Witch Ember by John Lawson (and Weekly Geeks)

Witch Ember opens with a story from when the world was young. Trickster Man stole a Stone of Power, and he ground it and baked it into bread for his friend First Ancestor. Later on, First Ancestor was chopped up, and the first humans were made from his pieces. Because he had eaten the bread, every human has a piece of the Stone of Power inside them. Some pieces, however, are larger than others.

Witch Ember is the story of a girl named Esmeree. Esmeree is an orphan, and from a very young age she has to resort to thievery and prostitution to make a living. It’s also at a very young age that she realizes that she’s in permanent danger. She has a large ember in her chest, a fragment of the Stone of Power, and according to the doctrine of the Medianist Church, women are not supposed to hold this power. Her ember means that she will potentially become a very powerful sorceress, and such people are often burned alive by the Inquisition, or put to even more sinister uses.

After making a living on the streets for a number of years, she becomes a Sellaria, a high courtesan, and this allows her to cross paths with a number of influential people. It is in the sequence of this that her considerable powers begin to be used by others to betray her fellow witches and wizards. But as Esmeree grows up, she begins to realize that she’d rather use her powers to fight intolerance, injustice and hypocrisy, and to spare others the kind of childhood she was forced to have.

The world John Lawson created in Witch Ember is a very rich and detailed one. It’s also a very dark one. Cliffs Reach, the place where Esmeree grows up, is a very rough city. It is a city controlled by the Medianist Church – a supposedly pious place where heresy of any kind is crushed, where witches, wizards and foreigners are burned alive or crucified, and yet a place where child prostitution is tolerated, or at the very least ignored. One of the things Esmeree learns as she grows up is to separate her own personal faith from the injustices that are committed by men in the name of God.

This world is also populated by a number of fascinating and original fantastic creatures, and by complex and nuanced characters whose actions and motivations surprise you even when you think you have them all figured out. These are also characters you care about – Esmeree, for example, remains likeable all through the story, even if some of her actions make you raise your eyebrow. Even when you don’t think she’s making the right choice, you understand her, you feel along with her.

Witch Ember is a very gripping story, full of twists and turns and emotionally charged scenes. The book is quite a long one, and yet I never lost interest in the story. On the contrary, I became more and more engrossed in it as it advanced. One of the reasons for this was the fact that the tone of the book changes as Esmeree grows older and becomes more and more aware of the complexities of the world that surrounds her, of the daily acts of cruelty she witnesses. At the same time, she becomes more and more determined to do what she can to change things.

In many ways, Witch Ember is a coming of age story. A great deal of it is about Esmeree figuring out what kind of person she wants to be. It’s a story with an epic feel that manages to remain very personal at the same time. And on top of that, it’s expertly written. John Lawson knows when to be subtle – his tone is always tasteful, even when what’s being described, or hinted at, is very disturbing.

I’m afraid I do have a minor quibble with the book, though. John Lawson created a language (or rather, several languages) for the inhabitants of the world he created, and all through the book there are strange words here and there. There’s a glossary at the end where you can check the “translation”, but I found that having to constantly turn the pages to check the glossary was pulling me out of the story. What I did after a while was stop consulting the glossary. I just figured out what the words meant from the context, and, as most of them were recurrent, halfway through the book they became familiar. Still, I’d have preferred the meanings to have been given in footnotes rather than in a glossary.

This really is a minor quibble, and it didn’t keep me from really enjoying this book. If you’re a fan of fantasy (particularly dark fantasy), of stories about strong women, or of good storytelling in general, I think you will enjoy it too.

You can find out more about Witch Ember and John Lawson here. He’s a great author and he deserves to be more well-known. Also, you can read Chris’ great review of this book here.

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Have you all checked out Dewey's great new idea? It's called Weekly Geeks, and it's a challenge - not a reading challenge, but a blogging one. There will be different themes each week, and signing up does not mean that you have to participate every week. For more details, go here. It sounds like fun, doesn't it?