Thomas wakes up in the maze, the newest kid there. Before he has a chance to figure out why he can’t remember anything, or acclimate to life in the Glade and the Maze and its horrible Grievers beyond, bad things start happening. First, another newbie shows up — the first and only girl. Then supplies stop coming. And then the Ending: if the Gladers don’t solve the Maze soon, they’re definitely going to die there.

There are spoilers uncovered under the cut.

My main thought after reading this book was that it called on a lot of the same tropes as the Maximum Ride series — but its strengths and weaknesses are exactly opposite. Consider: both books involve kids who are part of some enormous experiment (not one they entered by choice), who don’t really know what its endgame in. They both are told that everything happens for a reason, but never really get more than a hint of what that reason is, and yet have reason to suspect the evil scientists are perhaps not so evil after all. And both feature a lot of running and being chased by strange creatures.

But in terms of strengths and weaknesses, where the problem with Maximum Ride was the pacing and total lack of plot, but its strength was the characters, Maze Runner is in the extreme other corner. The book is face-paced and exciting; the plot is fine, though nothing extraordinary, and carries the book from setpiece to setpiece with no problem. But the characters had zero personality (and there was only one girl, who spent much of the book unconscious, which… yeah). We’re told that Thomas is very smart, and in great shape, super duper special and extraordinary… and being told that substitutes for development. Similarly, the ease with which Thomas defeats the Grievers and saves people makes it look like everyone else was just incredibly incompetent for two years,and makes it all feel a bit too easy for him.

Aside from that, the slang made me really irritated. I think adding in some slang can make for really great world building, when done well; it can make the strange setting feel real. It basically failed to do so in Maze Runner. It didn’t feel like there was a need for a lot of the words that were used, and whether there was a need or not, they were all vastly over used, to the point where it felt more like a nervous tick than an insult when a character was called a shuck-face or a pile of klonk or whatever.

Ultimately, because I’m such a nut for worldbuilding and structure, I liked the book fine. I might even pick up the second one, to see if there really is a plan behind everything, something I’m generally pretty skeptical of (especially after the Maximum Ride series…). But the book itself didn’t do much for me; the good parts were fine, but not outstanding, and the bad parts were pretty annoying. So it edges by with a respectable but not outstanding three cupcakes.

Incarceron is a prisoner unlike any other: it is alive, and holds thousands of prisoners inside it, in a bleak, ever-changing, deadly landscape. Finn awoke inside with no memories, but is sure he came from somewhere else — even though most other prisoners don’t believe the Outside even exists, or that Escape is possible.

Claudia is the daughter of Incarceron’s warden, soon to be married to a prince. Caught up in a web of intrigue and not sure who to trust, she searches for her father’s key — and through it finds Finn. Desperate, she’s sure Finn is the only one who can help her, and she’s certainly the only one who can help him.

But they have only hours to get him out, before her wedding takes place, and all hope to free not just the prisoners, but the entire trapped world is gone…

Oh man, you guys. During the four days I was reading this book, I kept running into articles about how it’s going to be the Next Big Thing in YA, and had to flee spoilers. But I hope it is the Next Big Thing, because it’s pretty much awesome.

I’m crazy for worldbuilding, and Incarceron‘s world is awesome. The world itself is one of the most interesting dystopias I’ve run across: several hundred years in the future, after some sort of horrific war (the “Years of Rage” — the book does have a minor tendency towards Significant Caps, but thankfully doesn’t take it too far), technology has been banned, but the wealthy still have it in semi-secret. The world itself is subject to Protocol (like I said about those caps…), which forces everyone into a sort of pre-industrial revolution existence, complete with corsets and capes and carriages (…alliteration is all mine, though). But the Protocol is oppressive, and the only people who find it entertaining or romantic are the people wealthy enough to use contraband technology — everyone else, for example, is illiterate, and likely to die from lack of vaccines. The combination of the Protocol and the sci-fi tech gave the whole thing a steampunky feel, which I really liked. (Hence it gets both the dystopian and steampunk labels up top.)

And then there’s the inside of Incarceron. Creepy, creepy, creepy. And again, a strange blend of sci-fi and steampunk — people born with mechanical limbs, metal forests, and the technology of Icarceron itself, contrasted with people living in semi-nomadic tribes, fighting with swords for survival, believing in magic and superstition. (Or is it only superstition …?)

