Book Review - Incarceron

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Claudia is the only child of the Warden of Incarceron, one of the highest positions of honor in this future world. After the unfortunate death of Giles, the eldest Prince, Claudia is then betrothed to his younger brother Lord Evian, a marriage that she would do anything to get out of. Even if it means confronting her father. Meanwhile, Finn is a prisoner inside Incarceron. When Finn obtains a crystal key, he finds it is a two way radio to the outside world, and who is on the receiving end? None other than Claudia. With the help of Claudia, Finn sets out with three friends to escape, while Claudia plots the downfall of an entire kingdom.

This book can be added to the list of 'dystopian future genre'. The pacing was quick. Claudia and Finn were both well rounded, with clear wants and desires, and the obvious drive to get the things that they most crave. Claudia is a majestic character, cool and calculating. One can see her as the Queen of this empire, even if she is forced to marry Lord Evian. Even with limited power, Claudia is a force to be reckoned with. Finn on the other hand is strong and yet pitiful. We desperately want him to remember who he is. Why is he a prisoner? Can he escape?

Characterization and pacing aside, this book was terribly confusing at times. Most of the things that happened were an "I think this is what was going on" rather than an "I know." Let me lay it down for you. This is a future society, where I think some King at some kind decided that technology was bad and wanted to go back to a simpler time. So he ordered "Protocal", which I think means that everyone dresses and acts like they are in the Renaissance. Problem: Everyone, as far as I can tell, still has technology. They have holo-projectors, washing machines, ovens. In fact, I was never quite sure what happened to people, besides a few fines, if they were caught using say...electricity. How do people who aren't rich live? Do they follow these protocals?

And then there is Incarceron. To the people outside it was supposed to be an experiment to create an Utopian society. But if that is the case then why in the world would you call it Incarceron, which obviously is a play on words for incarcerated, which means prisoner. Why not give it a nicer name? The people living on the inside definitely believe it is a prison. It isn't until well into the book that we are given any hints that it is anything but a prison. The thing is, when you are setting up a fantasy or science fiction world, we have to know the rules of the game. If not, then we become confused, and the number one thing you should not have is a confused reader.

My last bit of judgement would be that too much was given away far too early. The reader quickly figures things out long before the other characters do and this is frustrating because then all the anticipation of the story is just waiting for everyone else to get it. It may seem like this is good, because then the reader feels smarter for figuring it out, but in this case no. I almost felt a little talked down to. Like, "Hey, you reader, you probably won't get this so I am going to spell it out for you. Did you get it? Good. Moving on."

The positives are again, great characters, good pacing, and a very interesting premise even if it is a bit sketchy at times. It wasn't a bad read, I did enjoy reading it and definitely love that it is on my bookshelf because frankly I love anything Dystopian, but if this isn't your kind of book then you may want to skip this one and go read Hunger Games instead. Oh, and huge brownie points for cover of this book. I do love it.

Sapphique Book Review

Sapphique by Catherine Fisher

In book two of the Incarceron series Finn has escaped the prison only to be thrust into a new kind of jail, one full of rules and backstabbing, and Protocal. He must convince everyone that he is the long lost heir Jiles, but how can he do that if he isn't even sure of it himself? Meanwhile, inside the prison his friends Keiro and Attia maneuver desperately to outwit the Artificial Intelligence that runs the prison. Perhaps the only way to escape is to find the mythic glove of Sapphique, but can they find it before the prison does?

Incarceron was definitely not one of my favorite books. As I stated in that review the pacing was quick, but there were a lot of rules in this world that I didn't understand. In this second installment, I was hoping for answers and all I got were more questions.

Is Finn truly the prince? If so, who was responsible for placing him in Incarceron? And if he isn't, why is he a Starseer? What are these seizures he has? What is the Warden's role within all this? Does he want to preserve Protocol or overthrow it? If he wants to overthrow it, then why has he been lying to the Steel Wolves? Where is Incarceron? Is it really a small cube on a watch chain or is it hidden somewhere? What is the Glove, and how does its magic work? Better yet, is it magic or technology? What causes Keiro and Claudia to exchange places in the two worlds? How does Jared know what he must do to save everyone? Is Rix really a magician? If he is, then why does he resort to cheap tricks in his shows, and where does he get his powers that nobody else seems to have in the book? If he isn't, how does he perform all that magic at the end? How did Attia and Keiro find Ric had the Glove? Why does Incarceron's meltdown cause the illusions of the Realm to disappear? Why is Attia in this story at all? And are we supposed to believe that there is actually any romantic feeling between Claudia and Finn?

One of my biggest pet peeves in this book is the vocabulary. The author has found many wonderful verbs, but after a while I wondered how many things truly smelled acrid? And why was everything so gaudy? The one good thing about listening to the audio book of this rather than reading is that I wasn't as aware of where I was in the chapters or in the book as a whole. However, one couldn't help but notice how episodic each chapter was, reading like Charles Dickens, but without the depth. I grew frustrated with Attia, a character with such promise in the first book and absolutely pointless in this one.

Perhaps the most damning thing about this book was that despite Fisher trying to be mysterious, she was constantly giving away what would happen at the beginning of each chapter. As many books do, there are made of poems and songs regarding Sapphique. Conveniently, these snippets are always telling us what is going to happen in that chapter or worse, at the end of the book. It was like Fisher didn't trust the reader to fully comprehend the chapter and thought they needed a little help. Well, we did need some light shed on the mysteries, but the problem was with the world she created not the actual plot. I understand the plot. Get the Glove. Escape the Prison. Convince everyone you should be King. Simple. It was all the actual world building that was the problem.

