Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Prophet of Yonwood by Jeanne DuPrau


This book, is the prequel to The City of Ember series. It has been a few years since I read City of Ember and The People of Sparks, but I do remember enjoying both books. I wasn't as thrilled with Prophet of Yonwood.
The story itself is a good one. A little bit of a mystery with some believable characters. Nickie is an 11 year old girl who has set herself 3 goals: 1. Keep Greenhaven (the family home) 2. Fall in love 3. Help the World. Not bad goals for her to work towards. However, along the way to meeting these goals, Nickie runs into lots of problems.
First of all, her aunt is determined to sell Greenhaven, a house that Nickie is growing to love. Then, all the boys she is meeting are not the kind of boy she wants to fall in love with. The final goal- to Help the World seems easy at first. In Yonwood, the Prophet mumbles strange things and it is up to some select people in town to interpret her thoughts and pass the message on. Nickie finds helping the world to be easy when she follows the Prophet's message. As the story goes on though, the Prophet's messages get stranger and stranger. Suddenly for Nickie, helping the world isn't quite as easy as she once thought.
The part I did have trouble with in this book was making the connection between this story and the City of Ember, the relationship was distant at best. It isn't until the end that any connection is made between the two books. I feel that DuPrau was really reaching with this one.
I'm going to start the fourth book in the series and see where that takes me next.

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