The characters were great: Finn calls on a lot of standard fantasy/scifi tropes, but does so very well. I love that he isn’t just instantly a nice guy in a bad situation — he does bad things, and spends a lot of the book coming to terms with them and growing a conscience. I had a harder time getting a bead on Claudia, since she’s less archetypal, but she’s an active heroine (yay!), interesting and complex in her own right. And the supporting cast is equally complex: for example, the morally ambiguous guy is actually ambiguous. In many novels, that’s the guy you can tell either going to defect to the badguys, or get an obvious redemption in the end. Instead, I actually wasn’t able to tell which side he’d end up on in the end.

And then there were the twists at the end. I thought I called the book’s big twist — turned out it wasn’t the biggest, or even close. The last section is just reveal after reveal, and wow. I haven’t wanted a sequel this badly since I finished Catching Fire.

The one real quibble I had is minor at best. The first section has a lot of people expositioning awkwardly at one another — “Well, Claudia, let me explain this thing to you that you and I are both already aware of, but it bears repeating for no real reason except it’s a good way to explain to the reader.” It’s less than graceful, needless to say. But since I couldn’t put the book down, and every time I started to write this conclusion I realized I had another glowing thing to say, this book is a solid five cupcakes.

The Hunger Games are over, and all Katniss wants is to go back to her normal life. But the government isn’t happy with her – not least because she’s unwittingly become the face of the rebellion. As unrest grows in Panem, Katniss begins to realize that surviving the Hunger Games was only the beginning.

Becky and I both loved The Hunger Games, and were on the edge of our seats waiting for Catching Fire to come out. It did not disappoint. I can’t say much without spoiling it, but I can tell you that Collins’s prose and plotting are as brilliant and gripping as always. The Hunger Games was full of fascinating, morally-murky characters who remain just as fascinating this time around, though the characters introduced in this book are eager to give them a run for their money. Katniss remains brilliant and badass and utterly socially inept. Panem gets even creepier and more intriguing. I could not put this book down.

All that said, I do have two very brief quibbles. One is that the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale is played up a lot in this book, and I can’t stand love triangles. That’s a personal preference (or un-preference), though. The other is that Collins glosses over major scenes a few times, summarizing them in a paragraph or two instead of showing us the dialogue, action, and emotions that are going on. It would be one thing if these were minor, unimportant slice-of-life scenes, but they’re pivotal moments. It’s bizarre, since Collins is usually such a flawless writer, and goodness knows Scholastic has given writers a few extra pages to fit everything in in the past (*coughHarryPottercough*).

Still, these are the faintest of objections to an otherwise incredible book. Collins maintains her perfect average here at Active Voice, as Catching Fire gets five cupcakes. (Psst! Suzanne! We’ll give you six next time if you get the third book out fast!)

By Suzanne Collins [LibraryThing - Amazon]

Katniss Everdeen is a poacher in the poorest district of Panem, the country that exists where the United States used to be. She’s been single-handedly supporting her family for five years, and would do anything for her little sister — even take her sister’s place in Panem’s brutal Hunger Games, in which tributes (more accurately described as sacrifices) from each district are forced to fight each other to the death. On national television. At first, no one takes Kat seriously, but even as she proves herself a formidable opponent she rages against the system, knowing that if she survives and wins the Hunger Games, she may lose her humanity altogether.

Jess and I both read this book, in fact, devoured it, within days of its initial release last year. We’ve been trying to review it for months now, but it keeps getting put off, because there’s not actually much to say. You see, this book is., in a word, phenomenal. We have no real criticisms, and we don’t want to spoil anything for anyone. All we could really think to do is list some of the ways in which it’s awesome.

So here you go!

1. Kat is a fantastic character. She’s a first-person narrator; she’s jaded and cynical, and very angry at the world — and understandably, given everything she’s been through even before the Games get started. She’s incredibly kick-ass and active in all the ways we love our protagonists to be, and her internal dilemma is as compelling as the external danger she’s in: if Kat manages to win the games, it’ll be by becoming a cold-blooded murderer, and losing her humanity. She’s terrified of letting that happen. But her only other alternative is to die. So what’s a girl to do?

