Incarceron - Review

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Publication date: January 26, 2010
ISBN 10/13: 0803733968 / 9780803733961

Category: Young Adult Science Fiction/Fantasy
Format: Hardcover
Keywords: Social Experiment, Future Tech, Hidden Identities, Legend

Find the synopsis on goodreads.com.
 
How I found out about this book: I started seeing ads for this book late last year. I was tempted to order the UK version since that was already out... but I'm glad I waited for the US edition because a) the cover art rocks! and b) because I happened to open the mail when the ARC came in (our YA promos come few and far between so whenever I find one, I do a little victory dance).

Quickie: Exciting and poetic, Incarceron delivers an intricate story prickling with betrayals and secrets. I could hardly wait for the sequel to come out so, er, I ordered the UK paperback from Amazon Marketplace and promised to read 4 books from my TBR before I crack it open.

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My review: This book left me speechless. Even now when people ask me why they should read this book, I stare at them numbly and say, just read it!

All right, all right. Reasons. You need reasons?

Catherine Fisher builds an excellent world, from the techno-fakery of the "Outside" world where Claudia lives, to the desolate, rough terrain within Incarceron. It takes a skilled author to say the right amount about a world: not too little so that the reader can't imagine it at all, not too much so as to bore the reader to tears and make them want to put the book down in lieu of some other, easier read. Fisher gave me just enough to allow my imagination to run wild and build Incarceron from the outside in, fit it all inside my head, and yet still marvel at how it plays with your perception of time and space, of where and when and how.


Claudia & Finn manage to avoid the Mary Sue pitfall. Phew. While Claudia has beauty, brains, and all the training money can buy, she has few friends, and hardly anyone she can trust. Her impending arranged marriage will put her next in line to be queen; but her oafish fiance and sly, manipulative future-mother-in-law are not exactly every little girl's dream come true. Her father, the Warden of Incarceron, has been grooming her to ascend to this powerful place all her life, and seems to care for her only because of the political advantages her wedding will bring him. As for Finn, the harsh day-to-day inside Incarceron leaves no room for joy--on top of everything in his already hard-scrabble existence he also has seizures and visions, which mark him as even more strange and pitiful than usual in the eyes of his gang. A Sapienti eggs him on as he tries to find a way out of the living prison, following the path of Sapphique, a legendary figure who is rumored to be the only being ever to leave Incarceron. And every forty pages or so, one or the other of them lands in mortal peril.

I found the verses from the tales of Sapphique extremely tantalizing; they appear at the beginning of each chapter and were instrumental in keeping my nose placed firmly in this book. An absorbing read--if there was anything I could blame for possibly getting a B in my class over winter session, it's my weak will and strong inclination to go on reading Incarceron instead of studying Modern Japanese.

Who should read this book: Those who don't have the patience for new worlds and mythology, or who are looking for a straight-up romance, look elsewhere. The first 100 pages or so can go quite slowly, and impatient readers will be thrown off by the alternating points of view (every other chapter or so switches from Claudia to Finn depending on what's happening). If there was any vulgarity, I was too busy reading to notice it.

Incarceron is Catherine Fisher's first novel in this series.

Find the author at www.catherine-fisher.com.

Shortlink to this review: http://bit.ly/rnslincarceron


Find this book on goodreads.com, or buy it now!

Comments?
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