LitPick Review
What happens when the wrong people find a special item meant for someone else? How will the people it rightfully belongs to (in this case the city of Ember) get the item back? Well, with the help of Lina and Doon, of course. Well it all begins when one day, after Doon was thinking about how harsh the winter months have been and how low the food supplies are, he randomly says to Lina that he thinks that there must've been something left for the people of Ember by the early builders of the large city. The very next day when a roamer, someone who searches for left behind treasures in ruined areas and cities, comes to town, Doon notices an ancient-looking book sitting on the roamer's cart. He asks to see the book and on the cover the book says, "written for the people of Ember." Doon, having remembered what he said the day before, comes to the conclusion that the book must contain the directions of operation for what the item was that was supposedly left for them. There is one tiny problem, however: the mysterious ragged book only contains 8 lonely pages, the rest having been ripped out and used for starting the roamer's campfires. Doon, always wanting to solve mysteries, decides that he and Lina should go on an investigation of this mysterious and unknown, possibly even nonexistent, thing and travel back to the rundown, and possibly deadly, city of Ember in search of it. With much persistent pestering, Lina agrees to go along and start the adventure that will change their lives and the lives of the Emberties forever.
Opinion:
I thought this book was well written and a great conclusion to the City of Ember series. I thought it was neat how the author wrote the third book, The Prophet of Yonwood, about what had happened in the past, kind of like a flashback to the world before Ember, and then she started again in the present, in the Town of Sparks, for the fourth book, The Diamond of Darkhold. The author, Jeanne DuPrau, did a wonderful job of using descriptive words that painted a very vivid and lively picture in my head as I was reading. Even though I liked this book, it was kind of dull and dismal for me now that I've gotten older. Therefore, I mainly recommend the City of Ember series to tweens around the ages of 9-12, since I used to absolutely love this series when I was younger.
