The City of Ember Term 2- Review 1

City of Ember

For my reading challenge I choose to read the book City of Ember.  In the first term Anthony did a review on this book.  Anthony, in your review you say that in the book the author gave away to many things, and I totally 100% agree with you there.  The main character every chapter talks about a door opening and a staircase to a new world and that is what basically happens in the end, and to add on to that I would say the rest of the book was pretty easy to predict what would happen next. You also mention that you would rate the book 4/5 stars and I have to disagree with you on that.  I found the book rather slow and boring up until chapter 18/19 where I felt it started to get more exciting and interesting and then towards the very end it got back to that boring predictable book. I would rate this 2/5.  You talk about how you think the author wrote this book based off of the idea of non-reusable resources and how without them it would be a hard life, and I have to agree with you there. The author when writing this book probably had that idea in mind.  You also say that you found the book interesting because of the way the characters developed and I also agree with you there. The book would have been a lot worse if the author did not use so much descriptive characterization.

 I choose this book because it seemed mysterious and intriguing and I like those kinds of books.  In the story the 2 main characters are Doon and Lina, I would have to say that they are the protagonists of the story and the Mayor is the antagonist because he is going against their plans to save the city.  Doon and Lina are the protagonist of the story but they were kind of undeveloped characters. I really would have liked better detail and more excitement to happen with them and not just as an individual character.  The Mayor was a great choice for the antagonist in this book because he was greedy and didn’t want to help the other people.  One stock character I want to point out is Poppy, Linas little sister. Although Poppy was a stock character they used her a lot in the book to create drama and that really made it more exciting.  A dynamic character in the book would be Linas best friend.  At the start she is all excited and happy and towards the end, she is mad and keeping secret and I think that character made a great addition to the book. The time period of this book seems like it is in the 1950’s because they don’t talk about video games and all that but they do have electricity.  When reading the book I found it started a little slow then hit many climaxes, like for instance, when they discover the instructions, when they discover the boats and candles, and the ending were all points in the book where a climax hit. Then there was a lot of rising and falling action throughout the rest.  Overall I found the book kind of slow and boring and probably wont read the next in the series.