and maybe even considered as mistakes?
Same went for the Kordans. You have to admit that they are doing certain things right; they can work together. You are supposed to root for the Ossian side and still, they are the type of people who have an issue with organising and working as a unit without infighting. In that sense it's understandable why they fell, because we are shown the issues in their society. They did weaknesses, they weren't overtaken through some magical intervention or “cheating” like that, it's comprehensible.

I'm going to read book 2. I'm not super mega excited about it, I probably won't throw myself at it at light speed, but I guess the interesting things are good enough for me, though I hope it will be a bit shorter, maybe around the 600 pages mark? I think it would benefit from that. I'm not going to super enthusiastically recommend it to anyone willing to listen to my blabbering, though I will probably mention it when relevant. So far I feel it's kind of meh, middle of the flock stuff. Not the single greatest way to start my year as far as reading goes. Oh well.

As much of a sucker for fantasy that I am, this book has been my first contact with “contemporary” fantasy, so to say. By this I basically mean anything written since the turn of the century within this genre.

I must confess “The Ember Blade” has been a pleasant surprise. I have enjoyed it so much. This epic fantasy fantasy story has many of the tropes almost compulsory to the genre, yet unique somehow in its own style. Chris Wooding has achieved the massive task of transforming a classic Tolkien flavoured narrative into something more personal, somewhat deeper and still familiarly close as far as characters are concerned.

This is the story of a journey, of many journeys, indeed. The hero's journey, the actual travel and the transformation it brings to the characters (arcs, the connoisseurs call that), and sure each one's got his/her own.

Each character, with one exception (*), is developed deeply enough to make the story richer, whilst maintaining the pacing, not slowing down drastically.

The world building is really daunting yet fascinating. I'm willing to get to know more about the rest of the nations and races that dwell upon that world.

Am I the only one connecting the dots and drawing an allegory of WW2, the Third Reich, and the deportation of the Jews/Gipsies with all the Krodan empire expansion, the Sards being chased and deported, etc?

Now the cons. Basically I have just two of them and both are related to Cade. I feel this character could have developed so much deeply, not just becoming the cheerful, joke telling guy in the gang. If that wasn't enough he dies! I was shocked, not because I couldn't see it coming, but I was secretly hoping the author wouldn't dare to do it and eventually would give the character the chance he truly deserved. Thus I dropped one star off my rating.

As a side note, and it isn't the author the one to blame fully, I as a non-native English speaker, found Wooding's prose a bit hard to understand. This is obviously due to my lack of vocabulary, but also due to the author's tendency to abuse of the so called “said bookism”.

9.5/10

This book is exactly what I was told it was, which is a classic fantasy book but with really good characters and a fresh perspective. Nothing about it reinvents the wheel but that's fine, it has a lot of heart and all the characters were very well realized. The last third of the book was so good. I think the book takes the “modern voice” sentiment in a way that doesn't just mean “simple prose”, although I don't think the prose is dense. It's moreso how the way these tropes are changed slightly and given different contexts and routes that still feel familiar but also feel updated.

One thing I really liked about this that I tend to find missing in many other “classic fantasy” stories is that the characters pasts and actions actually feel like they are grappled with and that deaths and traumatic experiences affect people. It's my biggest pet peeve when series just have characters going to one big event to the next and being like “oh my best friend from the last 20 years just burned alive right in front of me, I need a whiskey and then I'll never think about this person again”.

The fellowship/found family aspect of this book was very well done and was probably my favorite aspect. I also liked the magical elements a lot, and the book isn't very combat heavy, but the fighting that was here was exciting. Apart from one stupid thing near the end, I don't really have any complaints for The Ember Blade. Excited to continue on.

What a fantastic book!

We have a fascinating world full of horrors and wonders (mostly horrors though) where on the forefront there is a losing battle being fought against a cruel rigid empire.
On the background though there are supernatural forces at play which threaten reality itself.
We follow a handful of fantastic characters, who struggle with the paths chosen for them and a whole lot of inner demons.
The book offers a delightful mix of politics, religion, magic, heroic quest, revenge, found family, redemption, sacrifice and world-ending stakes. I absolutely loved reading it and will definitely continue with the series at first chance.