[LISTENED TO: July 2017] The People of Sparks
After finishing up The City of Ember this summer, with that promising cliffhanger-ish ending, I was pretty excited to listen to book two.
Holy cow did I hate this book (until the end). I blame the combination of DuPrau’s writing and Wendy Dillon’s excellent vocal work. Because as soon as the book started, the sorta main character Torren quickly became the single most irritating character in fiction. He is bratty. He is incredibly whiny. He is a really mean. And he is unchecked by adults. Perhaps we are supposed to feel sorry for him, but he is so incredibly unlikable and does such horrible things that I don’t see how one could.
I imagined that this book would pick up where Ember left off–Mrs Murdo finding the note and rallying the city together to come and meet Lina and Doon in the new place. I imagined a lengthy first part where the characters try to convince the mayor and gather their stuff and eventually work their way out.
But no. The book begins in the city of Sparks. Horrible brat child Torren is sitting on a windmill (not sure why they have these windmills if they don’t harness the energy) and sees people marching across the empty land.
Soon enough Lina and Doon are introducing the 400+ Emberites to the 300+ people of Sparks. The leaders of Sparks: Mary, Ben and Wilmer meet to decide what to do with this huge influx of people.
The situation is Sparks is interesting: they are one of several villages in the region–small outcroppings surrounded by vast wastelands. They all know about each other because of Roamers, travelers who scour cities for items to trade. Sparks is the largest and most successful village–they actually have a small surplus of food and are feeling somewhat comfortable in their existence. How on earth can this city double its population and expect to survive?
It’s a fair question. But can they just turn these people away? No one actually believes that they came from a cave in the ground, and yet they know of all of the other villages nearby. So where did they come from? They look like rubes. Are they even people? If the city turns them away, where will they go?
We see a flashback (from Mrs Murdo) about what happened in Ember when she found that note. Nothing like I imagined: Mrs Murdo gave the note to the Mayor. And then nothing happened. After a couple of days, she went to investigate the pipeworks, and she founds the Mayor and his cronies loading up the boats–they took the note seriously but just fled the sinking ship that was Ember. Sounds like some elected officials I know–everyone for himself these days.
This outraged people obviously and there was chaos and many many people died before the Emberites were able to get to safety. Obviously they are all amazed by life above ground–so much so that the Sparks folks think they are all simple. They are routinely mocked for their ignorance. Of course Ember had electricity while Sparks doesn’t.
So this story turns into something of a geopolitical novel–how can a small village cope with a huge influx of people? And I suppose that the reactions from the people of Sparks is pretty accurate: anger, distrust, fear, resentment.
But the big difference is that Ember was a dying city and Lina and Doon were a ray of hope. But Sparks is just a dark and desolate place with no ray of hope. There is no one (or hardly anyone) who is welcoming. There is no one who is willing to offer to help them. There is no one who is even willing to take the time to find out what Ember was like or where it was. There is no one even willing to teach the Emberites about their new home?
This community is so unpleasant makes this a dreadful read/listen.
The Emberites pretty much all take residence in the abandoned Pioneer Hotel (with no running water). They are told they can live there for 6 months and then must go on their way. They don’t tell the Emberites that 6 months is the beginning of winter (which they’ve never heard of anyway) and they will be in serious trouble since nothing will grow then. Some of the other Emberites live with families–well, specifically Lina and Mrs Murdo (and Poppy) live with the city’s doctor. Poppy was ill when they arrived (and we’re never told what happened to her–she had very little to do in this book). So Lina is pretty much oblivious to the grumblings at the hotel.
Doon lives at the hotel with his dad. And there is a loud boy named Tick (I loved how both Lina and Doon knew him but couldn’t remember his name) who starts rabble rousing. He wants to makes sure the Emberites are not pushed around and he starts making sure the citizens stand up for themselves. He is clean-cut and sharp-looking and Doon falls under his sway pretty quickly–which means he has less time for Lina.
Meanwhile the Emberites are forced to work hard for their meager supplies and are not really taught anything about the world (beyond their jobs). I simply don’t understand anything in the way these Sparks people are thinking (how did they survive the Disaster?). Little details like: Why force the Emberites to work through the blazing hot sun on a long summer day–why not give them a break during the hot hours and let them finish when the sun goes down? Why is everyone making fun of them for their ignorance and getting annoyed by them instead of helping them learn about their new home? There is no one in this whole town who wants to be a teacher ? Not even the teacher? And seriously, no one want to know anything about Ember? It’s a four days walking journey away and the people of Sparks have beasts of burden so what the heck? No one could tell the elders that they had supplies that they could probably use?
The Sparks people at first are thrilled to share their interesting food ideas with the Emberites, who are amazed by everything. But they soon grow resentful and the meals are less interesting and growing smaller. People are concerned about their own supplies of food . Resentment builds more and more and Tick is there to stamp it down.
