Incarceron
Incarceronby Catherine FisherIt took me a while to read this book. Well, for me "a while" is more than a day. I started this book right after I completed Knife by R.J. Anderson on the last day of 2009, and yet it took me 5 days to complete it. I had to put it aside for a while as I found it difficult to get into.I'm sad to say I found the start of the book very slow and uninteresting. I am not generally a fan of books that are told from two points of view - in this case Finn a young boy on the Inside and Claudia a young girl on the Outside of Incarceron. I think the main problem for me is that this book has much more of a Science-Fiction feel than fantasy and I am not a big Sci-Fi person. I tend to prefer sorcery and mythical beasts to technology and dystopia.Actually, it also felt rather Victorian to me, though I know that is probably odd. Also not a fan of Victorian literature. Science-Fiction, Victorian literature? There's a combination!Around half-way through the book I got hooked. As the action and suspense built up I became much more interested in the lives of Finn and Claudia. By the end of the story I had already made up my mind that I would be placing my order for Sapphique, the sequel, over at The Book Depository soon.As for the characters? I did like Claudia, even though I can not stand that name (no offence to people named Claudia!). She has a good head on her shoulders and was just stubborn enough that I enjoyed her rather than was annoyed by her. The cast of characters living in the prison? Well, I suppose I like Attia the most, a girl who joins the journey later on in the story. Finn bothered me. I'm not sure if it was that he seemed whiny or weak, I just didn't like him all that much. Claudia was certainly the stronger of the two main characters.Nothing in the story surprised me, not that I knew right from the first pages how it was going to end. I just didn't find there were any big reveals in the story that I wasn't expecting.This review sounds much more negative than I actually felt about the book. I mean, I DO want to get the sequel, so I obviously did not hate the book. It just didn't WOW me like the other books I have read so far this year have. Honestly, I think that was mainly due to the Sci-Fi feel to the book.And yes, this is the UK edition of the book. I bought it a while back when I pre-ordered a bunch of other books. I like the look of the UK editions. I need to move to the UK I think.Incarceron series