The Ember Blade

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”.