I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: August 2017] The Prophet of Yonwood

I did not enjoy the second book of Ember much at all.  I wasn’t even going to continue with the series, but I was intrigued at this being a (shorter) prequel.

This book came out when I was still working at a public library so I remember the cover quite vividly.

But when I put in the disc I was shocked to realize that the narrator was different!  Where was beloved Wendy Dillon?  That was disappointing.  Worse yet, this book was set in the South so the new narrator, Becky Ann Baker, had a whole lot of Southern to speak to us, which I don’t care for in an audio book.

So there were already two strikes against this.  And then it turned out that the story has literally nothing to do with Ember at all.  Well, that’s not strictly true, but it is set in America (at an unspecified future date) where global stresses are tense, but in which life goes on.

Set with a backdrop of global war, the United States is up against the “Phalanx Nations,” and unless changes are made, war seems imminent.

Into this we see Nicole (Nickie) Randolph, an eleven-year-old girl visiting Yonwood, NC, with her aunt Crystal.  Nickie’s grandfather recently died and Nickie’s mother and aunt want to sell the property, called Greenhaven, and be out of Yonwood.  For reasons either unclear or which I don’t remember, Nickie is travelling with her aunt and not her mother, which is a little odd, but whatever.

They get to Yonwood and Nickie falls in love with the house.  Nickie and her mom live in Philadelphia, and Nickie hates the city.  She hopes to move to Yonwood (before she even set foot in the state).  Indeed, she has three objectives on this trip: to keep the mansion, to fall in love, and to help the world.

But Crystal cannot wait to get rid of this massive house and everything in it.  It has been in their family for over a hundred years and most of the original stuff is still there.  (I’m somewhat surprised at Crystal’s need to get rid of the place, but whatever).

Before they arrived in Yonwood, there was an incident there.  Althea Tower saw a vision at the beginning of the book.  She said a few words and then was silent.  Believing that the vision was from God, the town has called her ‘The Prophet,’ and an entire cult has developed around her.

Brenda Beeson is a community leader who has access to the police and the mayor.  She ‘interprets’ the words of The Prophet and then tells the town of Yonwood how to act.  The President has said that the war with the Phalanx nations is a ‘war on evil,’ and that everyone should work to fight evil.  Beeson has taken this quite literally and it’s fairly obvious from the start that she has already taken things too far, including banning singing because of something the Prophet muttered.

When Nickie is exploring the house, she finds a teenager, Amanda Stokes, holed up in the attic.  She was a former caregiver of Nickie’s grandfather.  When he died, she had nowhere to go, so she just stayed put.  Nickie of course lets her stay but doesn’t tell her aunt about the stowaway.

Why? Because Amanda has a dog, Otis.  And, while surreptitiously asking her Aunt about dogs, Crystal says she doesn’t like them.  So, obviously to a young kid, that means hide a girl and her dog in the attic.  This works through some soundproofing and because the mansion is very large.  But a few days later, Amanda is given a job looking after The Prophet (whose previous caregiver had had enough of dealing with an old woman in a sort of coma).  But Amanda can’t bring her dog, so Otis stays with Nickie.  And Nickie manages to hide the dog but still take him for walks (Crystal is very busy with real estate agents and such).

The only other person of consequence is Grover Persons.  He’s a nice kid with a keen interest in nature.  About half way through the book he reveals that he has been capturing snakes and raising them and studying them and then letting them go.  Nickie thinks he’s a little weird (and he is), but he’s also really nice, and they become friends.

But one day Nickie meets Brenda Beeson and Beeson tells her all about the war on evil.  Nickie wants to do good (her family don’t go to church so she knows little of God).  And Brenda tells her to keep an eye out for wickedness.  Essentially this amounts to spying on people.

Nickie sees various things going on, but she’s not exactly sure what’s actually evil, so she tells Beeson everything.  Kids smoking, people arguing and, because she’s afraid of them, Grover’s snakes.

Since Beeson has the ear of the community (and the police), she has been making “rules” in town.  And rulebreakers are punished in a fascinating way.  Oh, there is one other interesting character, Hoyt McCoy.  Hoyt is a weird guy in town.  And he is totally on Beeson’s radar.

Hoyt doesn’t participate in meetings, he yells at “trespassers” like when Grover cuts through his yard on the way home.  And one time he even point ed a gun at Nickie! Turns out it wasn’t a gun, it was a telescope, Hoyt is an astronomer.  Beeson would like nothing more than to punish Hoyt, but he has done nothing wrong…yet.

Things come to a breaking point when the prophet tells Mrs Beeson that dogs are the root off evil–our love for dogs is taking away our love of God.  Beeson has a dog herself whom she loves and she is sad to say that they must all get rid of their dogs.  That means setting them free in the woods to go back to where they belong in nature (which is a pretty cruel thing).

I did rather enjoy when the Prophet woke up and how things were dealt with.  In fact, I enjoyed the last quarter of the book quite a lot.  The rest of it was a little boring and a little slow.  Beeson’s doings were so obviously crazy that it was hard to believe a town would fall sway to her.  And there seemed to be way too much ignorance floating around, but maybe small towns can really be like that.

Incidentally, Nickie’s father, is away on a secret government- related job and he can’t say where he is.  So he sends postcards home.  The post cards have weirdo P.S. which are pretty obviously a code.  But it’s annoying that it takes until the third one before it is revealed that he and Nickie studied codes together.  I suppose one could figure out the code (its fairly easy once its explained) but it’s not the kind of code I was expecting (and it doesn’t really have all that much to do with the story.

So what does this have to do with Ember?

Well, that’s the thing.  This story would work perfectly well on its own.  I was half wondering whether this was another story she had written and then decided to tie it into Ember later. The part with her father is where things connect to Ember tangentially, and that could have been added once the book became a prequel.

I won’t give away the connection, and I secretly hope that DuPrau did write the book intending it to be prequel all along.  Because the way she ties this book to Ember is awesome.  In fact, the last couple of chapters were just fantastic.  The various resolutions and the various revelations were wonderful.  It was one of those “woah!” moments when it all tied together.  And I really appreciated that.

By the end of the audio book, I really came to appreciate Becky Ann Baker who was eventually able to do a lot of different characters and to show off her range nicely.

This book isn’t essential to the reading of the Ember series, but the way the end ties together is very cool.  And, since I have finished the fourth book, there is a cool connection to that book that only comes from this one.