The cover of Incarceron by Catherine Fisher caught my eye while I was wondering in the teen fiction area at our local library. The iridescent glow of the key called to me as I reached out and took it off the shelf. I read the inside blurb and was instantly intrigued.
Catherine Fisher is a seasoned English author who has written many novels. Incarceron was published in 2007, winning the Mythopoeic Society of America's Children's Fiction Award. It was also selected by the Times, London as its Children's Book of the Year.
The premise of Incarceron is promising. The story follows two main characters. The first is a teenage boy named Finn who is trapped within Incarceron, a living prison. A prison that thinks and feels and changes in order to rule over its prisoners. The other character is a teenage girl named Claudia, the daughter of the Warden who oversees Incarceron. Each is looking for an opportunity to escape the life they live and their best chance seems to lie within the other.
I enjoyed the rich descriptions of the world inside Incarceron and I was intrigued by the world that existed outside of it. However, I kept finding myself waiting for something more to happen and a better explanation of the things that did happen. The story as is didn't lack for action or adventure, but I couldn't help but feel like there was something missing as though the plot line hadn't been fully flushed out. In the end I felt like bones of the story were solid but the meat wasn't there to sustain me. It's a story that I wish could be written again. This time with some more potatoes.
Interestingly, Catherine Fisher wrote a sequel that was published in 2008. And though I'm curious to see where the author took the story, I just don't know if I can bring myself to read it. Do I give it another try? Or do I spend my time on other things?
The premise of Incarceron is promising. The story follows two main characters. The first is a teenage boy named Finn who is trapped within Incarceron, a living prison. A prison that thinks and feels and changes in order to rule over its prisoners. The other character is a teenage girl named Claudia, the daughter of the Warden who oversees Incarceron. Each is looking for an opportunity to escape the life they live and their best chance seems to lie within the other.
I enjoyed the rich descriptions of the world inside Incarceron and I was intrigued by the world that existed outside of it. However, I kept finding myself waiting for something more to happen and a better explanation of the things that did happen. The story as is didn't lack for action or adventure, but I couldn't help but feel like there was something missing as though the plot line hadn't been fully flushed out. In the end I felt like bones of the story were solid but the meat wasn't there to sustain me. It's a story that I wish could be written again. This time with some more potatoes.
Interestingly, Catherine Fisher wrote a sequel that was published in 2008. And though I'm curious to see where the author took the story, I just don't know if I can bring myself to read it. Do I give it another try? Or do I spend my time on other things?
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