The City of Ember

I found The City of Ember to be a very entertaining read that is somewhat difficult to categorize. It is essentially part science fiction, part fantasy with healthy doses of adventure, suspense, and mystery thrown in for good measure. It has a rather post-apocalyptic feel to it with a little government conspiracy on the side, although since this is a children's book, it wasn't nearly as dark as most stories of that type. My sense of this theme was confirmed when I read on the author's website that part of her inspiration for the novel was her experiences growing up in the 1950's when many people were concerned about a possible nuclear war and were building bomb shelters just in case. Having grown up in an older house that had a bomb show more shelter, I could definitely relate. I also thought I detected a bit of an environmental message in the story, mainly fueled by Lina and Doon's fascination with the things of nature, which was also something that Jeanne DuPrau said she hoped would be conveyed in her narrative. Trying to figure out the mystery of what and where Ember is and why it was created was a lot of fun. Some of these details were disclosed by the end of the book and others were not, but Ms. DuPrau stated that the remaining mysteries would be revealed in the next book of the series, The People of Sparks. I also think there was a morality tale embedded in The City of Ember that explored the idea that there is both light and dark inside each one of us, and which we choose to follow can affect not only ourselves but those around us too. There is a bit of a spiritual aspect to the story as well in the form of The Believers who are essentially the religious pulse of Ember. I would have liked to learn a little more about them, and perhaps they will play a bigger role in future books in the series. Ultimately though, I thought that The City of Ember was a tale about hope, courage, determination and selflessness in the face of a crisis.

I really liked the two protagonists, Lina and Doon. They are only twelve years old when the book begins, but not unlike their counterparts in similar stories, they take on semi-adult roles. Lina is a very energetic, determined and strong girl who is a survivor and very responsible for her age, having taken on a lot of the care-giving duties for her baby sister after the deaths of the adults in her life. I think I was particularly taken by Doon, a very curious boy who is fascinated by all thing, both natural and mechanical. He loves to study the few living creatures he can find in Ember, mostly insects, and is equally eager and adept at taking things apart to figure out how they work and putting them back together again. Doon has a bit of a temper problem, but underneath it all he has a good and kind heart. I loved the advice his father gave him, “The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of you. And then you aren't the master of yourself anymore. Anger is..... And when anger is the boss, you get....unintended consequences." I thought it was a great adage for kids and adults alike who might struggle with anger issues. I also think that Doon has an underlying desire to "be somebody" or “do something important,” because he always seems to be waiting for that "big moment" to reveal the things he learns about Ember and admits later that it was probably the wrong thing to do. Maybe he even has a little bit of a hero complex. Overall though, Doon and Lina both were very likable characters. I was impressed with how the author shows them sometimes being tempted to do something that would be unethical, but in the end, they make the right decisions for the good of everyone in Ember and not just themselves.

This book is highly character driven, and Jeanne DuPrau has a talent for vividly describing the sights, sounds and environment of Ember as well as the way certain things make Doon and Lina feel. In fact, I found it interesting (and difficult) to imagine what absolute darkness feels like, since Ember has no light whatsoever during the blackouts and nighttime hours. While the plot of The City of Ember moves steadily forward, the lush portraits the author paints sometimes gives it a rather languid pace. It also starts out a little slow, taking a while to build the action and suspense. I personally like the rich descriptions and am well aware of the challenges in establishing the characters and setting for a fantasy world, so these things didn't really bother me. However, I could see how kids with shorter attention spans might get bored at times. If given a chance though, the story can definitely grab both the adult and child imagination. My daughter was not entirely pleased when I announced The City of Ember as my choice for our next book to read together, but about halfway in she was enjoying it, and by the end, she was begging for the sequel. I too am very eager to read the next book of the series, since The City of Ember did have what I would characterize as a cliffhanger ending. It is followed by The People of Sparks, The Prophet of Yonwood, and The Diamond of Darkhold. For a children's book that is aimed at tweens in the 9-12 year age range, The City of Ember certainly caught my adult attention and in doing so, has earned a spot on my keeper shelf. show less

I read the graphic novel adaptation first, and think it was significantly better. The graphic novel glosses over a few details that killed the novel for me. It is YA and also seems to be a Christian allegory. Though, if my cultural reference were different, would it be a Zoroastrian, Hindu, or Islamic allegory?

The thing that bothered me most was that the residents of this underground city are so troubled by the dark. They have lived underground for generations, but can't come up with flashlights, torches, or candles? I known that is part of the allegory, but its dumb. It may be that it only works because of the allegory. If the residents are such wretched, apathetic clods that they can't come up with a stone age solution to their show more lighting problem, how can the reader feel any sympathy for them?

I'm not a fan. show less

I really enjoyed this. Lina and Doon live in Ember, a city that is always dark, lit only by electric lights. But the city is old and creaking, store rooms are running low and the electricity is precariously near to breaking.

