Blood of Ambrose

By James Enge
Pyr, $15.98, 401 pages

In Blood of Ambrose, James Enge has written a dark fantasy about a young king, an evil overseer named Lord Urdhven, and a brother and sister named Morlock and Ambrosia who battle to save the king and his kingdom. There is much fantasy, magic, murder, and mayhem involved as the forces of good and evil clash. Unfortunately, there is no magic to be found in Enge’s writing.

While Blood of Ambrose is filled with all sorts of action, Enge manages through his turgid prose to drain the passion, drama, and ultimately, the reader’s interest, from the page. A recurring problem that Enge has is an over-reliance on parenthetical explanations (which get rather annoying after a while). Rather than letting events carry the plot forward naturally, he inserts parentheses after parentheses to explain or comment on what just occured or will occur in the text. This has the effect of eliminating virtually all dramatic tension and vitality from the goings-on. This is unfortunate, because Blood of Ambrose has all the requisite elements of a quality dark fantasy tale. All that is missing is a storyteller to weave them into a seamless whole.

Reviewed by Doug Robins