Waiting on Wednesday (16): Skylark by Meagan Spooner

From Goodreads:

Sixteen year-old Lark Ainsley has never seen the sky.
Her world ends at the edge of the vast domed barrier of energy enclosing all that’s left of humanity. For two hundred years the city has sustained this barrier by harvesting its children's innate magical energy when they reach adolescence. When it’s Lark’s turn to be harvested, she finds herself trapped in a nightmarish web of experiments and learns she is something out of legend itself: a Renewable, able to regenerate her own power after it’s been stripped.
Forced to flee the only home she knows to avoid life as a human battery, Lark must fight her way through the terrible wilderness beyond the edge of the world. With the city’s clockwork creations close on her heels and a strange wild boy stalking her in the countryside, she must move quickly if she is to have any hope of survival. She’s heard the stories that somewhere to the west are others like her, hidden in secret – but can she stay alive long enough to find them?

Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab
Publication Date: August 1, 2012
Amazon, Goodreads, Author's website 

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I've seen the "never seen the sky" concept appear in writing before, this idea that looking up and having a solid understanding as to what's over your head is a basic human right. It often goes hand-in-hand with some sort of dystopian society and a guaranteed way to show your reasons that something's up (no pun intended.)

This skyless world that Spooner has created sounds genuinely interesting, even amass the high levels of YA dystopian books that publishers have been releasing nowadays.

However, I am a little sick of the "forced to flee," idea that pops up a lot in these kinds of novels. No one is forced to run, they take that choice to step forward and protect themselves and their interests, to make a better life for themselves. No one wants a protagonist that just gives up, and so I'm eager to acquire a copy of Skylark to make sure that Lark doesn't.

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Waiting on Wednesday is hosted over at Breaking the Spine.