The Warden

If I’m being blunt, there wasn’t much drawing me to The Warden when I saw the audiobook in my public library’s catalog. It seemed like fairly traditional fantasy fare, but with a queer necromancer that wasn’t The Locked Tomb. The thing that actually hooked me? The anticipated wait for a hold to come up was over a year long. Surely something that in-demand is worth the wait? This book didn’t reinvent my reading life, won’t make my favorites list, but it absolutely was a fun farmtown fantasy filled with plenty of things to love in a 300 page package. 

Elevator Pitch:
Aelis is a new Warden. She’s a prodigy able to manipulate magic from three fields of magic and the son of one of the country’s richest men. That didn’t stop her from getting placed at the very edge of the Country, near the frontier that serves as no-man’s land between Aelis’ people and the Orcs. Turns out everyone is terrified of a necromancer walking amongst them, there’s a few dangers and mysteries she didn’t expect, and a crumbling wizard’s tower in desperate need of a roof and a door. Before she can tackle any of those problems, she’s got to earn the trust of the locals. 

What Worked for Me:
This book pitches itself as Twin Peaks but with wizards, as well as a nonstop action/adventure story. I can’t speak for comparisons to Twin Peaks, but it definitely isn’t the latter, and the mismarketing here is a bit of a shame. The Warden is relentlessly slow-paced, allowing Aelis to settle into a new rural life with a remarkable amount of restraint. The inciting incident that kickstarts the more traditional plot doesn’t happen until about 40% of the way through the book. Before that, we follow Aelis as she meets townsfolk, follows up on a few strange oddities, and mourns that her role isn’t what she dreamed of. This book lays the groundwork for a much larger plot that will (presumably) span the trilogy, but my favorite parts were the extensive slice-of-life elements. If the final 10% of the book is any indication though, the series will shift more towards action and adventure. We did get a dungeon crawl after all; it just took the whole book for it to pop up. Expect lots of small moments to come up later, but the foreshadowing worked because it was mixed in with plenty of other details that are just as important to Aelis’ journey, even if they don’t have later plot relevance. 

The setting is both familiar and well-realized. We get plenty of classic fantasy elements in dwarves and elves and orcs, all of which fit into mostly familiar roles. It’s worth noting that while humanity definitely perceives orcs as monstrous and tribal brutes, Ford makes clear in the narrative through our limited interactions with orcs that they’re a multifaceted and complex people like any other. The sleepy town is filled with farmers, a few war veterans, and an inquisitive child, all of which serve as a buffer for the mysteries that seep into the edges of the story. 

Aelis is a good perspective character to follow. She’s an outsider with more than a bit of resentment at her new position, but that anger is matched by her determination to do the job (and the people living here) justice. She can get short and angry, sometimes even making unrealistic demands when she isn’t thinking situations through. She’s got a good heart at the core, but isn’t perfect. She’s fair, but young and a bit naive, leading her to take unnecessary risks. Now, she isn’t the most complicated character you’ll find in the world, but I liked spending my time with her. 

What Didn’t Work for Me:
There wasn’t enough Necromancy in this book! Aelis did a lot of wardcraft, a decent amount of swordplay, and some clever enchantment (human manipulation, not item creation) throughout the story, but precious little actual necromancy! Considering book 2 is called Necrobane, I’m sure that this gets addressed in the sequel, but I kept waiting for Aelis to pull out her ritual dagger and use it as a focus more often than her abjuration sword. 

A complaint that may not get addressed in a sequel is the bubbling sapphic connection established in this story. Aelis finds herself with a reciprocal crush on a travelling mercenary. They don’t start dating, but hook up and are clearly interested in pursuing something if their paths were more permanently in alignment. Considering she’s on the cover of book 2, she’s going to make a reappearance. And I didn’t find their attraction to each other believable at all. Ford can write a logical and rigid Warden well, but struggled with flirting, emotional depth, or other characterization that relied on nuance. This shallowness is a noticeable negative for me in this book, but wasn’t a dealbreaker. Should these elements become more prominent in sequels? I may run into a wall with this series. As it stands, I’m mostly coming back for a more grounded take on D&D style fantasy, not a thematically rigorous trilogy.

Conclusion: fun, but not groundbreaking. If you’re looking for a lowkey sapphic story, a necromancer protagonist, or a slow burn small town beleaguered by supernatural threats, it might be for you

• Characters: 3
• Setting: 4
• Craft: 4
• Themes: 2
• Enjoyment: 3