2. The world building. It’s definitely a dystopian story, and Panem is a scary place. The difference between the haves and have-nots is striking and stark. The way Panem deals with enemies is also terrifying: the book takes place 80 years after a failed uprising — the event that gave rise to the original Hunger Games — in which one district was completely obliterated and is now basically salted earth; and Katniss runs across several horrific mutant animals that were used as weapons in that war. But on a smaller scale, she also sees what happens to individuals who dissent — and since she’s the hero, and Panem’s capital is villainous, of course we want her to dissent as readers. But we definitely know what the stakes are for that, and they aren’t pretty.

3. The plotting. The book is incredibly tightly plotted, full both moral dilemmas and serious danger (and you never get the feeling that Kat will be okay, just because she’s narrating). It isn’t a shock that the book is so well-drawn, given how utterly phenomenal Collins’ Underland Chronicles were, especially towards the end when all the small bits and pieces came into play. I can only imagine the scale on which that will happen in the Hunger Games trilogy, because with a first book as well written as this, and knowing that Collins is an amazing writer who can truly follow through on everything she has set up, I can only imagine the series getting better. And that is saying something, because the first book is really, really, really good.

Do I even need to say it? Five cupcakes and all the sprinkles in the world.

Lia Kahn was beautiful, popular, and rich. Her life was perfect — until she died, only to wake with her brain patterns transferred into a mechanical body. But society isn’t kind to Skinners, as downloaded people are called. She loses her status at school when her friends and her boyfriend abandon her. There’s a whole cult devoted to ridding the world of Skinners. Even her own family is uncomfortable with her. And for her part, Lia’s left wondering… Is she really Lia Kahn, or just a robot programmed to believe she’s a person?

A few weeks ago, Jess and I dropped by a signing at Books of Wonder, since it featured AV favorites Justine Larbalestier and Suzanne Collins as part of the panel of writers. We weren’t familiar with the other eight, but Robin Wasserman got as far as, “My book is a dark dystopia with a teen girl protagonist — ” before Jess leaned over to me and whispered, “So you’re buying it, right?” Right! Because possibly my favorite sub-sub-genre is dystopian science fiction about teenage girls! So I got the book, and got it signed (Wasserman was super nice, too). And last weekend I finally sat down to read, and positively devoured it.

Skinned is awesome.

The first thing is Lia’s character. Lia is great, largely because she’s not the sort of protagonist you get used to in this kind of genre. She’s not plucky; she’s not spunky. She’s not even nice — in fact, she’s very much a classic mean girl. But she’s still sympathetic. As a reader, I was cheering as much for her to regain her shallow, horrible status as I was for her to learn she didn’t need it, which is a very fine line indeed. Basically, I wanted Lia to win.

Next is the world. Wasserman mentioned at the signing that she hadn’t originally set out to write a dystopia, and instead was planning near-future science fiction with our current world taken to the next level. That it turned into a dystopia is a little scary, but the world is great. Post nuclear war, the rich live in luxury, genetically screened to not just get rid of any potential diseases, but enhanced to be beautiful or brilliant (or, if you have enough credit, both). They are plugged in all the time, constantly on a virtual network that makes up much of their real world. Most of them work, but life is easy. On the other hand, everyone else is stuck living in crumbling cities which are not only not connected, but have no power much of the time (let alone proper healthcare, which is a problem, given that most of these cities are still toxic from the nuclear fallout). The only alternative to cities is to basically sell yourself into slavery and work for a company. But the gap between rich and poor is huge, and the way the characters deal with it is pretty fantastic.

Lia has no concept of how people in cities actually live, and firmly believes the party line that anyone can move from city to corporation to wealthy by working hard enough. Meanwhile, the class nerd — Auden — is a total freak because he worries about conditions in the cities and thinks city people need help, but he’s never been to a city; and when he suggests the energy crisis is just a way the government keeps people under control, everyone laughs at him as a conspiracy freak.

And speaking of Auden, he’s also a great character. And I absolutely must sing Wasserman’s praises here, because the tangible awkwardness between Lia and Auden as they become friends and it’s obvious he has feelings for her that doesn’t return is so very real. It’s almost painful. And double points because, while Auden represents one possible future Lia could take, and a male Skinner named Jude represents another, Lia attempt to make sense of things never comes across as Lia choosing between two boys.

Finally, the book’s treatment of race completely floored me. I won’t spoil that for you — the sudden bluntness of it actually made me gasp when I realized — but we’ll just say that it isn’t a coincidence Lia’s mechanical body is white, blond, and blue-eyed.

