My Favourite Quote: "That's it. I'm tiring of playing nice with these defective neophytes."

(I'mma be honest, had to look the word up:

neophyte: /ˈniːə(ʊ)fʌɪt/ noun

- a person who is new to a subject or activity.

"four-day cooking classes are offered to neophytes and experts"

synonyms: beginner, learner, novice, newcomer, new member, new entrant, new recruit, raw recruit, new boy/girl, initiate, tyro, fledgling.

See, we're all learning here.)

Title

I find 'Embrace and Become' to be an interesting title. Right off the bat, I assume it's a piece on self-acceptance, essentialism, and the exploration of self worth in a society that presents the 'self' as an outsider. My first thought was that it would include LGBTQIA+ themes.

Cover

I really do like the cover - so many pretty colours! It's intricate and messy - a perfect form for a piece that deals with self-exploration, reflecting a beautiful, yet chaotic, mind. I like it, but it's somewhat hard to make out the text.

If you want to stick with the concept, I would recommend making the text a bit bigger and darker. Maybe consider a more professional font. Helvetica is always good for reflective works.

Additionally, weight it lower. The picture is focused on the upper edge of the image, so you should balance that with darker, weightier text along the lower edge.

Alternatively, I'd recommend reconsidering the theme of the cover altogether to reflect the themes in the book. Make it darker, perhaps more industrial, or fantastical, or magical. I was expecting a light-hearted read about coming to terms with my sexuality, not a dystopian novel about super-powered kids raging against a machine.

Description

It's a thoughtfully worded paragraph that gives the impression it would be a 'slice of life' kind of story - it somewhat lives up to that.

It's short and succinct, but the content feels a bit out there with the expectations built from the name. With how colourful and light the cover is, one wouldn't expect 'Embrace and Become' to be a story to be about supernatural adolescents.

Introduction

Right off the bat, there's a third-person omnipresent narrator, and it immediately makes me think of teen movies.

*record scratch* That person getting hit in the face with peanut-butter toast? Yeah, that's me. The girl with the tiara covered in spaghetti? That's my ex-girlfriend, Sam. Now, I bet you're wondering how I ended up in this situation. Well, it all started...

Of course, it's not so whimsical. Embrace and Become starts off with heavy themes of military dystopia, maybe a bit of authoritarianism, and I'm only three paragraphs in. This is somewhat highlighted by the almost cynical tone our narrator takes.

A strange thing happens here: The narration is interwoven with the events of the scene and, while I think it's an interesting concept, it's somewhat delimiting. There's no clear perspective on what the reader should be focusing on.

This first part of the story essentially plays the role of an establishing shot, giving the reader a view of what this world is like - military shipments, helicopters, armed forces, the dangerous/weak students.

That's a great way to start off this kind of book, but I feel that the narration and fourth-wall break detract from the experience.

I'd recommend that, in order to stay with the theme of this opening chapter, the narration be stripped to a minimal. Don't tell the reader the entire backstory. Instead, show the reader what is happening and let them learn about the backstory through the events of the book.

Then again, it's not an incredible problem. It's only six paragraphs, and the story progresses naturally after that.

Prologue and First Chapter

I like the fact that the characters are introduced in a line-up inspection fashion. It introduces the reader to the harsh environment, but, truth be told, I'm not an intelligent creature, and as soon as I read about the next character I forgot the previous three.

These kinds of scenes are effective in film because they're quick and provide the viewer with immediate visual identifiers for the characters while displaying characters in their natural mode (the heightened version of their personality).

While this is a technique that could be used in literature, it should be used with constraint. Words on a page don't hold the same visual stimulus as, say, a character that is heavily themed purple. When the purple character appears, the viewer can say, "Oh, it's the cute little angry one!" That's not something that comes easy in books, and too many of them provide a mental overload.

Introducing too many characters at once also makes it difficult to care about any of them. Six intricate and distinct characters aren't a lot, but they're a lot to take in all at once. The beauty of their character is lost.

I'd recommend rethinking the scene. I understand that the method of introduction lends a lot to the theme of the story, but maybe we don't have to know all about the scary villain types - or perhaps we don't need to know all about the four new students - until we see them in action.

Which is, ironically, something that does happen almost immediately afterwards. We see the new guys acting their natural selves, which makes the introduction all the less necessary in the opening paragraphs.

And you know what? They're absolutely lovely, but more on that later. For now, my recommendation is that we use the opening to establish the character of Tiger's Eye, given that she's our main antagonist and essential plot-device to the first chapter. We learn about the other characters naturally enough, but we don't spend much time developing a three-dimensional villain.

Plot and Theme

I re-iterate: perhaps I'm not the most mentally proficient, but I do feel like the plot developed exceptionally fast and I couldn't keep up with the majority of it.

A lot of it initially feels unjustified - 'evil for the sake of evil' kind of thing - and I haven't read far enough to determine if this is the case or not.

It does move very fast however. There's an entire plot in the first chapter, and it exhausted me, to be fair.

The change in perspective is forgivable, and the full, intense plots of the chapters too, because it plays into the idea of isolated stories and experiences reflecting the characters' time at the institution.

As for the theme, I think it's very consistent and well thought out. It's heavily inspired by industrial military action, and I absolutely love the idea of the super-group injected into that. It's very good, and I'm proud of you.

I don't know if it was intentional or not, but the main characters all reflect certain aspects of society that are essential to generating a narrative on the (now) totalitarian regime. Wilbur has that nihilistic soft side, Tracy is super rebellious and ready to stage a revolution, and Jack embodies fear and lament under a restrictive government. Ab-so-lute-ly beautiful thematic work.

On top of that, THAT GAY REPRESENTATION! YEET! JACK IS MY BABY! I SWEAR IF ANYBODY HURTS HIM I WILL -

Oh, oh, okay.

Writing

The writing is fair. There are some issues with paragraphing and speech, and a few typos perhaps, but nothing that really stood out as distracting to me.

I think you did a good job on balancing visuals and action, and that's something that I honestly admire - I'm very bad at it myself.

I'd recommend that you find somebody to help you with editing in order to make your story easier to read and more visually presentable, but it's not a serious issue as it is now.

Characters

While all the characters were wonderful (SPOILER ALERT except Ty, I'm glad she died. She was mean), I think what I really took away from this was the relationships between the characters and their personalities.

They're very well thought out. The dynamic seems to be constructed for the typical 'team learning to be a good team' trope, and there's nothing wrong with that. I encourage it, in fact.

My background is in acting, so I'm trained to critically analyse character work and character relationships. If I say these characters were really good, take my word for it.

Everything they did played into their established personalities, and the way they spoke seemed completely natural for them.

One potential problem you might face later down the line is that you might find difficulty developing them further or building character arcs. At the moment, the characters seem more like idealised tools to progress the plot than the plot serves as an opportunity to tell character stories.

Also: WilburxJack 4eva, OTP!

Overall Impression

I wouldn't keep reading this - it's not particularly my cup of tea. While I commend you on the worldbuilding and the character construction, I feel like I cannot handle the pace of the story.

The only thing that makes me want to read further is to see these characters grow - I actually do care about them.

I am very critical, but that's because I'm supposed to be. Most of the things I've brought up here don't bother the general reading populace. I certainly wouldn't have cared as much if I was reading this casually.

I would recommend this book to anybody who like teen action novels (or Young Adult Fiction, as they call it nowadays). Despite my inability to keep my head on straight, I recognise that the plot is interesting, that the characters are fun, and that the book isn't badly written.

It's something to keep you company on a train ride, that's for sure.

Reviewed by: TimberWoolf