The Green Ember (S. D. Smith)

The Green Ember
The Green Ember series, Book 1
S. D. Smith
Story Warren Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Young rabbits Heather and Picket grew up with stories of kings and warriors, of Whitson Mariner and Captain Blackstar, of battles fought against wolf and hawk and eagle. But one tale Father never told them was the Rise and Fall of King Jupiter, lord of a hundred warrens and protector of the Great Wood. Never, that, is, until the night before the wolves came, and their peaceful childhood ended in flames.
Fleeing for their lives, the siblings fall in with their estranged Uncle Wilfred and his ward Smalls, who take them to a hidden rabbit sanctuary. It looks peaceful, a place to rebuild hope and a future. But all is not as it seems, and the forces that brought down Jupiter and ended his legendary reign - the wolves and birds of prey and even traitors of their own kind - stand poised to snuff out even this small spark of resistance. Worse, Heather and Picket find themselves disliked almost from the start, for reasons nobody will tell them. As they struggle to unravel the mysteries of Cloud Mountain, the danger looms ever closer.
Of all the tales Father told them, the one he wasn't brave enough to tell may be the most important, and most tragic, of all...

REVIEW: Though the characters may be rabbits and the edges may be a bit blunted given the target audience, The Green Ember isn't a cutesy Fluffy Bunny story. This is very much an epic fantasy tale, if one dressed up in fur and whiskers, and if you come to this expecting nothing worse than hurt feelings you'll be in for a shock; the violence isn't graphic, but it is deadly, and grows moreso by the climax. Heather and Picket both have to do a lot of growing up in a short (and tragic) space, and don't always manage it without some wrong turns, though to Smith's credit I fully understood even the backslides; the author builds real, solid characters with sometimes-complicated inner lives and conflicted wants, not just in Heather and Picket but in much of the surrounding cast. Naturally, there's more to the story of King Jupiter's fall and missing heir that bears directly on them and their family, though not in the obvious way one might expect. The plot moves rabbit-quick, but never too fast to keep up with. I considered trimming for the old trope of evil wolves and predators, a subtle but persistent tendency to soften the female characters to stereotype roles of healers and sages, and the needlessly-sanitized illustrations (which, in my opinion, don't honor the tone or the characters, not to mention the young readers who can and will take them every bit as seriously as any Tolkienian creation), but in the end decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. It's a well-told tale suitable for younger readers, and if The Green Ember sparks an interest in the greater field of epic fantasy, so much the better.

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