Perhaps the inevitable third book will help clear up some of these issues...but I seriously doubt it.

Of Domes and Other Things

In the Arizona dessert there are series of interconnected glass domes and pyramids called the Biosphere 2. Originally conceived as a self sustaining ecological system the experiment was a miserable failure in the early 90's when it was revealed that the plants weren't producing enough oxygen and the people inside had to breach the airlock when one of the scientists' leg was broken. The biosphere was a realization of an idea that has intrigued science fiction writers and scientists for decades. Sci-fi writers see these domes of furtile places for the imagination, often representing oppression. However, scientists see these self-sustaining cities as possible habitats for human life in the moon or Mars.

Early science fiction (pre-Global Warming days) usually showed domes as space colonies. Various writers put domed cities on Venus, Mars, and the moon. Other writers used domes cities to show the ills of ouor society and government. In the short story by E.M. Foster "The Machine Stops", humans live in a vast series of rooms in an underground machine that provides everything they could ever need. However, the machine eventually breaks down causing the inevitable death of all its citizens. Arthur C. Clarke saw domes as a retreat in The City and the Stars, a modern day (1950's style) Eden.

The first mention of a domed city was in 1881 in the white supremacist fantasy Three Hundred Years Hence by William Hay, besides being full of only white people Hay's domed city is mostly used for agriculture. In 1905 H.G. Wells suggested A Modern Utopia where at least part of cities were covered over in glass. in 1931 Ray Cummings wrote Brigands of the Moon where people lived in small glass dome shelters. James Blish created the idea of a spindizzy in his series Cities in Flight in which cities could take off into space at will. Logan's Run originally published in 1976 built domed cities to escape polution and war. In 1982 Ben Bova published A City of Darkness where domes were playgrounds during the day, and terrifying by night.

But these are all adult books you say. Never fear, domed cities infiltrated children's literature as well. The Tripods series by John Christopher has humans living as slaves beneath alien domes (very similar to Battlefield Earth, which is never read due to its scientology affiliation, but is really quite good) In 2010 A Crack in the Sky by Mark Peter Hughes was published with the domes being run by a corporation that isn't admitting that the domes may be falling apart piece by piece. Some may even argue that Incarceron by Catherine Fisher could be considered a "domed" city. Songs of Power by Hilari Bell is about an underground domed city and Away is a Strange Place to Be by H.M. Hoover features space habitats, very similar to domed cities.

But just in case you thought this was all some kind of fictional enterprise, feast your eyes on the newest form of domed city from the minds of the Chinese.

Book of the Week - Uglies

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.

I love Science Fiction. Let's just put that out there from the beginning. As a kid I was hooked after reading Away is a Strange Place to Be by H.M. Hoover, a wonderful book about two kids kidnapped and forced into slave labor on a space station. I devoured sci-fi book after sci-fi, leaving young adult books far behind when I ran out of them. I turned to Herbert, Heinlein, Ben Bova, Timothy Zahn, and C.J. Cherryh. I say this to tell you that there is a considerable difference between young adult and adult sci-fi, even the ones with children characters likeEnder's Game, which was originally meant for adults is completely different.

How you ask? Simply this. Adults books don't preach.

Adult books just tell a good story. And epic story but a story nonetheless. Yes, there are books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, perhaps even I, Robot could be included in that preachy mode of storytelling, but one thing is for sure, I never felt like the author was trying to tell me how ridiculous something was. There is a disturbing likeness to the young adult sci-fi I have read recently. This is the trend I have noticed:

An author finds something that bothers them about our society. (usually American society) These social ills can be anything from not living green (enough), obsession with beauty, safety, science, violence, terrorism, etc. Then they take it to the extreme.

In Uglies, Westerfeld creates a society in which everyone at the age of sixteen turns Pretty. All your life you are told how ugly you are and how one day, just like everyone else, you will become beautiful and never have to worry about anything again. No one will be too fat or too skinny. Frizzy hair will be a thing of the past. Everyone equal. Tally Youngblood can't wait to turn sixteen, but then she meets Shay, another ugly, who disdains the falseness of their society and runs away. Tally doesn't go, but is soon blackmailed by the authorities into finding the Uglies camp, if she helps they will make her pretty. But reality makes Tally wonder if the truth she has been told all her life is really a lie.

On the whole, the book is written well. It is action packed with rich characters and an interesting plot. But I just can't seem to get over the preachiness of it. Believe me, it was clear what the author was getting at from the very beginning. It just screamed, "Hey, isn't it terrible how obsessed we are with beauty? Look what could happen if we don't stop." Sometimes adult books can have moments of preachiness, but personally I think the best stories are the ones that move away from the preachiness to focus on story.

But Uglies isn't the only one doing it. The Roar by Emma Clayton, Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, Feed by M.T. Anderson, Rash by Pete Hautman, Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, Shade's Children by Garth Nix, Unwind by Neal Shusterman. This is not to say these novels are badly written, it is just that the "message" was way to much for this blogger's tastes. Yes, adults books do it too, but I never felt like Isamov or Bova was trying to say, "Look what happens when we get obsessed with--well you fill in the blank."