Review: Incarceron

Title: Incarceron
Author: Catherine Fisher
Published: 2007 by The Penguin Group
Obtained: Bought

Finn cannot remember his childhood. He cannot remember his life before Incarceron – a prison that has been sealed for centuries, where inmates live in cells, dilapidated cities, and unbounded wilderness. No one has ever escaped. But then he finds a crystal key and a girl named Claudia.

Claudia’s father is the Warden of Incarceron. And Claudia is about to become a kind of prisoner herself, doomed to an arranged marriage. If she helps Finn in his escape, she will need his help in return.

But they don’t realize that there is more to Incarceron than meets the eye. Escape will take their greatest courage and cost far more than they know . . . because Incarceron is alive.

First Sentence:
”Finn had been flung on his face and chained to the stone slabs of the transitway.”

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With Incarceron, Catherine Fisher wrote something creative. It truly is a very creative book, and she kept adding new things that I completely didn’t expect. The characters were unique and fascinating. The actual plot/conflict/whatever wasn’t really that fascinating…BUT, it’s incredibly long for what it is.

It’s not that the book is that long, it’s 442 pages, but the story drags due to the length. I think she would have been better off making it shorter. But when I ask myself what could she have left out? It’s hard to answer because while I felt like the book would never end, every scene was pretty vital to the storyline.

Also while her characters are unique, they are also rather annoying. The only character who didn’t bug me was Jared, because he was just really . . . cool. Everyone else did stuff that really bothered me. Claudia was relatively nice, but she was a bit bossy and impatient. Finn didn’t bother me too much except that he let people push him around. He rarely stood up for himself and when he did, he didn’t seem to care that much.

So I don’t know. I’ll probably read the sequel (Sapphique) just because of the plotline (which, as I said, was CRAZY! She kept throwing more information at you and switching the truth. So confusing, and yet pretty awesome). I have mixed feelings about it. Let’s just say it wasn’t as amazing as I heard it was.

Rating:  Just alright. Nothing super amazing.

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Content Warnings: Pretty much nothing that I can think of.