"We all have different ideas about how we should live our lives. That is why we fight a lot, we can't come to the same agreement and that causes wars to break out and finally when we are done fighting each other we look back and say to ourselves, this could have been prevented."
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The Beckoning Series: Elura by A.J.Watts Trafford Publishing
book review by Wendy Strain
Author A.J. Watts has a beautiful story of love, peace and forgiveness to tell in his novel Elura. However, this doesn't mean the story plods along predictable paths. Watts keeps the energy up in sometimes quite surprising ways as he brings his characters through to a satisfying conclusion.
The story centers around a 10-year-old boy named Tommy. Six months prior to the opening of the novel, Tommy walked out of a house explosion without a scratch on him. Unfortunately, this same explosion made him an orphan - one with a troubling and mysterious background and an even more troubling future. The cast of characters who round out his world are not always what they seem and don't always reach the end in the way you might expect. While many of these characters eagerly join Tommy's quest to save his world as well as planet Earth, not all have such altruistic motives at heart. However, Tommy's charms prove difficult to resist. None of the characters emerge unchanged by their experience even though some of this change seems to occur behind the scenes.
Though the plot of the story has many strengths including a highly worthwhile message, the story would be much stronger had it gone through a few more revisions. Issues of grammar, punctuation, and incorrect word choice persist. Occasional minor plot holes also emerge which could be better addressed in a longer work. In spite of these issues, Watts creates lovable characters readers will want to learn more about in future additions to the series.