Meanwhile Torren’s older brother Caspar returns. He is a Roamer and he is one of the reasons that Torren is such a brat–Torren can’t wait for his big brave brother to return with presents for him. But Caspar is a dolt and he has brought not a present but a partner (clearly not romantic) named Maddie. She and Caspar are both large, tough characters. Maddie doesn’t say much but Caspar is a boastful braggart (about really dumb things). We learn that Maddie thinks Caspar is a joke and only teamed up with him so she could leave her dying village.
Torren is sure that Caspar will take him along on his next trip, but Caspar has no intention of taking a whiny little boy. So Torren freaks out and damages some crops. In the morning, he blames Doon for doing it, which, of course, leads to more resentment.
Lina heard Caspar say that he was heading to the city–she imagines a bright gleaming city like in her drawings. And she imagines that the Emberites can move there and fix it up. She thought he said it was a day’s journey. So she hops in the back of his truck and sneaks off with them.
It turns out that the city is a five day’s journey (not sure how she misheard five for one). On this journey Maddie and Lina bond. And that’s when Maddie becomes the voice of reason. She Tells Lina about the city and the devastation of the Disaster.
And yet, we never learn what the disaster was all about! Not a word about it! We get that there were escalating tensions, sure. Side A gets mad at Side B so they fight and then B fights back and things get worse and worse (just like in Sparks). Obviously there was some kind of nuclear war, but we get no details about it? It’s so frustrating.
The city proves to be not a gleaming beacon of hope but a blasted out shell of its former self. They don’t even get close enough for Lina to check it out. I get the impression that the city is San Francisco, but I’m not sure.
I enjoyed this aspect of it: Caspar wants to go to the city because of a rhyme that he keeps hearing–about treasure under the ground. I love that he has a cockamamie numerology plan for finding this treasure. And I love that Lina is able to tell them that the treasure is actually her city–“remember remember the city remember” which she believes was changed from “remember remember the city of Ember.” Cool.
But again, no one want to find out about her city? No one asks her about it or where it is or whether or not they might have supplies that can be used? No one cares about the rhyme except Caspar?
By the time Lina gets back to Sparks, it is basically under martial law. Tick and his merry band have started collecting weapons. Tricks have been played on the Emberites (including a nasty case of poison oak). And so as tensions mount, the one real jerk of the three leaders threatens them with their old school weapon–they don’t know exactly what it is or what it can do, but they do use it to threaten massive retaliation.
Maddie has told Lina that the only way peace can come out of situation like this is for a brave person to do something scary to deescalate the tensions. But, and fair enough, how is Lina supposed to deescalate tension when she doesn’t even really know what’s going on and when everyone in this new city is so stubborn.
As the book came to a close I really started enjoying it. The talk of violence, the talk of resisting the temptation to be scared and angry and of course the way it ties back to contemporary society–frightened people do stupid things and politicians who drum up fear encourage people to react based on fear rather than love or common sense. So yes, #RESIST as much as possible.
So how did I go from hating this book to really liking it?
The early negativity of this book was just too overwhelming. Whether DuPrau felt compelled to really hammer home how bad things were I don’t now. But it was relentlessly bleak. For way too long. This book is even longer than the first one (in audio book terms, an hour longer). Worse yet there were times when she would give great examples of escalating tensions and bad feelings and then follow that up by explaining how there were escalating tensions and bad feelings. I couldn’t understand why these things didn’t get edited out. If you’ve shown us you don’t need to tell us as well.
Torren is a horrifying character (and why anyone would ever believe him is also a good question). The leaders of Sparks (except Mary) are surprisingly unwise for leaders. Even the doctor is so preoccupied that she doesn’t offer much in the way of confidence or common sense. It sounds like the Sparks people are forcing the Emberites to do all of the work in town instead of sharing it.
But after almost two-thirds of the book, the final third was very exciting and there was an interesting resolution. And yet…still no one has asked about Ember, no one has talked about the Disaster. I suppose this is all set up as being revealed in the final book?
The next book in the series, The Prophet of Yonwood is a prequel. I see that it is set 50 years before The Disaster, and so maybe that will answer my questions.
I assume that DuPrau had all the parts of this story planned out from the get go. This seems like a well-thought-out disaster story, especially if she planned on a dark middle book. But man, this book was so bleak that it was really hard to imagine it was ever worth leaving the city in the first place
Once again, Wendy Dillon did a wonderful job. Her voices were terrific-even the incredibly irritating one she chose for Torren–I hated it and it was perfect.
I assumed I would never want to deal with the rest of the series after the first couple of discs of this book. But I am intrigued by the prequel aspect and I see that Yonwood is much shorter. So…maybe it’s coming soon after all.
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