"Ember Rising" by S. D. Smith

You've had The Empire Strikes Back (not a link to anything about the actual movie), now get ready for... Nazi-occupied France! The rabbit edition.

They still don't have any of the things I suggested in my Ember Falls review, but at least they did make ballistae. (With, again, exploding ammunition. Even if you don't have heavy enough industry to build a cannon or a mortar, some land mines would be nice, they're not that high-tech. We came up with cannons in the 1100s, and invented exploding shells somewhere in the 1200s, about a hundred years later.)

[EDIT, June 2, 2025: It's possible I may be wrong in the above paragraph; the Mongols apparently had exploding catapult ammunition in their attempted invasion of Japan.]

Also, apparently the birds of prey have hand grenades? Which makes one wonder why the rabbits don't also have hand grenades, especially as they require much less heavy industry than, y'know, cannons. The gunpowder use in this series is very inconsistent.

Despite being the rabbit edition of Nazi-occupied France, this isn't a completely depressing book; it's only mostly depressing. No, I'm kidding; it does end on an uplifting note (albeit one that implies the next book is going to be Leningrad: The Rabbit Edition).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some violence.

4 stars. The |battle for the First Warren| at the end was extremely cathartic.

(Endnote: I kind of want to ship these rabbits a modern hand grenade or two and let them marvel at its destructive power. And then launch it out of a catapult or something because it would be like as big as they are. Now I'm imagining a war movie where instead of grenades, everyone's throwing rabbits.)