The City of Ember (Books of Ember)
by Jeanne DuPrau
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Book Reviews of The City of Ember (Books of Ember)
Book Review: A truly great novel
Summary: 5 Stars
The City of Ember is one of my favorite books for children/young adults. My son, an avid reader, read it in grade school and also liked it very much.
The book does two things brilliantly. One is the basic idea of the story. To the people living in it, Ember appears to be the entire world, and that world is edging towards some kind of breakdown. I love the way the true nature of the world is revealed to the teenaged protagonists and even as an adult reader I was fairly tingling with excitement as they found the way out of Ember's doom.
The other success of the book is a more rare one for the science fiction and adventure genres: despite the fantastic scenario, the human characters are never dwarfed by the demands of the plot. In most books in this genre, the heroes are little more than cartoon characters who are too busy Doing Heroic Acts to reveal much individuality. Doon and Lina, the heroes of Ember, can each be described as impulsive and unrelenting, two qualities that seem to contradict each other and yet manifest in each character in very different ways. It is rare that I have encountered such realistic characters in an adventure book.
DuPrau puts these real people into a situation in which the tension builds organically, starting with something being vaguely wrong with Ember and growing to looming disaster both for Ember and the protagonists. She does this without resorting to exploding buildings or battles with monsters (viewers of the movie may be disappointed--or relieved--to find there are no giant man-eating moles). Yet there is enough action, conflict, and suspense to keep a reasonably good reader turning the pages.
In all this, DuPrau also manages to write the book as an ode to careful observation, dogged problem-solving, and independent thinking. Doon is a primitive scientist in a society that has never heard of science. Much as I love the star ships, ray guns, and nerdy jargon that inhabits most popular science fiction, I was pleased to see scientific values presented in an unadorned, pure form. Ember is a home run of a book. Thoughtful children will love it, and they will learn some deep truths about people and society by reading it.
Book Review: Compelling Story
Summary: 4 Stars
Lina and Doon are twelve years old, graduating from school and making their way into the working world of their city. Ember is a city in trouble. When the electric floodlights are off, it is always dark, and the generator isn't as reliable as it used to be. The warehouses used to be full of anything anyone might need, but now scarcity is more and more the rule. People are growing concerned about the future of their city.
Lina imagines there must be something else beyond Ember, but anyone who has ever tried to venture out into the darkness has come running back, terrified. Doon thinks that there must be a way to repair the generator, but his people lack the scientific knowledge to do so. Their world is reaching a crisis.
Then Lina finds a set of instructions, partially chewed up by her baby sister. They seem to indicate that there is something else beyond Ember, and that their entire population could leave the city. The idea is thrilling and terrifying. Lina enlists Doon to help her puzzle through the instructions and find the secret way out of Ember.
I really enjoyed the framework of this story; it was interesting to think about how a city underground could be functional, and to think about the unique problems that would appear in such a city. I liked the details of the different jobs, the descriptions of the storehouses, and the bits and pieces of the story that described how the city worked.
I felt like the story was too short, though, to give all of the detail it deserved. There were so many aspects of Ember that were left unexplained, and there also wasn't enough time to develop the characters as much as I would have liked. I found that the relationships between characters were a bit weak. Lina doesn't have a single friend besides Lizzie, who drifts away immediately after school ends. Doon doesn't seem to have a single friend at all. Mrs. Murdo is too convenient for my taste, and doesn't seem to have her own personality or any sort of job. She's just there to do exactly what Lina needs. I would have liked to have seen more complex relationships among characters.
Book Review: Simple yet inventive post-apocalypse SF for young adults is worth reading for all
Summary: 4 Stars
A very solid post-apocalyptic adventure novel which takes an interesting tack -- putting our young heroes in a subterranean city of dwindling resources and allowing us to watch as they gradually figure a way out (ahead of course of the stuffy, conservative-thinking adults). One nice touch to me was that the kids really don't figure that much out by the end of what is obviously the first part of a series -- only as much as you could reasonably expect a couple of bright, inquisitive children to find out coming from positions of almost total ignorance. Duprau is great at capturing the mood of evergrowing dread both in the city as a whole, as the lights start going out and supplies start drying up - and in the hearts of the two young protaganists, Lina and Doon, as they get ever more frustrated that as kids nobody will take them seriously as they slowly discover a possible way out of the mess. There are some small issues of believability - I personally find it hard to imagine that Ember could have descended so far into ignorance in just 200 years - but nothing really destructive to enjoyment of the book as a whole.
