Customer Reviews

The Dirt Eaters (The Longlight Legacy)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Dirt Eaters

"The Dirt Eaters" by Dennis Foon, takes place in post-apocalyptic earth, where most modern day things such as metal or solar panels are rare and hard to come by. There is only one place, "the City" where electricity is still abundant and it would appear that metal is worked to make things such as motorcycles, this "City", is apparently trying to dominate the world. The story follows a boy of about fifteen, named Roan; he was raised in the town of Longlight, which was destroyed, and Roan was the only survivor. The "Brothers" a religious cult doing who are sworn to protect others and better the world, took him in. While with the Brothers, Roan is trained to fight and concentrate to calm himself, but all the while Roan has the feeling something isn't quite right.
As the protagonist, Roan grew up in Longlight, a place where people never fought; they believed that fighting corrupted people. When Roan is trained to fight by the Brothers it goes against what his people taught him, however he is very good at it and he tells himself that if his people did fight then they would not have been killed.
The main theme behind "The Dirt Eaters" is about having power, but knowing when to use it. Roan struggles with this throughout the whole book, he can fight, very well, but he was brought up not to fight; however at times it is necessary to fight.
I would recommend this book for nearly all readers; the storyline is good, and it's not too predictable. It's not a really high level of writing, but it is well written, and contrary to most stories it's written in present tense; but once you adjust it's not really noticeable. The characters are all interesting, especially Roan with his inner conflict around violence.

I really enjoyed this book. Many books and movies have been created about After the [pick one: War/Bomb/Holocaust] that destroys civilzation as we know it. So many, in fact, that new ones of that genre can be boring or at least cliché. Not this one though! It is well written and has interesting ideas and characters, and pulls in thoughts from many cultural traditions. It asks questions about pacifism vs fighting back, and when to take action and when to wait. It also manages not to be cynical. I couldn't put it down! This is a book I'm glad I own because I will definitely re-read it.

Anyone who loves fantacy type books will love this one. This book expands your imagination and curiosity to the limit. very interesting charaters and plot!

I recently picked up the whole trilogy of this, because I'd read the first one about 5 years back and remembered it being halfway decent.
I'm a very love-it-or hate it kind of reader, and I have to say, I could not feel one way or the other about this series. It would have been easy to just hate it, but Foon is not nearly as offensive to a reader's intelligence as folks like Cassandra Clare or Stephenie Meyer. Roan is a likable guy, and there are some genuine stakes in the story with some decent word-building.
It is a Crapsack World with a capital C and W. But the reason for why things are what they are is never given any explanation, and I mean that about the entire series. I kept expecting an exposition dump that would explain why the white crickets are sacred and sentient, what exactly the Dreamworld was, and how everyone knew the Longlight prophecy was definitely going to fix everything when Longlight itself got slaughtered to a man (and one little girl.)
This being the first book in the series, it was the most cohesive of the bunch. I just can't bring myself to say that this was a stupid series, but it just seemed to suffer from foggy character arcs and plot stakes, in addition to a smidge of world-builder's disease.

I picked The Dirt Eaters at my usual spot in the library and the cover was interesting enough to make me read it.

The Dirt Eaters is the first book in a trilogy that takes place on a post-apocalyptic earth after a nuclear disaster, making everything very unpleasant. Roan is one of the Longlight, the people who are doing fairly good on this destroyed earth until they are massacred, leaving Roan alone in the world and seeking revenge.

Now, I am an otaku, I will admit that without the shame that most feel. The reason I bring this is up is because the basic storyline and setting feels familiar to me and then I realized that The Dirt Eaters is similar to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, an anime which also takes place after a nuclear holocaust and there's talk of a chosen one and so on. Hen again, the post-nuclear holocaust scenario is very popular. You could say the setting is also similar to the Obernewtyn Chronicles.

Despite this similarity, the Dirt Eaters is interesting nad has a unique sound and look. I think anybody who thought Eragon was a good book should read this instead or be hit very hard.

Plot: B The plot has been done before but there are new elements that make it different.
Characters: B The characters are intersting and open for rounding.
Readability: B The book is easy to read, although there could be more description sometimes.
In short: B Its worth reading and maybe buying if you really like it. I own a copy myself.

I am submitting this review on behalf of my 8 year old son whom I read this book to.

I thought this book has excellent characters. It really felt like I got to be inside the head of each character and look at things in the story from different points of view. The descriptions of the area they were in was great especially how they described new creatures. Parts of the made me feel really scared because it almost felt like I was one of the characters. Some parts were very exciting, and made me wonder. When Roan has visions I was curious how the characters in his visions would appear in the real life part of the story. I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it!

This book has a few intresting concepts, but it quite frankly lacks decent descriptive talent. Also, the story never really found foundation. The back of the book had more substance than ninety percent of the pages.
I could be wrong. Just my opinion.