Review: The People of Sparks

*Second Book in the series*

Summary from Goodreads:

The People of Sparks picks up where The City of Ember leaves off. Lina and Doon have emerged from the underground city to the exciting new world above, and it isn’t long before they are followed by the other inhabitants of Ember. The Emberites soon come across a town where they are welcomed, fed, and given places to sleep. But the town’s resources are limited and it isn’t long before resentment begins to grow between the two groups. When anonymous acts of vandalism push them toward violence, it’s up to Lina and Doon to discover who’s behind the vandalism and why, before it’s too late.

Review:

The People of Sparks is the post-apocalyptic continuation of the first in the series, The City of Ember. I highly enjoyed The People of Sparks as I really wanted to know what happened to the Emberites after they left their underground home and this book began where the first book left off and for that I was glad as I didn’t miss anything.

Lina and Doon remained strong, independent characters. In this book, they seemed to have their own journeys to take and they grew in different ways. This was different than the first book as Lina and Doon figured more of the mystery out together, but in this book, they were physically apart for longer lengths of time. I missed them working together. Also, I figured out the mystery of who was causing strife between the two groups before it was discovered in the book.

Of course, all the Emberites had to acclimatise to their new surroundings and I believe that DuPrau achieved this realistically. They slowly learnt to live on the surface of the world and tried to get along with the people of Sparks, with mostly negative results- until the end.

The new characters, the people of Sparks, were well written and 3D. They acted in ways that I would have expected them to so the story was believable. There seemed to be a lull in the middle of the story and I was waiting for it to pick up. Luckily, it did and the climax of the book was somewhat exciting and resolved nicely. The ending, like the first book, was exciting and filled me with hope as to what would come next.

I liked the message of The People of Sparks. I think the book asks us to all work together and put aside our differences (Not working together will just lead to discord). All the themes, such as learning, friendship, the idea of community and oneness were interesting to observe in The People of Sparks.

Overall, while I enjoyed The People of Sparks, I didn’t feel as though it was as good as it could have been and it wasn’t as good as The City of Ember. However, Lina and Doon did mature and develop as characters and it was exciting to watch them learn about the world.

DuPrau’s style of writing was mostly engaging. The book was good; it ended in such a way that it made me want to know what would happen next. After this, DuPrau wrote The Prophet of Yonwood, the third Book of Ember, which was a prequel to the series and The Diamond of Darkhold, the fourth book which shows what happened to the People of Ember next.

Although I have read The Prophet of Yonwood, I have not read The Diamond of Darkhold yet.

Book Rating: 4/5

Cover: 5/5

Concept: 3.5/5

Author: Jeanne DuPrau

I wrote this review as part of Dystopian August which is going on over at Presenting Lenore. Check it out.