There are earlier examples of this kind of plot, but I suspect most young readers won't know a lot of the earliest and most recognizably similar stories, like Charles Tanner's "Tumithak" series from the 1930s and 40s originally serialized in American pulp SF magazines (and finally widely available in book form - see my review). Much of "City of Ember" struck me as very much indebted to this and other pulp stories of that era, though I have no idea if in fact the author is familiar with such material. It's also reminiscent in feel and tone of the more recent (but still a generation old) "Tripods" trilogy by John Christopher. Still, whatever the story may lack in originality it makes up for in mood and plotting, and it's nice to see a narrative where the adults, though more severe and serious generally, aren't ogres or bent on violence.
Followed by three sequels - descending in quality I'm afraid - and made into an unfortunately wretched film in 2008.
Book Review: The City of Ember
Summary: 5 Stars
Doon and Lina are two teenagers who live in a city called Ember. A city built by "The Builders" using an underground river to power their generator which runs all their lights and storerooms filled to the brim with all their daily necessities - light bulbs, clothes, canned goods, etc. - that should last them forever. Well, sadly forever is here and their generator keeps breaking down and causing flickering lights and blackouts through the city that last longer and longer each time. There are also scary rumors of their storerooms being empty.
As the residents of Ember start becoming aware of their city's dire situation and the mayor's lack of providing them with a solution, they all start to realize that it is only a matter of time before the city will go dark permanently. As the townfolk begin to worry, Lina finds a very intricate box in one of her closets but sadly her little sister, Poppy, has chewed up the paper that was inside. So it is up to Lina and Doon to decipher this message that is mysteriously written in the same handwriting used by "The Builders" when they provided the city with their books on rules to live by. Together they will piece clues to lead the population out of the dark and into the light.
I know I'm a little old to read this book, but maybe that is what makes this book stand out and get noticed. This tale was able to hold my attention almost two decades after middle school, which I believe is the focal age group for this book.
This book will make you hold your breath in anticipation every step of the way. You'll cheer for the main characters and good folk of Ember. Ms. DuPrau's description of this world is brilliant and you can picture the crumbling city as you read the book.
The story is full of mystery, adventure, great characters, and vivid descriptions. It plays with themes of light and dark. A fun, easy read that pulls you in from the very first chapter and will keep you hooked until the very last page! This book is very well written and I whole-heartedly recommend it to young and old alike.
Book Review: Poorly plotted knockoff of Lois Lowery's The Giver
Summary: 2 Stars
At the opening of The City of Ember, twelve-year olds Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow wait anxiously, along with their twenty-two same aged classmates, to learn their fate. The pre-teens will draw lots to determine their Assignment, a job they will hold for the following three years. Lina disappointedly picks Pipeworks laborer, while Doon's lot is to be a Messenger. They later trade and team up in hopes of finding a way out of the over two hundred-year-old underground city before the artificial light source is snuffed out for good. They worry about the once-plentiful supplies that have since become scarce, and the power outages that have begun to occur with increased frequency and duration. Adding to Lina's worries is a stressful family situation; her parents have died, leaving her in the care of (and for) her senile grandmother and toddler sister. Fortunately, kind persons lend a hand when the kids' sleuthing leads them to a shocking discovery and into hot water with a dishonest authority figure and his minions.
But even with the benefit (to the book, not the reader) of excessive similarities to the many times better Newberry winning novel, The Giver, The City of Ember has self-made problems: hokey pictures of the B movie based on the book, the benign description of a boat ride that should instead have had readers on the edge of their seats, the fact that certain persons had never before encountered matches or candles in spite of the city's 240-some-odd year existence, and the overall feeling that "the first book of Ember" does little more than provide the setup for the rest of the series.
Anyone who has read The Giver by Lois Lowery will no doubt see the statistically significant parallels between the stories. Unfortunately, The City of Ember lacks two things important to ensuring a terrific tale: fabulous writing and a unique, engaging plot. Skip this sad excuse for a series in favor of: The Giver by Lois Lowery, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (Percy and the Olympians), or A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.