Witch Ember [Paperback]

John Lawson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2002

In the days when gods walked the earth and the clay of Man was still wet, a Stone of Power was shattered. From that day forward, all humankind carried a piece. Most have just a little- just the tiniest speck of dust- but some have one of the bigger grains- or even a pebble- and they are the most powerful of sorcerers. In the paranoid, magically-barren lands of the Seven Kingdoms, the street urchin Esmeree is born to carry a stone of unprecedented size and power. As she struggles to survive the unforgiving streets of Cliffs Reach, she endeavors to master the sorcery of her stone and understand its purpose. But time is running out for her for others have discovered her skills and seek to use or destroy her. The Inquisition, the Superbus Tyrannus, the Primate of the Holy Median church. Esmeree must determine her own path, or she will die their slave.

Product Details

• Paperback: 489 pages
• Publisher: PublishAmerica (March 20, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591290384
• ISBN-13: 978-1591290384
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,390,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well done!, January 12, 2007

By 

Detra Fitch (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Witch Ember (Paperback)

Legend says that in the days when gods walked the earth, the god called the Trickster Man stole a Stone of Power. To cover his crime, the god ground up the stone, put it into some flour, and baked it into bread for First Ancestor to eat. But in his haste, Trickster Man did not grind the stone pieces fine enough. There were still pieces big as a piece of sand. Some were still the size of pebbles. When the time came for the first people to be made, they were created using pieces of the First Ancestor. Therefore, each person has at least a tiny speck of the Stone. Those who carry one of the bigger grains can do minor magic. Those who carry a pebble sized piece became powerful shamans. Of course, the people who could not summon power grew to fear the rare people who could. Thus, the people with magic are hunted down as witches and burned.

The story opens with the main character, Esmeree, being around the age of six. She is a street urchin, trying only to survive among the magic-fearing people of the Seven Kingdoms. Esmeree carries a big stone (a.k.a. witch ember) within her and tries to keep anyone from finding out about it. However, Esmeree must learn to use and control the ember's sorcery before she is declared a witch. Should that happen, Esmeree would be turned over to the Inquisition, tortured until she confessed, and then publically burned.

Lady Andelliza learns of Esmeree's ember and begins to tutor the child in magic. Old Myrdd, one of Esmeree's few friends, mentors her in ways that may one day help the child marry well above her station.

By the time Esmeree hits puberty, knowledge of her ember has leaked. She is continuously on the run, simply trying to survive one more day. Esmeree must master her ember before she is captured by the Inquisition, the Superbus Tyrannus Valven, Primate Klemm and his army, or even the notorious Fée.

**** This is a thick novel. Consider yourself warned. Having said that, let me add that once I got into the story, I could not put it down! In a few sections of the novel, as Esmeree's story unfolds, you meet Sir Guiromélans. He is a Raven of the Seven Kingdoms, one of the elite. (Think of him as a paladin of God.) I do not believe I give anything away by mentioning him since the second novel, "Raven", has already been released. By including the Raven within Esmeree's tale, I feel as though I already know him. Watching Sir Guiromélans, a paladin, struggling to deal with his honor and beliefs in order to decide whether Esmeree, a witch, is evil or not was very intriguing. Of course, to the church it does not matter whether the girl seems evil or not. (Have stone, will burn.) No, there is no real reason for me to even mention this paladin to you at all. But I cannot help myself. The author does such a masterful job, in the sections Sir Guiromélans is mentioned, that I came to know him as well as I do Esmeree.

As for Esmeree, author John Lawson may start this girl out at a very young age, but by doing so he makes sure that the character keeps her wits sharp and learns quickly. Toward the end of the novel it dawned on me that several of the small tales told to Esmeree, as well as some words of wisdom handed down to her early on, make more sense than I ever could have imagined. All-in-all, this is a well developed story that fans of fantasy will highly enjoy. I heartily recommend it! ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful read., September 4, 2007

By 

Odyssey Reviews - See all my reviews

This review is from: Witch Ember (Paperback)

Author John Lawson brings us "Witch Ember"; a gritty, dark fantasy set in a creatively crafted world where people are born with tiny shards or `embers' which lend them magical powers. Esmeree, the primary character is born with a large piece of this ember, and unknowingly possesses tremendous powers; however she is also unfortunately an orphaned child of `the Mill' where she grows up knowing only the horrors of prostitution, drugs and violence. Her role models are an assortment of unsavory adults, with only one or two creditable souls to help her survive. She is also surrounded by a collection of youths who are also part of this dismal, dirty world. Her greatest aspiration is to become a more refined, personal prostitute/concubine for the city's richest; it is her sheltered view of the world and her ignorance of her own power and potential that makes her ambition so limited. You watch her grow, and with it, her world as well. It starts focused on the mill and its scurrying, grimy inhabitants and broadens slowly as the story goes along. You learn as Esmeree learns.

