Book Review: Incarceron

TITLE: Incarceron
Book 1 in the Incarceron series
AUTHOR: Catherine Fisher
PUBLISHED: 2010
CATEGORY: young adult
GENRE: steampunk, mystery, adventure
PREMISE: In the infamous prison Incarceron, Finn is a prisoner with a mysterious past who discovers a key that lets him meet Claudia, a woman who claims to be from the Outside...
MY REVIEW: First, apologies that there's no image. For some reason blogger is being a butt and not letting me post images today. That said, I loved this book to death. First breath it all in: no werewolves, vampires, faeries, or angels to be had. All normal people...for the most part. Nor is it the usual: girl moves to new place and meets guy who is different but pulls at her soul stuff. No. This book is actually creative.
First off, the characters are definitely complicated and three-dimensional. In fact, you may not even like any of them, though I personally thought Claudia was awesome. There is also a lot of thought provoking things in this book without it being heavy handed. Plus there's a complicated plot that doesn't involve romance or a love triangle. In fact there's very little romance in it and some people may not like that but I was personally happy about this because it was nice seeing a plot that didn't revolve around a love triangle for a change. Plus as an added bonus, the writing is actually GOOD. The only thing that slightly bothered me about the book was the revelation about Incarceron that seemed...silly. I won't give it away but trust me, it's a little out there.
Word has it that this may be made into a movie. I kind of do and kind of don't want this to happen. I kind of do because I bet it'll be awesome to see on screen. Fisher's world building is superb in this and I've developed a fondness for these steampunk settins so I really look forward to it if it does get made. I kind of don't because much of the complications in this book are internal. It'll require superb actors/actresses in the teen community to pull these characters off and I don't know if Teen Hollywood has those kind of people available judging from what I've seen lately from the teen set (with the possible exception of maybe Emma Stone and Amanda Syfried...who would both have to dye their hair to play Claudia). So torn about that. But I will say I am definitely looking forward to Sapphique coming out in December.
WHO SHOULD READ: Steampunk fans, if you like books like Leviathan, those that don't mind a lack of romance or darkness in their books
MY RATING: Four and a half out of Five lace corset dresses

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