Book Review: The Shadow Casket, by Chris Wooding
The second book in an epic trilogy does not suffer a sophomore slump.
Gollancz, 2023, 832 pages
A band of rebels.
A traitor in their midst.
A revolution about to begin.
It's been three years since Aren seized the Ember Blade. Three years since they struck the spark they hoped would ignite the revolution. But the flame has failed to catch. The Krodans have crushed Ossia in an iron grip of terror. The revolution seems further away than ever.
Far in the north, the Dawnwardens seek to unite the fractious clans of the Fell Folk and create a stronghold from which to retake their land. But even if they can overcome the danger of treachery from within, they still have to contend with the dreadknights. Only the druidess Vika can resist these near-unstoppable foes, and there's only one of her.
But what if there was a weapon that could destroy the dreadknights? A weapon of such power it could turn the tide? A weapon that, if it fell into the wrong hands, might mean the end of all hope?
The Shadow Casket has returned from out of the past, and it will save or damn them all.
Warning: Spoilers for the first book in the series.
I enjoyed The Ember Blade so much that I started right in on the second book in a planned trilogy, The Shadow Casket. It's another big, slightly bloated book that still manages to be entertaining even in the chapters that could have been cut.
In the first book, Aren, son of a disgraced Ossian nobleman living under Krodan rule, struggled through prison escapes, dungeon crawls, wilderness crawls, and infiltration of enemy strongholds guarded by Nazgul"Dreadknights" to obtain the legendary Ember Blade, symbol of rulership for the ancient Ossian kingdom. Along the way, he lost friends and companions and his youthful naivete.
The Shadow Casket starts three years later. Aren and his fellow "Dawnwardens" are trying to raise a real resistance among the downtrodden Ossians, who are suffering under the brutal Krodan crackdown after the events at the end of The Ember Blade in which Aren's party managed to bring down a castle and kill the Krodan Emperor's son. The Ossians, however, hardly a united people even before the Krodans conquered them, show no signs of rising up, and Aren and his crew are fugitives, traveling from town to town and hiding in safehouses.
Much of this second book involves the Fell Folk, who like most of the cultures in these books are recognizably based on historical Earth cultures but not one-to-one mappings of them. The Fell Folk are kind of a tribal Celtic/Native American mash-up, mounted raiders of the far north with an honor culture, who have long suffered under the yolk of Ossians and then Krodans.
One of the things I have appreciated about Wooding's writing is that pretty much everyone winds up painted in shades of gray. Even the Krodans have their virtues, although in this second book they become increasingly close to a caricature of the worst parts of Rome and Nazi Germany.
The Fell Folk, when Aren appeals to them for aid against the Krodans, rightfully point out that the Northguard militia that oppresses and humiliates them, has done so ever since the Ossians conquered them, and are merely continuing to do so under Krodan rule. So if the Ossians drive out the Krodans, what will change for them?
But the Fell Folk, for their part, were raiding, raping, and pillaging across the north before the Ossians put a boot on their necks. So no one is exactly innocent here.
This leads to Aren having to make a lot of terrible bargains with terrible people, which inevitably catches up to him. Just as he lost his naive admiration of the Krodans in book one, he begins to realize that the fabled "Second Empire" when the Ossians were the rulers of the land was not exactly a paradise for anyone else.
As in the first book, Aren and his companions go on a whole bunch of adventures and side quests, even secondary characters get a lot of character development, and once again, some major cast members die. There is more magic, more diabolical powers, and more epic battles. There's also a betrayal practically every other chapter.
The "Shadow Casket" of the title is a sort of MacGuffin and honestly, the weakest part of the book since it really serves no purpose except to give both good guys and bad guys a reason to go seeking after it and running into conflict. It is an artifact which seems destined to unleash Dark Powers (tm), which is a subthread running throughout this book: while Aren and his companions see their big enemy as the Krodans, some of them begin to realize that the Krodans are tampering with Things Best Left Alone, which means probably hell will break loose (perhaps literally) in book three.
One of my favorite parts of this book, though many might find it extraneous or less enjoyable, were the chapters about Klyssen, a Krodan Watchman (demoted after the debacle in the previous book). He is a main character in his own right, a formerly straight-arrow and loyal Krodan agent, now embittered and wanting only to retain custody of his beloved daughters, for which he's willing to bow, scrape, and machinate and do whatever he has to. He has fully realized that he's doing evil in service to evil, and basically accepts this as his lot. His motives are on the one hand noble: he genuinely loves his family and will do anything for them. But to this end he has wholly embraced amorality. Whether we will see a redemption arc in book three, or just Klyssen continuing to be a sympathetic villain, I found him as interesting as Aren. Maybe moreso, because Aren is still barely out of his teens and still sometimes dumb as a rock.
With 4D chess moves, double-crosses at every turn, and climactic battles and confrontations with Big Bads in all the right places, I enjoyed the second book as much as I enjoyed the first. This is, as I said, supposed to be a trilogy, and Wooding took a while to get the second book out (The Ember Blade was published in 2018 and The Shadow Casket came out at the beginning of 2023). So there may be a wait for the third book, but I am definitely going to pick it up immediately.
