by Meagan Spooner
Hardcover: 344 pages
Publisher: Carolrhoda Books (August 1, 2012)
ISBN-10: 0761388656
ISBN-13: 978-0761388654
Thank you Lerner Publishing Group for allowing me to review this ARC!
Blurb
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?
The Good
- The plot and internal dialog. Fans of The Hunger Games, the Divergent series and Under the Never Sky will love this one. Mostly because it has many of the same elements of all of these books, but meshed together with new bits to make something new. There wasn’t any real down time and I felt it hard to put the book down at all. The narrator was believable and the internal dialog was engaging and insightful. I really felt like I got to know Lark through reading this story, which is not easily done.
- The twists. There were so many points when reading this book I thought I knew where the story was going, who the villains were, what the next chapter was going to bring. And, fortunately, I was wrong. The plot twists come out of nowhere and are so well-constructed. I am so excited to see what the next book in this series has to offer!
- Nix. At some point, Lark acquires a sidekick named Nix, and it is wonderful. I really liked Nix and, although he ends up being an important element in the plot, I wish he had just a little bit more dialog and personality.
- The Romance. The romance in this story was based on mutual trust and built on experiences the characters had together. This felt much more realistic than the romance that is often used in YA books which comes out of NOWHERE and, for the reader, feels like nonsense.
- The fear. As mentioned earlier, the internal dialog was terrific. The best part were Lark’s reactions to the world outside her city. To a person who’s never seen the sky before, it’s scary. As a matter of fact, a whole bunch of stuff is scary, and Spooner does a fantastic job making the reader’s trip with Lark to the outside world feel genuine.
The Bad
- Confusing beginning. The beginning of the book felt disorienting and confusing to me. The narrator, Lark, attempts to introduce all the elements/rules of Spooner’s world to the reader hurriedly through internal dialog and various problems she encounters. This is not bad, but it felt rushed and could have been more effective if we had followed Lark through a few days in her everyday life rather than what felt like a small chapter of half-explained terminology.
- Carnivorous Trees. This element is introduced very briefly, and while it might appeal to some people, I didn’t feel it was necessary or interesting. It felt a little cliche and the action scenes involving the trees were not very engaging.
Overall Rating
Really liked this one, and I can’t wait to see what happens in the rest of the series. I love Lark and the other characters, and although many elements of the story have been used before, there is enough new material and plot twists to make this worthy of reading for a variety of reasons.
