We’ve been fans of Chris’s previous work at SFFWorld for a long while – from The Fade (2007) to his steampunk/bucklepunk series of the Ketty Jay trilogy (2009 – 2013), there’s been a lot we’ve liked.
After a science-fictional YA trilogy, this is Chris’s return to more traditional Fantasy fare – his first since The Braided Path series (2003 – 2005) – and there’s a lot for Fantasy fans to like.
But there’s a big caveat to begin with.
The story begins on very traditional ground.
From the publisher: “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 must admit that I did wonder whether I was going to last the distance when I started reading The Ember Blade. Though undeniably well-written, the initial set up felt like typically Tolkien-esque fare. So much of it was similar to things I’ve read many, many times before.
Even fairly new fans of fantasy are going to recognise similarities between this and other work. Aren could be Frodo, with loyal Cade his Sam. Like many other plots, there’s a quest, but this time for a legendary sword, the Ember Blade, not a ring, where the heroes and heroines of our story have to get the sword. As the story develops we meet others that seem familiar – rebel leader Garrick could be Aragorn, a fighter with a secret past, and there’s a degree of mystical flim-flam with Vika-Who-Walks-the Barrows, a druidess with connections to ‘the old ways’…. a female Gandalf, albeit with a loveable and faithful canine companion. Grub is a rough ill-mannered character that kept making me think of Shrek, though perhaps less green.
For the bad guys, the key antagonist, Klyssen, feels like he’s wandered in from Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the addition of an evil side-kick who has personal ambition and a lust for punishment rather than justice. Their minions, the Black Riders of the story, are the dreadknights, who chase our heroes in the hope of capturing them and no doubt doing evil things. (There’s a torture scene at the beginning to emphasise how bad the evil guys are.) They are nasty, but nothing we’ve not seen before.
It further doesn’t help that, moving away from the archetype characters, there’s a number of set pieces that reminded me of other books – a flight through the vast house of Skavengard brought back thoughts of the mines of Moria, for example, albeit a bit less dark. There’s battles across bridges, dashes through passageways, struggles in water and fights on dining tables, all of which are done well, but…. nothing new.
By about a third of way in (c. 250 pages) I was struggling, so disappointed that I was seriously considering dropping the book for something more… unique. I felt that I had read something like it before, lots of times.
Of course, what Chris is doing here is settling readers in quickly and making the reader feel comfortable by focussing on standard characters and settings. Because they are recognisable, there is little time needed getting the reader to work out who they are, what is going on and where. There’s no mistaking that there’s a pace and drive, but managed by following a familiar path.
Once the reader is pretty much resigned into expecting the expected, about half-way through the book – remember, this is after about 400 pages – there’s an abrupt left-turn. Where Tolkien’s story moved from the bucolic rural environment of The Shire to etherial Lothlorien and then the extremes in the mountains of Mordor, here Aren, Cade and the rest of our heroes and heroines have escaped to the Ossian city of Morgenholme, where The Ember Blade is expected to be, and we meet new characters in a new environment. We now feel that we’re into an urban environment, with dark, dirty streets, poverty, disease and original inventions.
And we’re also privy to the real purpose of the story: to obtain The Ember Blade before it is given, in an act of subjugation, to the Krodans. The last part of the book is a heist story, with the eclectic group attempting to get The Ember Blade from the hands of the Krodans and generate a revolution amongst the oppressed Ossians.
The good news is that this last part of the book is on firmer ground. I was pleased that at times our assumptions, used to delimit our original caricatures, suddenly become more complicated. Some of the bad guys are not as bad as we first thought and some of our heroes are given greater depth and a more complicated aspect. The story eventually becomes, in places, something richer, more complex and more gripping. By the end, it is actually an exciting read. Although there is a now-typical cliff-hanger ending, there is enough resolution to make the reader feel that the journey (so far) has been worth it.
And yet….
Chris is clearly a skilful writer, and there’s clearly been a lot of work in putting this together. Any reader wanting the challenge of a big Fat Fantasy will relish such a read and realise from the beginning that The Ember Blade is a story for the long haul. It must be said that by the end I felt that it is an immersive experience, if you give it time to develop. If that is what you want, then this is a satisfying read, building from traditional tropes into a series of set pieces that read well, although not always working well together.
In summary, I’m pleased to have spent time reading The Ember Blade, but in the end I can’t help feeling a little underwhelmed. It’s good, but I have to say that it didn’t wow me as much as say, the complexity of The Fade or the energy of The Ketty Jay series did. It seems to be determined to be more like older style Fantasy books – more Raymond Feist’s Magician, than say, Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade itself, although The Ember Blade is quite messy in places.
The problem with it is that as much as I appreciate a Fantasy novel that is determined to be old-school and not Grimdark, it also has to bring a little of something new to the table as well for today’s demanding readers. Trying to do this by writing a big fat Fantasy is admirable but not entirely successful here. Length does not always equal depth, and this may also be the problem. I think that there’s much that you could remove here and make it a tighter, possibly better, novel. As much as I’d like to say different, I’m not sure this book ticks all the boxes, though the last part shows the reader what could be done. If you can stick with it until the end, it’s an enjoyable read.
The Ember Blade by Chris Wooding
Book One of The Darkwater Legacy
Published by Gollancz, September 2018
ISBN: 978-1473214842
832 pages
Review by Mark Yon
