Book Review: Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

So, I haven't been reading much lately, mostly because my Nook is currently misbehaving and I need to get it repaired or replaced. In the meantime, however, my friend Steph loaned me a few books to read, which was awesome of her! One of those books was Catherine Fisher's Incarceron.

Image from Amazon.com

If you know me and my reading preferences then you know that I love dystopian literature. I guess it's kind of a weird thing to love, when you think about it. I enjoy reading books about what could happen in the future if things go horribly wrong. Ha! Anyway, Incarceron is a dystopian novel so you should know I loved it before I even read the first page.

Synopsis
Incarceron introduces us first to Finn, a boy trapped inside a living, breathing prison. The prison is like a giant society all its own, housing countless prisoners in a variety of landscapes. It has metal forests, dark tombs, and giant caverns. It's full of bullies and heroes, just like life on the outside. Except that very few in the prison even believe in the idea of Outside, because no one has ever been there.

Next we meet Claudia, a girl who lives on the Outside. She is the prison warden's daughter, and she's trapped in her own kind of prison. She lives in a futuristic version of Earth where a long-since-dead dictator decided to re-create the past in order to save the future. Everyone lives in a sort of a play, pretending that they are from an era before technology and modern conveniences. The ruling class take their liberties with this situation and they keep everyone else in line through strict punishments. Meanwhile, very few people ever even think about Incarceron or the people inside it.

In this situation, Incarceron was built as a way to rid the world of all the evil-doers at one time. The rulers who built Incarceron sent all the criminals away to live there, along with several of the best and brightest people from that generation. The idea was to create a Utopia inside the prison, a perfect society with no problems. They would always be comfortable, always have food and shelter, and never have any disease or crime. Then the rest of society would move ahead by living in the past.

As the reader soon discovers, nothing ever works out the way you plan it. When Finn and Claudia connect with one another through a secret key, they will put in motion events that can change the future for everyone.

Review
Ok, enough teasers. I'm hoping I've enticed you to read this book, all my ramblings aside. They're making it into a movie, but that won't be out for another year and a half so in the meantime you've got plenty of time to read the book. The plot sucks you in from the very beginning and doesn't let you go until the very end. Even after reading it I'm left wanting more, and patiently waiting for Steph to send me the sequel, Sapphique. In the meantime, I'll have to busy myself with the creation of some Incarceron colorways for my shop, I suppose!

So, what have you been reading lately? Any recommendations for me?