The City of Ember

My daughter asked me to read this book because she liked it a lot. It's one of the better books she has recommended me lol It is about two 13 year olds, a boy and a girl, who live in a strange city with strange customs and ways of living. (But it doesn't have magic or fancy technology, so I guess it's technically not fantasy or sci-fi.) The city infrastructure is deteriorating and resource is running out, so the book depicts how people react as the end of the world seems to draw nearer and nearer. Some reactions are not pretty. The builders of the city 200 years ago had left a message that tells residents how to leave the city, but the message got lost over the years, and within the first 100 pages of the book the 13-year-old girl finds it. She enlists the help of the boy to figure out what the message means. It's pretty fun to read. The ending is satisfying. At the end of the day I think the story is about the wonder and beauty of our natural world. ( )

Slowly progressing plotline and not as riveting as similar young adult novels. ( )

Slowly progressing plotline and not as riveting as similar young adult novels. ( )

I really enjoyed this. Lina and Doon live in Ember, a city that is always dark, lit only by electric lights. But the city is old and creaking, store rooms are running low and the electricity is precariously near to breaking.

It really captures the air of a society that has outlived its predicted time, and is run by people who have very little idea of how anything works, and have become very disempowered in their response to problems. The generator is a black box where they apply sticking plaster fixes to each increasingly common fault. There is a pervasive sense of hopelessness - everyone on Doon's team do their one assigned task, and then knock off for the day, to have what fun they can in their doomed city.

It is very made-for-young-teenagers post-apocalyptic fiction. Probably not best to come here if you want razor sharp world building - for example, it feels implausible that everyone has forgotten fire, and the ending, where our protagonists skip out into sunshine for the first time, meet a fox, and are joyfully enchanted by the beauty of everything, contrasts interestingly with the agoraphobia and sunburn of when the protagonists of Room get out. Also, I think if you were intelligent enough to build Ember, you probably wouldn't make the exit depend on one wooden box and a rollercoaster boat ride down a river. The Hunger Games this is not, it is managing a U for Mild Peril. But it is good story telling.

The description of really selfishly just wanting something, knowing it's a waste of money and you ought to be being responsible but just desperately craving the thing is very well drawn. In fact, the whole book feels very rich in understanding of human nature - the laziness, the corruption, people sliding into being bad out of hopelessness - but also deeply deeply hopeful. The force that turns the caterpillar into a butterfly means that escape and change and sunshine is possible for the People of Ember, if they are brave.

[I also really like that it reads very well as a standalone novel. Not that I'm not looking forward to the rest of the series, but it is not one book split over three books just because it needs to be a trilogy.] ( )

The City of Ember is a very interesting and entertaining read. It is about a post-apoctalyptic world in which a civilization formed underground to survive. However, the city is in critical condition. They lack food and the cities generator is not working properly. Two kids from the city have an idea that they think will lead them back to the surface of the earth. This book is very strongly driven by characterization, as Duprau does a great job to develop the characters two protagonists, Lina and Doon. As you read, you can feel the excitement and nerves of the characters as the stories they heard of the surface become a reality. Not only is DuPrau very skilled at describing the characters emotions, but she was also able to describe very vivid images, not just of the sights, but also sounds. ( )