A Thrilling New World to Explore

W hen I was 13 or 14, John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series was my reading obsession. If memory serves, that summer, I’d checked out the first five books from the library and eagerly started devouring them. Vacation rolled around, and I made the terrible mistake of only packing two of my books, thinking I’d be much too busy to actually read them. Alas, I severely underestimated my own powers, and I was never so impatient for vacation to be over as I was that year, because I couldn’t wait to get home and find out if my new literary friends had survived whatever dramatic escapade had befallen them.

This memory popped up recently as I worked my way through S. D. Smith’s The Green Ember series. Book III ended with quite the cliff-hanger, and even though I’d requested Book IV at my local library, it was taunting me from another library shelf an hour away. Soon enough, though, as I was zipping back from visiting my adorable new nephew, I made a much-needed pitstop at the library for my prize. And if these words you’re reading seem coherent, it’s thanks to my editor, not my own doing — I was up past midnight before writing this so I could finish the book in one go.

The Green Ember is an adventure series in a vein similar to that of Brian Jacques’s Redwall books, but this series deals with only three types of animals: rabbits (generally good), wolves (evil), and raptors (also evil). Our main rabbit hero and heroine, Heather and Picket Longtreader, have their peaceful life in Nick Hollow thrown into sudden, violent chaos when wolves attack their home. The brother and sister barely escape and begin an epic journey to find their little brother and their parents, who have been taken captive. They meet loyal friends, wicked betrayers, brave fighters, and many more characters — and discover their own true gifts along the way.

The bulk of the series is in four books, but to round out the narrative, there are shorter, more focused novellas woven around them. This is a nice idea in theory, but I personally would’ve preferred all the lore and side stories be included in the main books. I had a disagreement with some of my students, whose cousins had recommended this series to me, about this technicality, but we otherwise had a wonderful time discussing the books.

This family and I have been sharing book recommendations and having disagreements for years. It is a joy to join them for dinner every so often and discuss the merits and failings of everything from Shakespeare to Wooster and Jeeves (not that Wodehouse has any failings, of course). And so it was with this series, which I was excited to tell them I’d read.

One of the kids observed that you could see the author’s writing and storytelling style improve as the books progressed, something that can also be said about J. K. Rowling and my beloved Brian Jacques. I have two critiques of the story, and I want to get them out of the way here.

First, every epic saga needs a ruthless villain. The Green Ember seems to promise many more than one, with a massively vile bird, Morbin Blackhawk, at the very top. Unfortunately, you see very little of the bad guys, and when you do, they’re rather formless. The focus seemed to be more on infighting among various rabbit factions, some who want total freedom from Morbin and some who want to bargain with him. This dynamic leads to a lot of plot twists, and ultimately gives the impression that it isn’t Morbin who is the real villain but a very wicked rabbit named Garten Longtreader.

SPOILER ALERT . . .

This leads to my second quibble. You don’t see much of Garten throughout the books, and then suddenly, at the very end of Book IV, a rather important bombshell of a plot point explodes on the reader: Garten’s foul deeds, which have caused nearly all the pain and bloodshed in this series, apparently came about because Heather and Picket’s mom had married his brother, not him. This revelation seems to get dropped in rather casually, and I would’ve appreciated more of leadup on this point — and it once again confirms my observation that women and money are the cause of most of the conflict in novels. (No, women aren’t bad, nor are they always causing the problems. But just read a few mystery novels. Seriously.)

These criticisms aside, the books are rousing reads for a wide range of ages. I highly recommend doing them as a read-aloud if you want to introduce them to younger children — some of the fight scenes are pretty gruesome and scary, so you can skip parts they can’t handle yet. And if you’re like me, you’ll put an egg on to hard-boil and then go outside to read Book I, forgetting about said egg for an hour until it explodes all over your kitchen.

Smith employs quite a number of cliff-hangers, making it nearly impossible to put the book down sometimes. I also appreciated the sweet romance he lightly weaves into the books, and which has the perfect culmination for all the die-hard romantics out there. Finally, and this is a small point, but the names Smith uses are always on point. Often in fantasy novels, authors get carried away making up ridiculous names for their characters. Smith keeps his simple and interesting, adding to rather than detracting from the tale.

So for your next road trip or lazy summer day, try pulling out this exciting series and join Heather, Picket, Smalls, Helmer, Emma, and so many others. By the end, you’ll be shouting with them, “My place beside you, my blood for yours. Till the Green Ember rises or the end of the world!”