“Ember Falls” by S.D. Smith

The rabbits are back.

If you’d told me I would be enjoying a children’s book series about rabbits, I might have laughed out loud. But I am enjoying one, and I’m not laughing – I’m smiling.

Ember Falls is the second installment of The Green Ember series by S.D. Smith and illustrated by Zach Franzen (there’s also a prequel – The Black Star of Kingston). And what rabbits can do is rather amazing.

Following the great victory over the wolves at Jupiter’s Crossing (where we left our rabbit friends in The Green Ember), brother and sister Picket and Heather Longtreader have settled into a kind of normal daily living. Heather is learning the arts of medicine from Dr. Emma, who will turn out to be something more than a doctor. Picket is training with the elite military unit called the Fowlers, while mourning the taking of his parents and little brother by the wolves. He’s in training because the rabbits know war is coming.

Trouble lurks at every corner – wolves attacking in unexpected forays into the rabbit compound of Halfwind, eagles screaming and pouncing, the arrival of a new and suspect rabbit army, and traitors lurking in their midst. Heather and Picket have much to learn, and much to be wary about.

It’s a delightful story, and it can be read aloud to a children’s audience (or an adult one, for that matter). It’s action-packed, full of near misses and near hits, acts of courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and riveting scenes of anguish and confrontation. An additional story is being developed as well – the plight of a girl rabbit enslaved by the wolves and forced to serve them.

Ember Falls is the second of at least three in the rabbit series. It’s a self-contained one but not a completed one.

Yes, I’m glad the rabbits are back.

Related:

My review of The Green Ember.

My review of The Black Star of Kingston.

S.D. Smith’s “The Black Star of Kingston”

Amazon made a mistake.

S.D. Smith’s new children’s book, The Black Star of Kingston, is scheduled to publish July 13. But Amazon shipped some pre-orders early.

I was one of the beneficiaries of the mistake.

And what a rollicking good story this is. Yes, it’s a children’s story, but it stirs the blood and makes you want to take sword in had to fight alongside the characters in the story.

The Black Star of Kingston is a kind of prequel to Smith’s first children’s book, The Green Ember, with the story taking place about 100 years before (I reviewed The Green Ember here in February). A prequel, yes, but it provides context for the story of the green ember and the critical role it plays it the history of the rabbits.

S.D. Smith

Yes, rabbits, rabbits with names like Fleck the miner, and Galt, Gavin, King Whitson and Queen Lillie, Prince Lander, Massie and so many more. Some years prior, they had fled the destruction of their home and many members of their families, founding the town of Seddleton on the shores of Lake Ayman.

The settlement needs fuel, however, and to cut down too many trees is to make the rabbits vulnerable. They look across the lake at the brooding, dark mountains beyond – which Fleck believes are a likely source of coal. Eventually, the king outfits an expedition. The rabbits do find coal, and something else, something evil, something that will seek to destroy them, their families and their town.

Zach Franzen

It’s a heroic story, demonstrating what happens when an ordinary individual (Like Fleck the miner) follows his convictions and rises to what can only be called heroism.

Like The Green Ember, this story is illustrated by Zach Franzen, who gets the rabbits exactly right. A sequel to The Green Ember is scheduled for publication in 2016.

The Black Star of Kingston is not only a children’s book; it is a book to be read by adults to children – for the benefit of both.

Top photograph: Cover illustration of The Black Star of Kingston by Zach Franzen.