It really captures the air of a society that has outlived its predicted time, and is run by people who have very little idea of how anything works, and have become very disempowered in their response to problems. The generator is a black box where they apply sticking plaster fixes to each increasingly common fault. There is a pervasive sense of hopelessness - everyone on Doon's team do their one assigned task, and then knock off for the day, to have what fun they can in their doomed city.

It is very show more made-for-young-teenagers post-apocalyptic fiction. Probably not best to come here if you want razor sharp world building - for example, it feels implausible that everyone has forgotten fire, and the ending, where our protagonists skip out into sunshine for the first time, meet a fox, and are joyfully enchanted by the beauty of everything, contrasts interestingly with the agoraphobia and sunburn of when the protagonists of Room get out. Also, I think if you were intelligent enough to build Ember, you probably wouldn't make the exit depend on one wooden box and a rollercoaster boat ride down a river. The Hunger Games this is not, it is managing a U for Mild Peril. But it is good story telling.

The description of really selfishly just wanting something, knowing it's a waste of money and you ought to be being responsible but just desperately craving the thing is very well drawn. In fact, the whole book feels very rich in understanding of human nature - the laziness, the corruption, people sliding into being bad out of hopelessness - but also deeply deeply hopeful. The force that turns the caterpillar into a butterfly means that escape and change and sunshine is possible for the People of Ember, if they are brave.

[I also really like that it reads very well as a standalone novel. Not that I'm not looking forward to the rest of the series, but it is not one book split over three books just because it needs to be a trilogy.] show less

I'm tempted to attribute the dumbed down world building, logic flaws, and flat characters to the fact that this is written as children's literature, but I've read far too many excellent stories in that category to accept that children don't need or deserve better. Much of the ignorance of the people of Ember is explained at the end - that the adults who were chosen to populate that world were under strict orders to not pass on knowledge of the world before, but that just seems like a cop-out to me. Children ask questions, and their caregivers didn't have anyone preventing them from answering after they were dropped off in Ember. There was no satisfactory explanation for why the Builders demanded that their history be erased. In fact, show more it's nonsensical, if they expected that their descendants would need to emerge from Ember and re-integrate into the outside world some 200 years later. This is just one of the many logical flaws that kept me disengaged from the book. The characters and their relationships with one another had no depth. Lina feels very little grief for her grandmother, and forgets her death almost immediately. She seems to feel very little for her sister except concern when the child wanders off and is lost. When she refuses to leave Ember without her sister later, it seems borne of a sense of responsibility rather than any actual connection. She might as well have been refusing to leave without her only pair of shoes. I finished the story mostly because it was on audio and kept me company while doing some chores around the house, but if I had been actually reading the book, I probably would have put it down halfway through and not picked it up again. show less

I really really love the idea of a post-disaster society of people living underground. And I especially love the idea of reading about that society several generations in, where they no longer remember what daylight is, or why the city they live in is theren- or even where exactly their city is. I like the idea of this society making up their own myths about 'the dark' and having new origin stories and singing songs amid candles lit against the ever-present night. However, all those enchanting pieces of The City of Ember are just tiny footnote details in what's really a fairly decent adventure story. The setting of an underground sort of steampunk like society surviving post-collapse without any connections to their past is merely the show more place where this book begins. I really enjoyed this story, and am excited to read more in the series, but I wish this book had been about twice as long and had about three times the depth. I really feel like the author here was on the verge of creating a whole new world, maybe not with the intricacy and pull of the Harry Potter universe, but something heading in that direction. Instead everything - setting and plot and characters et cetera - is at a pretty basic level and merely serves as the dressing around the main story, which is a somewhat didactical examination of the ills of society and scarcity mentality hidden inside an engaging adventure story of two plucky pre-teens trying to save their people. show less

This is the 2nd book I've read in this genre in a short period of time, and at first, it reminded me a lot of The Giver. It quickly becomes its own story with a very different theme, and I enjoyed it just as much as I did The Giver, though for different reasons. The slow falling apart of the city and the vastly varying ways the citizens respond to it are fascinating to follow along with. Lina and Doon are well-crafted characters, both with their own issues and driving desires. They even have considerably different reasons for wanting to save the city, and I really admire DuPrau's ability to make them such well-rounded characters in a short space. I also appreciate how she explains items that are common, everyday things to us but are show more completely foreign to these people.

I'm looking forward to my 12-year-old daughter reading this book so we can discuss it. I think she'll enjoy it as much as I did, and I recommend it for others around that age (or older) too. show less

Lina lives in the city of Ember, which is surrounded by absolute darkness and itself experiences the difference between day and night only because of the lightbulbs lighting the entire town. The people of Ember believe that they live in a city of endless bounty, but the supplies are running out, the mayor is corrupt, and the lights flicker more and more frequently. Lina, along with her friend Doon, believe that there is something more beyond the city and together - along with a mysterious set of instructions that have been long lost - set out to discover what they can discover.
I liked this one tons. I particularly loved the world (or rather, city)-building, and how DuPrau slowly and cleverly unfolds the mystery of what the city is and show more how it came to be. show less