Basically, the book is amazing. The tone is great; it’s dark without being overwhelming, even in the moments when the book makes some really unpleasant points. And the ending was fantastic, because it sets up to go one way, which would totally make sense and be fantastic — and takes a sharp left turn that is unexpected, but also fantastic. (Definitely did not see it coming.) Skinned is the first in a trilogy, the rest of which is not out yet. Since I will be buying them in hardcover the moment they are available, the book gets an obvious five cupcakes.

Luke was never supposed to exist. The Population Law says that families can only have two kids—and the Population Police will murder any third children they find. But So Luke lives in hiding in his parents’ attic, never allowed outside, not even allowed to eat with the family in case someone glances in the kitchen window.

But then everything changes—from his hiding spot he sees another child like him, a girl who shouldn’t exist, another third. He risks everything to meet her…And it turns out that she has a daring plan which might not just liberate the two of them, but every hidden child in the country. If only they can find the courage to do it…

I was expecting a bit more science fiction when I picked this book up, and instead got a dystopia with a more classic feel. It reads very much as a cross between 1984 and The Giver, set in the Great Depression. Except, of course, that it isn’t the depression; it’s a generic future where population explosion combined with drought and famine to topple the government, bringing a totalitarian regime to power. The book also touches on class, quite a bit; Luke’s family are poor farmers, barely able to keep the roof over their heads, completely unable to turn a profit. But they live next to a settlement of Barons, a class so wealthy and powerful they have hidden luxuries like illegal junk food…and their third children can get fake identity cards, leave their houses, and pretend to be normal.

The book does a pretty good job of showing just how miserable Luke is. He’s lonely and isolated, and it gets worse as the book goes on; the writing is vivid and clear. The characters are pretty standard. What makes the book good, though, is Jen, the girl Luke finds hidden in a Baron household. Jen is both passionate and naïve. She desperately wants to be free of the tyrannical Population Laws, and defies both her parents and the government to try and do so. But her passion blinds her; she believes she truly can fix everything, that it’ll be easy to do. She believes anti-government propaganda uncritically, while Luke discovers for himself that the truth isn’t what the government claims, and it isn’t what Jen and her circle of pre-teen rebels believe; it’s somewhere between the two, all shades of gray. And then…spoiler. show

The dystopia itself is pretty great, but then, I love a good eerily wrong society. (Shocking for long-time readers of this blog, I’m sure.) The book definitely has that; it’s developed and fascinating. Unfortunately, part of what makes it so upsetting is that it’s got an…hm, not exactly anti-choice message, but it skirts the line pretty closely. There’s a very effective scene where Jen and Luke discuss the government’s propaganda, encouraging women to have fewer children—only one, or none at all. And Luke knows that all women are required to have a surgery after they’ve had two children, to make it impossible to have more; and that if an accident happens and she gets pregnant again, she’s supposed to “take care of it.” Luke doesn’t know what that means, only that his mother knew she could never have “taken care of” him because she loves him so much and wanted a large family so badly. The juxtaposition of the evil government forcing sterilization on women and the loving mother defying them is pretty striking. It isn’t a pro-choice, pro-life question, because pro-choice is very definitely not pro-forced-sterilization (since that, you know, takes away your choice), but it comes close enough to make me uncomfortable. It didn’t strike me as intentional, or that it was a message the author was hoping readers would take away, but it was subtext nonetheless.

Otherwise, the book is a dandy little dystopia. A little off the beaten path for this blog, but solidly-written and definitely something that could be read, enjoyed, and discussed in a young-ish classroom. I would read the sequels (the further adventures of Luke, presumably still seeking a way to free the shadow children) if they were available free, but am not interested enough to pay for them, and I was mildly disturbed. But then again, isn’t that why you read dystopias? Anyway, I’m split; I’m giving this three cupcakes because my enjoyment of it was stronger than my discomfort, but it’s slightly generous on my part.

When Joe follows the strange girl called Katherine who’s been sent to fetch him, he finds himself in a land torn apart by war, where the people live in fear of secret police and horrifying machines capable of immense destruction. With Katherine and a blind guide named Spider, Joe must make his way across the perilous no man’s land to the capital city in order to find his little sister, Hannah – for this is the land where sick children go, and Hannah is deathly ill. But as Joe finds himself awash in this land’s secret history and deceptive politics, two questions arise: Just who is behind this war, anyway? And is Hannah the one who needs saving – or is Joe?

