Hers:::The door was mildewed with age, the wood so soft it crumbled. Inside the dim room the windows had been blocked with ivy; as Jared lit lamps, Claudia stared around. "Just like home."
He had set up his electron microscope on a rickety table, unpacked a few boxes of instruments and books. He turned; in the flame light his face was haggard. "Claudia, you must look at this. It changes everything. Everything."
His anguish scared her. "Calm down," she said quietly. "Are you well?"
"Well enough." He leaned over the microscope, his long fingers adjust it deftly. "You remember that scrap of metal I took from the study? Take a look at it."
Puzzled she put her eye to the lens. The image was blurred; she refocused very slightly. And then she went very still, so rigid that Jared knew she had seen, and in that instant, had understood. He went and sat wearily on the floor, among the ivy and nettles, the Sapient robe wrapped around him, its hem trailing in the dirt. And he watched her as she stared.
His:::
It WAS the Wall at the End of the World. If Sapphique had truly fallen down it from top to bottom it must have taken years. As Finn gazed up he felt the wind rebound from it's immensity, making a slipstream that roared before them. Debris from the heart of Incarceron was blasted upward an then plummeted in an endless maelstrom; once trapped in that wind nothing could escape. "We need to turn" Gildas was staggering to the wheel; Finn scrambled after him. Together they squeezed beside Keiro, hauling, trying to make the ship veer before she struck the updraft. With the thunder, Lightsout came. In the blackness Finn heard Keiro swear, felt Gildas struggle around him, holding on tight. "Finn. Pull the lever! In the deck."
I've been putting off reviewing Incarceron basically because I needed to think about how I felt about it. Initially, I was very excited about getting my hands on the book, but I wasn’t too many pages into it before I realized that it wasn’t the dark-and-strange work that the book trailers had led me to believe Fisher had written.
So who to blame for my disappointment? Well obviously, in this case the media experts that led me to believe that this book was something that it wasn’t. The prison, after all, isn’t amazing or even particularly scary. It’s a futuristic prison—end of story. Something you might expect Kirk and Spock to stumble upon.
Now given that this site is ‘Good Books’ and not ‘Merely Adequate Books’ or ‘Just Okay Books’ you might be wondering why I’m even taking the time to talk about Incarceron. I’m doing so because of Catherine Fisher’s history of producing fine fiction, and because this series has so much potential. For while the prison might not be all-that – I didn’t even find Finn the man at the center of the action within Incarceron at all intriguing – the world outside of the prison makes up for it. It and the character of Claudia, the daughter of prison’s warden; they are fascinating.
Her world is one that is technologically advanced, but which isn’t allowed to show that. She and the rest of the citizens are forced by law to live an artificial existence in an environment which appears to all extensive purposes to have popped out of a Jane Austen novel; complete with badger baiting, long silk gowns, and candles. So essentially, inside and out, the two worlds are stagnant.
What isn’t stagnant is politics. Claudia’s father and the Queen have been busy setting plans for how the world will be run. They've assigned Claudia to the be the bride of the second son, a lout who will ‘need to be controlled’ once he becomes king. What they didn’t count on though was Claudia’s determination to free herself from that prospect of that loveless marriage, and her attachment to the first son, a boy who died under mysterious circumstances.
And for those of you who know Fisher’s work, you know that political shenanigans are her meat and potatoes. The stuff she deals with brilliantly. And it’s because of this, that Incarceron is being recommended and reviewed here now.
Talking Points:::
Interesting societies and concepts. The world outside of Incarceron was more interesting to me than the interior domains of the prison.
The prison itself is more or less standard sci-fi fair. Moving walls, little lights that spy; mechanical critters that spy; a computer that's getting out of hand. To be truthful the scenery inside the place is not all that well described. People tumble, for example, and hit things, but a sense of direction and place is never well developed.
The same is not true for the outside world. Ms. Fisher does a wonderful job of describing the stagnant, artificially stuffy world in which Claudia lives.
I'm interested in the follow up book, but for now I can only suggest Incarceron as a Library Find.
Pam
Somewhere in the X-burbs
- Accelerated Reading level : 4.6
- Hardcover: 448 pages
- Publisher: Dial (January 26, 2010)
- ISBN-10: 0803733968
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