Embers of the Ethereal Kingdom

Embers of the Ethereal Kingdom

Fantasy · 432 pages · Published 2024-07-23 · Avg 2.9★ (7 reviews)

THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE ETHEREAL KINGDOM SAGA FROM ACCLAIMED FANTASY AUTHOR JACKSON THORNE. When the Ember Crown sparks in the shattered citadel of Vaelor, map-thief Elowen Kash is bound to an oath she never chose—and to an uneasy ally, the exiled prince Cael of the Umbral Court. To keep the skies of Aevyra from tearing open, they must cross the glass dunes of Kharis and descend the Mirrorgate beneath Mount Ardent before the Hollow King devours the world's memory.

A breathless romantasy of cunning, ruin, and radiant magic—where salt-iron corsairs haunt Port Sable, names are weapons, and a single ember can rewrite a kingdom. Welcome to the Ethereal Kingdom.

Jackson Thorne is an American fantasy author and former field cartographer. Raised along Oregon's coast, he studied geography and folklore at the University of Washington before mapping trails across the Cascades and the Great Basin. His short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Shimmer, and his work often blends mythic cartography with intimate, character-driven adventure. When not writing, he restores antique compasses and hikes volcanic ridgelines for research. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with a rescue greyhound named Ember.

Ratings & Reviews

Asha Whitcomb
2025-10-22

Best for readers who enjoy lyrical fantasy with slow traversal and court tension rather than nonstop battles. Violence is present but not gory, and the central threat is psychological, focused on the erasure of memory by the Hollow King.

Content flags include coercive oaths, identity manipulation, and peril in subterranean spaces. I'd shelve this for older teens and adults who like romantic sparks with restraint and a landscape-forward quest.

Kendra Zhou
2025-08-18

Quick notes for fantasy readers who like map-heist energy with romance on simmer.

  • Aevyra feels fresh without a glossary slog
  • Heist opener in Vaelor clicks, then quest stays coherent
  • Tender beats between Elowen and Cael that avoid melodrama
  • Some purple phrasing slows momentum
Mateo Villalobos
2025-06-09

Thorne plantea un conflicto sobre identidad y memoria que late en cada paso hacia el Monte Ardent. El juramento impuesto a Elowen y la corona chispeando en Vaelor ponen en juego la pregunta de quién decide qué recordar. Me gustó el motivo de que "los nombres son cuchillos", aplicado a alianzas y traiciones, aunque la ejecución a veces se diluye entre adornos líricos. Queda una novela que piensa en el costo de reescribir un reino, más interesante en sus ideas que en su pulso.

Gopal Sinha
2025-03-26

The setting sings. Glass dunes that hiss under moonlight, salt-iron corsairs in Port Sable, and the Mirrorgate's unsettling reflections turn Aevyra into a place you can almost taste.

Even the Hollow King's hunger for memory feels textural.

Eleni Duarte
2025-01-14

Elowen's map-thief pragmatism plays well against Cael's polished exile, and their bickering settles into wary respect.

The romance thread flickers rather than burns, which fits the title's ember mood, but I wanted sharper motives for some of Elowen's choices and less royal brooding from Cael.

Darius Mott
2024-10-02

A quest with a neat hook dragged itself thin across Kharis: cool images, thin urgency. Stops in Vaelor and Port Sable feel scenic but stall the race to the Mirrorgate.

Marin Caffrey
2024-08-12

I went in ready for radiant magic and got a fog machine. Thorne stacks metaphor on metaphor until the Ember Crown and Mirrorgate feel like props rather than forces.

Scenes throb with adjectives, yet direction stutters. Big reveals land with a clink because the structure keeps cutting away whenever momentum might build.

The POV shuffles feel arbitrary. Elowen and Cael vanish for pages while a side locale monologues about Port Sable legends, then snap back as if nothing happened.

The rule of names as power is nifty but hazy. Terms arrive before any frame of reference, then get footnoted later by dialogue that reads like patchwork lore dump.

By the time we finally descend toward Mount Ardent, I was tired of being told what's luminous and what's hollow. I needed a spine of cause and consequence, not a chandelier of pretty phrases.

Generated on 2025-11-06 12:03 UTC