I’m not really sure where the title of this book came from. I mean, I placed it in “Portal Fantasy” because Joe gets whisked away to a different world, and there are elements that suggest magical intervention at times, like the fact that it’s been raining since the war started and stops raining when the war stops, but other than that it’s really more of a steampunky sci-fi, hence the secondary categorization in “Apocalyptic/Dystopian Science Fiction” (well, it’s a dystopia that eventually utopifies itself). But I digress.

As Joe and his companions attempt to cross no man’s land, they are beset by a variety of deceptively-harmless-looking tanks called Goliaths, which fire a disproportionately huge burst of flame at the slightest noise. Dirty Magic is like that: it’s a serviceable, unassuming story, and then wham! the ending hits you right between the eyes. As a reader, I loved it; as a reviewer, it’s a pain in the tuchas, because it’s the best aspect of the book, and I can’t talk about it. Woe.

The characters are straight out of central casting, from the Everykid hero (his name is Joe, for crying out loud!) to the wise blind mentor with the shadowy past to the sleazy politician villain. However, Hughes deploys them well, so I have no complaints to make. I quite enjoyed Spider and Katherine, and was pleased that Katherine was allowed to be very much a three-dimensional character without any nonsensical (and inappropriate at her age) romantic elements tacked onto her character, which so many books nowadays tend to do.

My main gripes were with missing details and unresolved plot elements. For example, one of the good guys dies, and there are absolutely no consequences – no one mourns him, and it doesn’t throw a single hitch in the good guys’ plans. What was the point, then? Another semi-spoilery quibble is show

My main question, though, concerns the world itself. Children who are deathly ill in our world are taken to the Dirty Magic world by fetchers, underage gofers for the army; then they must make their way to the capital city where, ostensibly, they are supposed to go through one of three arches in the city’s library and either return, healthy, to their bodies, or die. But why? What is the purpose of this world? How did the people who aren’t children from our world get there? The villain suggests that he himself was a sick child from our world, but that conversational thread was never resolved. What is the underlying logic here? There simply wasn’t enough explanation of what was, to me, a really interesting concept.

All told, Dirty Magic gets three and a half cupcakes. It wasn’t particularly outstanding, for the most part, but it was a good idea that was executed well, and I enjoyed it.

Like the other denizens of Tabletop, Atheron’s middle level, eleven-year-old Edgar can’t read. So when he comes across a secret book that was left to him years ago, he has no choice but to climb the almost-sheer cliffs separating Tabletop from the ruling level, the Highlands, in search of someone to read his book to him. There he befriends a quiet, bookish boy named Samuel, who reads in the book the hidden truth behind Atherton’s recent earthquakes – the Highlands are collapsing into Tabletop. As the people of Tabletop discover the treachery of those in power and prepare to make war on the Highlands, Edgar embarks on a desperate journey to the desolate Flatlands, Atherton’s lowest level, where he may find the answer to the mysteries of Atherton’s very existence – and, possibly, its destruction.

Like Rebecca with Dragon’s Blood, I thought Atherton was a fantasy book until I was well into it. It’s not. Atherton is a made world, essentially grown in a bottle by the brilliant but insane Dr. Harding as a replacement for a dying Earth. It’s built like a three-tiered wedding cake with a round bottom. Water, Atherton’s most precious commodity, flows in three streams from a hidden source in the center of the Highlands, known only to Atherton’s sinister ruler, Lord Phineus. Whatever water is left over flows off of the edge of the Highlands in three waterfalls, where it’s used by the peasant class in Tabletop, who form their three villages around it (the Village of Figs being Edgar’s home). The Flatlands below Tabletop are a barren wasteland where no sane person would ever go (so of course our hero heads straight down there). At first glance, Atherton is supposed to be an Eden (although as a 21st century type, I don’t know if I consider a pared-down feudal system to be precisely Edenic), but the design is flawed, and after holding up for only a few years, Atherton is now collapsing into itself.

It’s a fascinating design for a world, somewhat reminiscent of CrossGen Comics’ Meridian, and the incredibly small population (the vast majority of people were left on the horribly polluted Earth, or “the Dark Planet”) allows Carman to get away with extremely simple and thus extremely striking world-building. The power structure is simplistic, the agriculture even more so, but it works (Carman’s all-purpose hybrid fig trees are particularly inspired). Some of the science gets a bit wonky, particularly Carman’s description of how Atherton’s gravity works – not to mention the fact that the essentially hollow Atherton shouldn’t have enough mass to hold an atmosphere – but for the most part the world-building is the strongest aspect of the book.

