Since long before mankind ever began building houses for itself—long before there was ever such a thing as a market or an industry or money, long before the very first organized war rolled itself out across some expanse of coveted land—we’ve been telling stories to each other. Stories of love and of hate, of bravery and cowardice; stories of comedy and stories of sadness; stories of life, and stories of death.
Stories of what lies beyond, even.
And why? Why does this thing, this practice, unite an entire world, so that some nomadic tribal father on the long-ago Veldt unfolding a tale to his children with magic shining behind his eyes shares the practice with today’s careworn used car salesman, who spends the best part of his evening putting his own kids to bed with the bedtime story du jour?
The opening lines will grab you by the hand and pull you into the sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying world of Topos versus The Oarsmen.
The answer—my answer, anyway—is that as human beings, we have a singular vocation that both drives and ennobles us as a species. We seek to find and preserve Truth, a word which you will find purposefully capitalized throughout most of the new young adult novel by Glenn Beck and Mikayla G. Hedrick: Chasing Embers, the first book in The Oarsmen series.
In the book, we follow the adventures (and misadventures) of two young characters from the city of Oasis—Ember and Sky—as they first begin to learn what the concept of Truth really means and then to uncover what’s really going on in their world.
As one writer has jokingly said, “Glenn Beck lives in the vestibule of the Apocalypse." If so, it must be a great place to pick up ideas for good stories, because this book is an exciting and fascinating ride. From the opening lines, which will grab you by the hand and pull you into the sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying world of Topos versus The Oarsmen, to the last page, which will leave you wanting the next book in the series—now, please and thank you—this first foray into young adult literature on the parts of Beck and Hedrick is a rousing success.
We must seek Truth. We must preserve Truth.
Set against the backdrop of a land blasted by the hell of a global war, Oasis is the Shining City on a Hill for a new age, one in which people are encouraged—forced—to forget history, the past: Truth. Seven years ago, Ember’s father and mother found out the hard way what happens to those who try to preserve Truth when they were hauled away to a terrifying experience known as "Sleep Camp." Since then, Ember and her younger brother Henry have been under the watchful eye of a local caretaker. Ember is a teenager with one foot planted firmly in the reality she’s been conditioned to believe: that Topos, the corporation that runs the world in general and Oasis in particular, is the singular purveyor of Truth. Meanwhile, her other foot is tentatively dipping a toe into the past: the memories of her father and mother and the book she received from them which she now must hide. Only when that book is found, and Topos recruits her to find its owner (not knowing it’s her), does Ember slowly begin to uncover the web of lies into which her world has been woven.
Meanwhile, a teenage boy named Sky—who has left Oasis for what, he does not yet know—stumbles onto the small community of Cherry Harbor, a town of Holdouts, those who refuse to live under the tyranny of Topos in Oasis whose shared task is the preservation of history and its Truth. Sky, who has never seen people acting in these ways before, is shocked to discover that he is slowly drawn toward the old stories that the town’s schoolmaster tells—the dying mythology of a once noble and powerful nation. Sky, who has all the inborn ignobility of Topos flowing through him, begins to understand just how important the tales we pass on really are.
Ultimately, our two main characters find themselves drawn together in an increasingly perilous unfolding situation filled with moments of courage and betrayal, love and loss. And in the end, they each will have to make hard decisions—decisions that will affect them for the rest of their lives.
If you’re a teenager, you’re going to love this book. If you’re a parent who has teenagers, you’re going to love this book. And if you’re an adult trying to remember what it was like to be a teenager, you’re really going to love this book. Beck and Hedrick follow the most important and least often heeded rule in writing, which is that the story always comes first. The pacing and character observation are well balanced, the world-building unfolds in an organic and pleasing way, and the characters feel lived-in and real.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that a good dystopian post-apocalyptic piece of fiction is almost always a great time.
What this book is... is a fantastic read that anyone can pick up, but few will be able to put down. What it does is inspire us to fulfill that sacred vocation of man: we must seek Truth. We must preserve Truth.
Because without Truth, all is truly lost.
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