You will find that Esmeree is a plucky character, and she successfully carries the reader through this very thick novel as she overcomes each terrible experience, and slowly begins to discover who she is, where she must go, and the extent of her `ember's power'. She is thoroughly likable, and despite how casually she perceives the trauma of her daily life, she has an honourable sort of soul, and she makes others around her better as well.

The author did a commendable job showing Esmeree's personal growth, and wrote a believable world imbued with the same political and faith-based upheavals as our own. The detail in this book is broad and you can get lost in it occasionally. It is a dark, coarse sort of book, I will not fail to mention that. The sexual content is explicit and without sugar-coating, and the violence is graphic and vivid. Those of you that are squeamish may not care for the content of Witch Ember.

As a reviewer, I do have some criticisms of this unusually tidy, well-put together novel. The author obviously enjoyed interspersing his many invented words into the book. He definitely took his time to create a world complete with its own dialects and slang. You can't miss these words; they are all italicized and infused with a pröfusion of symbols to make them appear exotic. Frankly, as a reader, all it did was make it distracting. This was really unnecessary and it does nothing for the flow of the book when you constantly have to stop, flip through the index, find the word and its meaning, and then find where you left off. And doing it again and again (for it is a sizable index) really just made me want to put the book down and go read something less arduous, like War and Peace. It nearly ruined the book for me, and that is a lot considering that this is a really good book. I think the language was overdone, and unnecessary for a story that can carry itself perfectly well without it.

This is definitely the neat, seamless work of a technical writer. I usually tend to look for errors and such when reading, as do the other reviewers here at Odyssey, and despite the symbols and the distracting language, I could find little to pick apart when it came to the quality of the writing, the cleanliness of the manuscript, and the author's ability to keep you riveted even through the slow bits and the index references.

I have to give Witch Ember five medallions. ONLY because I think it's a notable work of self-published writing, BUT if I were feeling less generous, I'd take a half or whole medallion away just for the time I had to spend looking up words.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard Core Science Fiction, May 9, 2008

By 

Theresa M. Studer "Terra57" (Hopedale, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Witch Ember (Paperback)

Witch Ember by John Lawson is an extraordinary work of hard core Science Fiction/Fantasy. Intricately detailed, I found this novel reminds me of Dune by Frank Herbert in so many wonderful aspects.

Esmeree is a wonderful character with so many different traits that you can actually envision her in a 3-D format. She is top and foremost a witch/sorceress but doesn't realize this in the beginning of the book. Her character is developed slowly and the author is very dedicated to every detail of her.

The story starts out with Esmeree as a young child who has no parents and is left to be captured and work in the mills. Being on the bottom of the ladder so to speak really makes each little life action a hard learning experience. Esmeree knows that she is different from the other young children but doesn't exactly know why at first. It doesn't take long however for her to realize that what makes her so different has to be from her birthmark.

As time goes on in this novel, Esmeree's character develops right before our eyes over a matter of days, weeks and years to becoming a quite intelligent beautiful young woman. All of this comes at a large price that is most difficult for her to pay. She is used, abused, beaten and near death mores times than you can count. In fact, with all that Esmeree goes through it makes her a very strong character and she deals with what life throws at her with the highest of precision. Not that it doesn't knock her down a few pegs here and there but what she learns from this is hard and quite often inhuman.

The storyline is so rich that you really must read this a bit more slowly so as to not miss one single tidbit of what might be going on. It is brutal, sexually explicit and down right scary in some spots. Makes you really think about things that go bump in the night or about those stories you were told as a child to make you cautious and aware of everything and everyone around you. There is no childhood innocence here.

There are many other characters in this novel for periods of time, richly detailed and strategically used for their purposes. Some are extremely close to Esmeree and some are very alien. All are dangerous in their own ways but learning from them is worth the danger. They enrich the story tremendously.

The author gives us a world of bitter reality, harsh abusive lifestyles, greed and lust which make this some place I would hope to never see in my dreams let alone while I'm awake. With all this said I would have to give this author high kudo's for such an impressive masterpiece.