[LISTENED TO: July 2016, July 2017] The City of Ember
I enjoyed this book when we listened to it the first time and I enjoyed the graphic novel as well.
But I couldn’t remember enough about the audio book to post about it so I listened to it again. And what was so interesting this time was how much it sounded like an attack on our current political situation:
A greedy pig in charge of a country; sycophants as his cronies; keeping as much as possible for themselves and allowing the richer to get richer while the country falls apart; shutting down truth; imprisoning dissenters and just to top it off, the mayor is a large man with very small hands (seriously). The only real difference is that the mayor speaks eloquently and has a big vocabulary.
I absolutely loved the reading by Wendy Dillon. She has quite distinctive voices for the main characters and some of the secondary characters have wonderful details about them that keeps them individual–the mayor wheezes, another character smacks his lips together, Clary speaks slowly and deliberately almost with a stutter. It’s wonderful. And the sound effects, while not necessary, are a nice addition. Although they are fairly infrequent and can be surprising if you forget about them.
So what’s the story about?
It opens with some people talking about some instructions that they need to hide away. They are going to put them in a box which won’t open for 200, no 220 years. They hope that the mayors will keep this box safe and pass it down to whoever is next.
The narrator tells us that the mayors were good about it, for a few mayors. And then there was a greedy mayor who tried to open it. He failed and left the box in his closet, forgotten about. After 220 years it opened on its own in the closet. The story takes place 21 years after that in the year 241. Supplies are running scarce (the builders prepared them for 220 years, not 240), the generator that powers the city is breaking down, and a feeling of unrest has settled on the city of Ember.
Our main character, Lina, is 12 years old. When the children turn 12 they leave school and start working for the city in a job-revealing ceremony. Lina hopes to be a messenger, a person who runs all around the city delivering information. But she is given the job “Pipework Laborer,” and she is devastated. She does not want to work underground all day long. Her classmate Doon Harrow (since I never saw it written out I assumed it was spelled Dune) wants to be an electricians assistant. He has always been curious and intelligent and he believes that he knows how to fix the generator–if he can just get a look at it. But he is given the job of “Messenger.” He freaks out and the mayor really lets him have it for showing such disrespect.
After school, Doon asks Lina to switch–he wants to get down to the generator and her job is the closets he’ll get. Obviously she is excited to switch, so they do.
I enjoyed the way the story was structured that we would follow Lina for a bit and then we would back up and relive more or less the same time frame with Doon. It’s not different perspectives of the same event exactly, because often times they are not anywhere near each other. But it was fun to see how some one else reacts to events as they unfold.
Lina enjoys her job as messenger, although she does hear some strange messages. Doon does not enjoy his job as much as he thought–and the generator is a huge rumbling mostly broken down machine. He is more frustrated by everything.
And then Doon finds a secret passage. And then Lina finds the instructions from The Builders (the way they are found is satisfying and strange). But before she can read them her baby sister Poppy has started chewing on them. So she has to try to puzzle it out.
I rather enjoyed that this world does not have a lot of the same words as The Builders’ world does–they even have a dictionary of former phrases like hogwash (no one knows what a hog is or why you would wash it). So some of the words in the instructions are just hard to figure out. Lina believes that they show an exit to another world (she has dreams of a bright glistening city). And she imagines that the secret door leads to it.
But when they open it up, they find only greed and hording. And this is when things felt like our current situation–people hiding, doing horrible things but no punishment befalling them.
So now they have to try to figure out The Instructions while also trying to let people know about the corruption in the city.
Lina and Doon are flawed characters which makes them more relatable, if not more frustrating. Doon wants his father to be really proud of him so he doesn’t tell him anything until he can do a grand presentation in front of everyone. Even Lina is flawed. One of her friends who has been getting special gifts from her boyfriend (who is in on the corruption), and the girl offers to get things for Lina, too. Lina is tempted and almost goes through with it.
The end of the book is really exciting as there is a lengthy section that takes place in pitch darkness–and the reader can only imagine what it must be like to be thrust into utter darkness.
I also enjoyed how the book ends with what the set up for a sequel, but also a satisfying ending in itself.
I also had to comment on how much I enjoyed her descriptions of things that we find common and every day. Her appreciation for plants and seeds. Her descriptions of animals and sunlight show such a sense of wonder that it really makes you appreciate what you have around you.
I hadn’t planned on dealing with the next book, but after listening again I’m very curious to see hoe DuPrau plays out the story.
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