Hero Loses Everything. Hero Keeps Going.
Grant knows exactly where to plant the knife and twist it slowly. No stereotypical evil laugh required.
Oath and Ember has a classic grimdark setup: the hero loses everything, the hero keeps going. It's brutal without descending into gore. Darren Grant knows exactly where to plant the knife and twist it slowly (but without the stereotypical evil laugh!).
I loved how he built everything brick by brick, with small domestic gestures that accumulate weight in a very natural, cinematic way.
The prose is a pleasant surprise. "Mercy is a word we drag across the floor when we don't want to move the table" is a line you remember, and it's deliberate, not thrown in to pad the word count. The novel has a voice.
At times you feel the excess of preciousness, but personally I prefer an author who risks too much over one who risks nothing at all. In this, Grant shows courage, and that's something I admire.
The Gulch as a setting works! The creatures are fascinating and thematically relevant.
The book tends to wobble a bit toward the end. The last chapter shifts register in a jarring way, and the main villain would have benefited from more nuance. It works for the narrative arc, in the sense that it's effective but not efficient. I hope the sequels complicate him.
It's a Prince of Thorns kind of book, but with a more human protagonist (well, that's a low bar).
Grant writes about vengeance. I write about survival.
Different paths through the dark, same destination: ordinary people making impossible choices.
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