Also by Chris Wooding: My review of The Ember Blade.
My complete list of book reviews.
Gollancz, 2023, 832 pages
A band of rebels.
A traitor in their midst.
A revolution about to begin.
It's been three years since Aren seized the Ember Blade. Three years since they struck the spark they hoped would ignite the revolution. But the flame has failed to catch. The Krodans have crushed Ossia in an iron grip of terror. The revolution seems further away than ever.
Far in the north, the Dawnwardens seek to unite the fractious clans of the Fell Folk and create a stronghold from which to retake their land. But even if they can overcome the danger of treachery from within, they still have to contend with the dreadknights. Only the druidess Vika can resist these near-unstoppable foes, and there's only one of her.
But what if there was a weapon that could destroy the dreadknights? A weapon of such power it could turn the tide? A weapon that, if it fell into the wrong hands, might mean the end of all hope?
The Shadow Casket has returned from out of the past, and it will save or damn them all.
Warning: Spoilers for the first book in the series.
I enjoyed The Ember Blade so much that I started right in on the second book in a planned trilogy, The Shadow Casket. It's another big, slightly bloated book that still manages to be entertaining even in the chapters that could have been cut.
In the first book, Aren, son of a disgraced Ossian nobleman living under Krodan rule, struggled through prison escapes, dungeon crawls, wilderness crawls, and infiltration of enemy strongholds guarded by Nazgul"Dreadknights" to obtain the legendary Ember Blade, symbol of rulership for the ancient Ossian kingdom. Along the way, he lost friends and companions and his youthful naivete.
The Shadow Casket starts three years later. Aren and his fellow "Dawnwardens" are trying to raise a real resistance among the downtrodden Ossians, who are suffering under the brutal Krodan crackdown after the events at the end of The Ember Blade in which Aren's party managed to bring down a castle and kill the Krodan Emperor's son. The Ossians, however, hardly a united people even before the Krodans conquered them, show no signs of rising up, and Aren and his crew are fugitives, traveling from town to town and hiding in safehouses.
Much of this second book involves the Fell Folk, who like most of the cultures in these books are recognizably based on historical Earth cultures but not one-to-one mappings of them. The Fell Folk are kind of a tribal Celtic/Native American mash-up, mounted raiders of the far north with an honor culture, who have long suffered under the yolk of Ossians and then Krodans.
One of the things I have appreciated about Wooding's writing is that pretty much everyone winds up painted in shades of gray. Even the Krodans have their virtues, although in this second book they become increasingly close to a caricature of the worst parts of Rome and Nazi Germany.
The Fell Folk, when Aren appeals to them for aid against the Krodans, rightfully point out that the Northguard militia that oppresses and humiliates them, has done so ever since the Ossians conquered them, and are merely continuing to do so under Krodan rule. So if the Ossians drive out the Krodans, what will change for them?
But the Fell Folk, for their part, were raiding, raping, and pillaging across the north before the Ossians put a boot on their necks. So no one is exactly innocent here.
This leads to Aren having to make a lot of terrible bargains with terrible people, which inevitably catches up to him. Just as he lost his naive admiration of the Krodans in book one, he begins to realize that the fabled "Second Empire" when the Ossians were the rulers of the land was not exactly a paradise for anyone else.
As in the first book, Aren and his companions go on a whole bunch of adventures and side quests, even secondary characters get a lot of character development, and once again, some major cast members die. There is more magic, more diabolical powers, and more epic battles. There's also a betrayal practically every other chapter.
The "Shadow Casket" of the title is a sort of MacGuffin and honestly, the weakest part of the book since it really serves no purpose except to give both good guys and bad guys a reason to go seeking after it and running into conflict. It is an artifact which seems destined to unleash Dark Powers (tm), which is a subthread running throughout this book: while Aren and his companions see their big enemy as the Krodans, some of them begin to realize that the Krodans are tampering with Things Best Left Alone, which means probably hell will break loose (perhaps literally) in book three.
One of my favorite parts of this book, though many might find it extraneous or less enjoyable, were the chapters about Klyssen, a Krodan Watchman (demoted after the debacle in the previous book). He is a main character in his own right, a formerly straight-arrow and loyal Krodan agent, now embittered and wanting only to retain custody of his beloved daughters, for which he's willing to bow, scrape, and machinate and do whatever he has to. He has fully realized that he's doing evil in service to evil, and basically accepts this as his lot. His motives are on the one hand noble: he genuinely loves his family and will do anything for them. But to this end he has wholly embraced amorality. Whether we will see a redemption arc in book three, or just Klyssen continuing to be a sympathetic villain, I found him as interesting as Aren. Maybe moreso, because Aren is still barely out of his teens and still sometimes dumb as a rock.
With 4D chess moves, double-crosses at every turn, and climactic battles and confrontations with Big Bads in all the right places, I enjoyed the second book as much as I enjoyed the first. This is, as I said, supposed to be a trilogy, and Wooding took a while to get the second book out (The Ember Blade was published in 2018 and The Shadow Casket came out at the beginning of 2023). So there may be a wait for the third book, but I am definitely going to pick it up immediately.
Also by Chris Wooding: My review of The Ember Blade.
My complete list of book reviews.