Review: The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

From Goodreads:

Citizens of Ember shall be assigned work at twelve years of age...
Lina Mayfleey desperately wants to be a messenger. Instead, she draws the dreaded job of Pipeworks laborer, which means she'll be working in damp tunnels deep underground.
Doon Harrow draws messenger - and asks Lina to trade! Doon wants to be underground. That's where the generator is, and Doon has ideas about how to fix it. For as long as anyone can remember, the great lights of Ember have kept the endless darkness at bay. But now the lights are beginning to flicker....

Not a very deep read, but good none-the-less.

This book is a great introduction to the dystopian subgenre for middle-grade/ early high school students. The book is rather short too, so it would also make an ideal book club read for students.

I don't have very much to say about this book. I liked the world-building very much (for some strange reason I have a thing for fiction with people living underground), but I do wish that there were a little more insight into the lives of the people of Ember. What do they do with their dead? Why did not as many people seem to know each other, despite the fact that the same family lines have been living there for 200+ years? There are three more books to go, so I know that more answers will come, but a little more detail would have been nice in book one.

I also liked the two main characters, Doon and Lina. I love younger protagonists (they're both twelve), as well as the fact that The City of Ember didn't even bring up the possibility of a romantic relationship between the two of them. This may make the book a bit boring for older audiences, but again makes it perfect for younger ones.

The City of Ember was a nice read overall, and I wish that I had more to say about it. I figure that I would have liked this book quite a bit when it first came out, I was about nine, but now the writing comes off as a bit juvenile. Still, the action moments, especially towards the ending as more secrets are uncovered, did hold my attention, as they will for anyone looking for a younger dystopian/ post-apocalyptic book to enjoy.

Do you have any more middle grade/ younger-teen appropriate dystopian novels? Share them in the comments!

Amazon, Goodreads, Author's Website

Title: The City of Ember (Book of Ember #1)

Author: Jeanne DuPrau

Publisher: Yearling

Publication Date: May 25th, 2004

Page #: 270

ISBN: 0375822747

Reviewed for Dystopian August (2012) over at Presenting Lenore!

Review: Y: The Last Man (series) by Brian K. Vaughan

*Spoiler Free!*

From Wikipedia

Y: The Last Man tells the story of Yorick, a young man who finds himself to be the last male on the planet, aside from his pet monkey Ampersand, after a mysterious even called "the plague" results in the deaths of every creature possessing a Y chromosome.

Divided into several arcs that take Yorick and Ampersand, along with Agent 355, the woman protecting him, and Dr. Allison Mann, a genius geneticist, across the world in search of a cause for the plague and to find Yorick's girlfriend, Beth. Along the way they meet up with women some strong, some violent, some desperate and broken, but all trying to make it another day in a collapsed society after many of their friends and family die.

I had reviewed the first volume of Y: The Last Man earlier, but felt that since the series spans ten great, well-written books it was worth writing another review once I had finished.

The plague's cause isn't laid out in black and white like the apocalyptic disasters of other series. Throughout Y: The Last Man theories range from Mother Earth "cleansing" herself, an act of God, scientific accidents, government attacks, to just an abnormal one-time deal. I enjoyed how this set-up prevented the reader from developing a sense of omnipotence; we're kept in the dark just as the characters are.

I applaud Vaughan's ability to juggle so many characters, some whom we only see for a chapter or two, and give them believeable emotions and realistic lives. Not one introduced character had a boring backstory or a uninteresting exchange upon meeting Yorick, as short as many of those meetings were.

I have a hard time picking a favorite character, but even if I was to I feel that my opinion would just fall flat. I could see a little bit of myself in every character as I thought about how I would deal with my situation if I were in their shoes.

Rest assured that the ending, no spoilers given, was the perfect wrap-up to such a lofty series. I cannot conceive of another way for it to end, Y: The Last Man concluded just as it was supposed to.

A lot of thinking on my part went into reading this series. After every book I spent some time musing about Vaughan's world and our world alike, especially in regards to what it means to survive, to adapt, and my connection to other women both in my community and my world at large. This may have been easier for me because I am a woman, but I still have no doubt that men will take something away from this series too. How would you see yourself in the shoes of the remaining women, or in Yorick's?

Y: The Last Man is a mature, dystopian/ post-apocalyptic series that, despite it's frightening world-building, says plenty about the world we exist in. If you're still unconvinced, here's a fan film that a very talented group of people made. It differs from the plot of the comics, but if the fans are this devoted, just picture how fantastic the series itself is! Now double that. Yup, the comics are that good:

Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Artists: Pia Guerra (lead penciller), various

Publisher: Vertigo

Publication Date: 2002-2007

Books: 10 regular volumes, or, 5 deluxe edition books

Reviewed for Dystopian August (2012) over at Presenting Lenore!