Witch Ember

Witch Ember
John Lawson
PublishAmerica
ISBN: 1-59129-038-4
Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy
Reviewed by Dr. Tami Brady

Of late, I’ve been getting quite a few novels (historical, science fiction, and fantasy) written with a contemporary voice. This tends to make the characters a little more edgy and tortured than traditionally written works. When it comes to fiction, I’m a little old fashioned so I prefer fantasy to sound like fantasy and science fiction to sound like science fiction. I like the feel and the pacing of the storylines. With that said, there is something very intriguing about this new style of writing. It creates a sense of realism (albeit somewhat dark and pessimistic) to the action that perhaps gets a little candy coated in other works.
Witch Ember has a very good premise. The book starts off with a legend describing how Trickster stole one of the Stones of Power. Scared that he’d get caught, he ground up the stone and fed it to the First Ancestor. Thus, everyone would get a piece of this stone. The interesting thing is that the stone wasn’t ground into a perfect powder, bits of various size were left and redistributed to those who would come later.
The story continues with a young girl, Esmeree. She suffers the fate of many other children in her society. Without any semblance of love or caring, she simply serves as a tool for profit for the adults around her. But unlike other individuals, she carries something special in her chest, a witch ember, which serves as both a savior and a curse.