![]() ![]() When an old metal box is discovered in their closet, Lina’s grandmother is overjoyed. At home she cares for her aging and forgetful grandmother, and her baby sister Poppy. Lina takes easily to the job of messenger and finds herself zipping all over Ember, delivering important missives to even more important people, including the mayor himself. Thus, an unlikely friendship is born, one that, as it blossoms, will change the course of all the lives in Ember. She is thrilled and grateful and eagerly changes jobs. The Pipeworks isn't the Generator, but it is close enough and Doon offers to swap assignments with Lina. Her classmate, Doon Harrow, who wants more than nothing else to work in the Generator, panics when he pulls the messenger assignment. Lina, praying with all her might to be a messenger, is appalled to be assigned to the Pipeworks, the vast network of pipes underneath the city. A rite of passage for all graduates, it is Assignment Day, the day on which the Mayor himself will stand before the graduating students as they choose, by lottery, how they will spend their lives working for their society. Despite growing concern for the future of their beloved city, Ember’s students find themselves confronting the next step in their lives. Now Ember is falling into darkness as the generator fails, and the dazzling lights begin to flicker and fade. ![]() Built as a refuge for humanity and powered by a massive generator - this city will only sustain for 200 years. The ending of this book just makes me want to keep reading, and did you know that this book was made into a movie? (Trailer here makes the city appear so much more technologically advanced than I imagined…) But anyway, solid sci-fi read.For generations, the people of the City of Ember have flourished in an amazing world of glittering lights - underground. The City of Ember is an action-packed dystopian tale that is on par with The Giver, and I keep comparing the two because I feel that they’re very similar in writing style and character design even though they have completely different plots. Good thing about this is that there’s no instalove! I got caught up in the action anyway, so for me, not getting to know the characters as much is a small sacrifice.Īnd the ending! So I’ve always complained about cliffhangers, and this might be one… but the ending was well wrapped up and so strategically written that I can’t be mad! The ending made me want to pick up the next book because there are definitely questions left unanswered from this one. This may be due to the fact that DuPrau uses a lot of “said’s” during conversations and focuses more on actions than on feelings. Lina and Doon are great problem-solvers and are brave as heck, but I just couldn’t get into them as I do with some other characters. ![]() I liked the main characters in The City of Ember, but as in The Giver, it was hard for me to get attached to them. Running out of light bulbs, running out of power, running out of time - disaster was right around the corner. I like the feeling of impending doom from this premise since it creates opportunities for solutions or a way out. However, the city does seem reasonably advanced, since the citizens know to take vitamin pills with all of their meals (to prevent vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight, presumably?) and workers are continuously trained on how to fix electrical problems. In addition, the city’s not run very well, since new workers get assigned jobs that they draw out of a drawstring bag instead of being placed based on their strengths. The city of Ember doesn’t seem to have been built hundreds of years from today’s world, since they lack a lot of technology. DiscussionĭuPrau created an interesting and impressive world built on artificial lighting. One day, Lina finds an illegible message left by the Builders of the city from hundreds of years ago, and together with Doon, the two figure out the key to saving the people of Ember from eternal darkness… as well as some shocking revelations about the city and the people who they thought they knew. Meanwhile, the people of Ember start to panic as they realize that the generator is deteriorating, the food supplies dwindling, and the light bulbs are running out. Soon Lina is carrying verbal messages for the citizens of Ember, and Doon is maintaining Ember’s sewer pipes while trying to understand how the generator that powered the city works. So when Doon proposes they trade jobs, Lina is beyond willing to do so. On Assignment Day of Year 241, twelve-year-olds Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow have the bad luck of drawing each other’s dream jobs aka jobs they hated: pipeworker laborer for Lina and messenger for Doon. Category: ( Young Adult) Dystopia / Post-Apocalyptic / Science Fiction Introduction ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |