Authors: Lauren DeStefano
Series: The Internment Chronicles #2
Genre: YA Dystopian Sci-fi
Page Length: 320
Published: March 10, 2015 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Source: Library e-book
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Summary
Danger descends in the second book of The Internment Chronicles, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Chemical Garden trilogy.
After escaping Internment, Morgan and her fellow fugitives land on the ground to finally learn about the world beneath their floating island home.
The ground is a strange place where water falls from the sky as snow, and people watch moving pictures and visit speakeasies. A place where families can have as many children as they want, their dead are buried in vast gardens of bodies, and Internment is the feature of an amusement park.
It is also a land at war.
Everyone who fled Internment had their own reasons to escape their corrupt haven, but now they’re caught under the watchful eye of another king who wants to dominate his world. They may have made it to the ground, but have they dragged Internment with them?
Overall Rating: 3/5
Format: 3/5
The book is told fully in Morgan’s point-of-view, first person, same as the first in the series. Chapters are relatively short, but I feel like they could’ve been stuffed with more detail and it wouldn’t have been a bad thing. The first person POV makes it hard to reveal a lot of details about the world, which I understand, but there are ways to make this happen. More discussions with the native characters, more books, Morgan spends a lot of time inside the hotel, aside from some jaunts over to some nightlife spots. I felt equally shut-in. I know that’s the point, that they can’t really go anywhere on their own, that there’s all sorts of danger and turmoil out there, but I still feel like more could’ve been done to get me a more immersed in this world.
Story: 3/5
This book has to deal with what I like to call the “Outside the Wall” problem. The first book has us trapped on Internment, with no idea whatsoever what we will find on the ground. No. Idea. Whatsoever. Is it the future? Is it 1872? Is this another planet? When a book sets up the big “What’s on the other side of the wall?” reveal, it has to pay off. I’m not fully satisfied with the payoff.
I have mixed feelings about how this one went down. They find themselves near this amusement park that is geared towards the city floating above them, which makes perfect sense. That’s something humans would do, try to monetize this phenomenon. There are rides and little scopes that you can look through to try and catch a glimpse. After this, I got a little lost. They become holed up in this hotel that’s closed for the winter, and almost never leave. It became clear that this is an alternate reality, because there are 1920’s elements, then there are elephants called “elegors,” a fictional natural resource that seems to be the source of a war, a Bible-like book simply called “The Text,” and jets. I definitely thought it was World War I or something when everything started going down, but it’s obviously not supposed to be grounded in any specific time in history. I liked that a lot about it, but I just wish it was way more fleshed-out. Like I mentioned in the first section, it’s hard to be omniscient when your first-person narrator is obviously not omniscient. I still have a million questions. At least a million. How did they just get a jet airplane working in the span of like a month? There are mermaids in the water, so are there other mythical creatures around? How are they even functioning when their bodies are used to being 35,000 feet in the sky? Etc etc.
I still don’t think I fully understand why they trusted Jack Piper. They’re baby birds and he’s the first thing they see, so suddenly he must be trustworthy, and they really don’t question anything about him for the whole book. He’s “friends” with the king, somehow. I didn’t really get that dynamic or why that mattered, except that it gives Celeste a way to talk to him. Also why would the KING trust this pushy girl from the sky claiming to be a princess, when those on the ground know NOTHING about how Internment operates? More questions. He’s never around, so all of his kids (who are Brady-Bunch-like) just have to run around and get into shenanigans with our characters. I liked some of them, probably the ones I was meant to like, but when something significant happens later in the story, I didn’t really care all that much. Along those lines, I wasn’t appropriately shocked by certain plot lines either. The main plot-driving revelation came out early on and wasn’t really acted on until the end. It made sense that way
Celeste probably became my favorite character just by virtue of having the most dimension, though Pen is a close second. They were written very well, and it was interesting to see the “friend triangle” that formed as a result. I liked seeing Morgan struggle with just going along with whatever Pen says and does, simply because they’re best friends. That friendship obviously isn’t going to break due to some little spat, but I loved all of their interactions and learning more about them. The love triangle later on wasn’t really necessary, though I saw it coming. I guess it can’t really be a triangle when one of the corners just sort of gives up and allows the other to move in for the kill, though.
Writing: 4/5
The style is simple and easy to follow, except somehow lyrical and teeming with amazing metaphors and sentences. I wish I didn’t already return this to the library so I could find some of them to quote here. As a metaphor-lover (obviously), I was in love. Could I have had more description of the world down below? Absolutely. I probably felt most immersed in the world when they were over the river seeing silent movies and drinking illegal alcohol. I would have a very hard time describing anything around the hotel. I picture some snow and rocks. There’s a cemetery somewhere nearby. Also an amusement park. And a hospital. As stated earlier, I wanted more of the world. Some people feel like paragraphs of description is just fluff, unnecessary to the story. I can’t get enough of it. Related to this, was there a map in this book? I don’t remember, but there should have been, if not.
Judging by the Cover: 3/5
Not a bad cover. I like the title though, so maybe that would push me towards it. I only picked up the first one because I enjoy following the author on Twitter, so it had nothing to do with the cover, though I was certainly intrigued by the synopsis.
LITERA SCRIPTA MANET
Ashley
The Apt Metaphor 