Official Review: Embers: The Foundation

[lyndsie_anna]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Embers: The Foundation" by D Robert Landholt.]

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Embers: The Foundation by D. Robert Landholt centers around the idyllic life of the protagonist, Luke Embers. This book has the makings of a perfect teenage possible movie adaptation trilogy: a good, wholesome country boy with rough-housing friends, the beautiful girlfriend, and a perfect family. The description of his everyday life, described by the author as “just another day in Pumpkin Run,” drags on for one hundred and eighteen pages. He goes to work, he makes stupid jokes with friends, he goes home to dinner (where he is perfectly respectful and loving and joking with both his older sister and parents) and then he goes off to a bonfire at the hang out spot with all his friends. Basically, for the first half of the novel, nothing of note happens to our protagonist. After the exposition of Luke’s life, we are present with him at the bonfire, which again is made overly idyllic. A scene happens here which we are apparently supposed to recall and pay attention to later in the story.

The morning after the bonfire, he is woken up by the local sheriff, who informs him of the deaths of his family due to arson that night. This loops us back around to why the beginning scene of several nameless criminals bickering is important. Turns out, they were bickering about their botched robbery-turned-arson at Luke’s house. Luke’s reaction to the situation is severe; he seems to develop multiple personality disorder. Now, this would be interesting, but the author’s descriptions are, again, heavy –handed and keep us outside of Luke’s mind.

However, even for someone who has suffered something so horrible, Luke’s personality shift doesn’t seem believable. Gone is the wholesome boy; he becomes surly and even righteously violent. The transition deeper into madness seems too formulaic for my taste. It’s even a bit problematic. Luke begins referring to his anger as a completely separate entity from himself and talks to himself, a stigma for mentally ill people.Towards the end of the novel, Luke goes on a sort of personal mission to avenge his family, the results of which we will find out in Landholt’s second installment.

The excessive description seems to be Landholt’s way of trying to make us sympathize with Luke. It falls flat, not only due to length, but also because he has made his characters his puppets. Though the book seems to be geared toward a younger audience, Landholt still needs to learn to give his readers some credit. He directs every action, thought, and emotion each character has. For example, if Luke is thinking to himself, Landholt feels the need to end the sentence with, “he thought,” as if we couldn’t figure it out on our own. Aside from all this, he consistently makes the same grammatical and punctuation errors. This is something which should be correct before the book can even be considered for publication by anyone.

While the book has an interesting premise, it seems like Landholt needs to get to know his characters more in order to be successful. He could potentially have the materials to make a potent statement about mental illness and trauma, if he researches properly.

I’d give it a 2 out of 4 rating. This is because he has an incredibly interesting, if difficult premise about what happens to people when they go through something unspeakable. It could potentially be interesting. However, I found it to be too heavy handed. This book would appeal to those who enjoy teen literature series.

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