I get why Loren hesitates to review Sam Smith’s The Green Ember, and I share his desire to see it succeed. Here’s a bit of his review:

“Here’s the best way I can sum up The Green Ember for you: It reads as if Brian Jacques had Sam Gamgee’s famous quote from The Return of the King (“Is everything sad going to come untrue?”) nailed above his desk while writing a version of Redwall that wasn’t awful. Far from being merely “not awful,” though, Smith’s first novel shows that he truly understands the essentials of storytelling.”