Brace yourself ducklings, I’m fixing to give you something on this blog that has never been seen here before. I’m about to give you a YA kind of book. I know that you are all clutching your pearls right now. But trust me, Slumbering Ember is definitely worth it. So, let’s dig into it, shall we?
We start with Matt. He’s 16.5 years old, and American. He’s been raised by his single mother. She met his father when she was an exchange student in Denmark as a teenager. They got it on, she got sent him, and Laurits, Matt’s dad, told her that he would do everything he could to get to her. When Matt was 6, his dad died in a motorcycle accident, so Matt will never get to meet him.
Now that Matt is old enough, he’s on his way to Denmark as an exchange student. He’s staying with his mother’s friend and her husband. They also knew his father. There’s a huge connection going on there, and Matt and they are really familiar with each other and love each other like family.
Matt is doing all the student exchange kind of things, including going to school. One of the things that he needs to do for school is a report on fracking. It turns out that there is a protest against fracking, so Matt goes down there to see it and see if he can interview some of the protestors. And that’s when things began to get weird for him.
So, the Vargr, which the series is named after, are a form of shifter. They have really long lives, and they are tasked as the protectors of nature. The Vargr children get bitten by their parents on their 15th birthday to help prepare them for their lives as a Vargr. At a later date, they get the bite from the Alpha which turns them into their full Vargr self.
Now, as a YA story, there isn’t a whole lot of sex. In fact, the most we get is Matt making out with his boyfriend. And that is actually perfect for this story. The worldbuilding and establishing the characters and the mythology are so much more important. This isn’t really a romance, and yes, I do read more than romance. It’s definitely a coming of age story and one where the main character goes on an epic journey to this self discovery.
The worldbuilding in this is tiptop. It’s really one of the best books I’ve read with the worldbuilding, I think. The world and the mythology have stuck in my head, and I had to remember that the next couple of books I read didn’t take place in the same world. That’s how good it was.
I’m really looking forward to the next book/s in this series to see what is going to happen, because I fully expect it to be wonderful.
In Between the Pages 