Edgar is something of a nonentity, unfortunately. He’s a really good climber, and extremely determined once he sets his mind on something, but aside from that he’s not particularly interesting or relatable. Far more compelling are the other two children in the book, who don’t get nearly as much page time, alas. First off there’s Samuel, whose father used to be one of Lord Phineus’ right hand men until his mysterious death; now Samuel’s mother works as a cook in the House of Power, and Samuel spends most of his time reading. Despite the tragedy in his past, Samuel reads as much more of a child than Edgar and is thus engaging and likeable. He gets scared and is easily overcome by adults, but is doing his best to make up for it now. Then there’s Isabel, who works in the fig grove with Edgar and is always following him around and making a pest of herself, as little girls do. Once the adventure starts, however, she proves herself to be remarkably competent, to the point that her fellow rebels in the Village of Figs look to her for leadership and guidance. By the end of the book Samuel and Isabel have teamed up to restore water to the people of Atherton, and I have to say I was far more interested in their quest than in Edgar’s.

The plot details were a little wobbly. Dr. Harding’s motives for creating Atherton and sending people off to live on an unfinished world are never explained with anything more satisfying than “he was insane.” The book is riddled with references to and even quotes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, so you get the sense that the never-seen Harding created life and tampered with the laws of God and man just because he could, but that’s not really enough for me. The avuncular Dr. Kincaid seems to know plenty, but tends to hold things back for specious reasons, just to heighten the suspense.

There were also some weak points in the prose. The narrative voice was never firmly established; at times the narrator addresses the reader directly, but who the narrator is and where he or she gets authority to speak is never made clear. I don’t ask for the narrator to be a fully-realized character like Lemony Snicket of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but if the narrator is going to communicate directly to the reader, a stronger voice needs to be established. As it is, the point-of-view shifts disconcertingly and not-at-all convincingly from character to character, and the periodic personal pronouns the narrator steps into are jarring. There was also far too much telling and not nearly enough showing:

This was not the timid little girl he’d expected, but Samuel felt he’d be more likely to get help from her than any adult he might encounter. He began pleading with her to help him.

“Do you know a boy named Edgar?” yelled Samuel. He saw a glimmer of acknowledgment on Isabel’s face. “I know him! He came to see me in the Highlands. I’m only trying to find him!”

Mr. Carman, if you’re going to have Samuel plead for help, it is not necessary to tell us in advance that he will now be pleading for help. He can just make with the pleading.

Aside from Isabel, I found the treatment of women a little annoying. Most notable was the complete emotional collapse of Samuel’s mother after her husband’s death:

Samuel’s mother hadn’t always been so frail. There was a time when she’d enjoyed a higher station in life and demonstrated more poise, but then Samuel’s father had passed away in a dreadful accident. When it happened, her thin outer shell of confidence was shaken and she seemed to crack into a thousand pieces all at once. Her station in the kitchen was the result of the loss of Samuel’s father, for he had been a man of great importance before the accident. Without his authority, Samuel’s mother had been relegated to a life of servitude.

There are certainly people, male and female, who fall apart after the death of a loved one. There are certainly people, male and female, who lose their status when their more-important loved one dies. But no indication is given that Samuel’s mother is anything but a typical woman in this regard. In fact, extreme care is taken to point out that Maude, an aggressive, no-nonsense women from the Village of Rabbits, is an extraordinary woman. This seems to imply that Samuel’s mother is in fact the norm for the women of Atherton, especially since Isabel’s mother is very similar to Samuel’s. I’m not sure why a weak will is depicted as a typical attribute for women, but I do know that I don’t like it.

On the whole, however, Atherton was entertaining and exciting, and left me wanting to know what will happen to this apparently-doomed world. I give this book three and a half cupcakes, and will definitely be picking up the next in the series.

Nickie Randolph wants Greenhaven, her family’s ancient estate in the small town of Yonwood, to be her new home. She’s tired of Philadelphia, and with the world in the state it’s in, big cities aren’t safe. Neither her aunt nor her mother wants to take care of the big hulking house now that her great-grandfather has died, but Nickie talks her aunt Crystal into taking her along when she goes to fix up the house for sale, and she fully plans to spend that time convincing her aunt to keep the house so the family can move in and be together…someday, when her father gets back from his top secret government project. Since she’s got a plan anyway, Nickie adds two more goals: to fall in love, and to do something to help the world.

But things in Yonwood aren’t as perfect as she imagined. Like everywhere in the country, the town is worried about an almost inevitable war, but the town thinks it will be spared. A local citizen, Althea Tower, has had a vision from God of the world on fire, and now in a fevered fit she gives commands from the Lord. Most of the town’s members have decided to do their best to follow the Prophet’s orders, even when they’re hard and require sacrifices, like no singing. But things start to get worse as the world gets closer to war. People who don’t obey the Prophet are singled out and shunned, and are forced to wear electronic bracelets that produce noise designed to drive them crazy.

At first, Nickie thinks following the Prophet is the way to go…but when she inadvertently betrays her only friend in the town and almost gets an innocent man arrested, she starts to wonder. Then the Prophet gives an order that seems impossible to accept, and Nickie has to decide once and for all what she believes.

Yonwood is the prequel to The City of Ember and The People of Sparks, which I absolutely loved. Those take place two hundred years after a Crisis (consisting of a series of wars and plagues) almost wipes out humanity. This book is the lead-up to that Crisis, and as such, is creepier. Also lending to its air of creepiness is the fact that it’s much closer to our own world. Nickie lives in the United States, with technology barely a step ahead of our own; they talk of fighting terrorists and the President (who is unnamed) keeps saying war is imminent and asking the country to pray for their success. It reads as our world, ratcheted up a notch—a creepy feeling indeed.

This book tackles religion in the same way Ember deals with the environment and Sparks deals with war. But ultimately its message is neither that religion is good or bad (though it has a strong hint of atheism), but that fanaticism is the problem:

“Could you answer my question now?” said Nickie. “About how you tell if something is good or bad?”
“It’s a deep question,” Crystal said, “and I’m deeply tired. I guess if I had to answer, I’d say that you look to see if what you’re doing causes harm. If it hurts anyone. If so, it’s probably not good.”
“What if it doesn’t hurt any people,” said Nickie, “or even animals, but it hurts God?”
“Hurts God? How can God be hurt?”
“Well, I mean if what you do goes against what God says.”
“You’d have to know what he says, then, wouldn’t you? Assuming he’s up there saying anything.” Crystal swallowed a spoonful of soup. “It’s too deep for me,” she said.”

That would be the quote that jumped out at me; it sums up the message of the book pretty well. But unlike the other two in the series, this book feels built around the allegory, as though the message is put ahead of the characters and the story. I love that scifi can be used to create parallels to our own world, but I always object when story is sacrificed for morals.

The book overall is compelling; the tension builds up through it as the war draws closer. I love the way it handles Nickie’s decision to fall in love: she acknowledges she’s too young to meet someone she’ll love forever, but she wants to feel something passionate, so she’s trying to figure out which of the boys in Yonwood she could fall for. In the end, she realizes she’s fallen in love with the dog she adopted, and the boy she met becomes her best friend. Awesome.

But aside from the issue of moral-over-story, I had a few problems with the ending; they’re spoilery, so read at your own risk. show

So, due to those two elements, this book gets 4 cupcakes instead of the 5 the rest of the series earned. It’s still excellently written, compelling, and fascinating; I definitely didn’t want to put it down. I’d recommend it in a heartbeart.

The City of Ember and The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau. Five cupcakes, and a friggin’ cherry on top. (Genre: Apocalyptic/Dystopian Science Fiction)

Uglies, Pretties and Specials by Scott Westerfeld. Four and a half cupcakes for Uglies, three and a half for the other two. (Genre: Apocalyptic/Dystopian Science Fiction)

Bruce Coville novels, including the My Teacher series, The A.I. Gang, The Dragonslayers, The Nina Tanleven Ghost Series, and The Magic Shop series. I’d say the average rating is about four cupcakes. (Genres: Aliens Among Us, Other, High Fantasy, Contemporary/Urban Fantasy, and Fairy Tale/Mythic)

Pendragon, books one and two, by D.J. MacHale. Two cupcakes. (Genre: Portal Fantasy.)

Meta talk about writing and books:

Fantasy Females (Of the Literary Variety), about the roles female characters play in fantasy.

Seriously, What is Wrong With Cinderella?, about Disney princesses, ideas about how to keep female characters dynamic, and a little bit of repeated review of Pendragon.