You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
Just the right type of dystopia to cope with right now! Not too heavy or dark. A great heroine, Letta, who works as a wordsmith, a community member in charge of which 500 words the society can use. Controlling language and expression is essential in Ark after the Melting but when the governing members want to reduce the words to 300, many get suspicious. Letta suddenly questions everything she knows and dares to dream for more.
Grades 6 and up
Grades 6 and up
I enjoyed this book but it drives me crazy when it's clearly set up for a sequel that doesn't appear. Tell us about Amelia and her sisters? Will Letta find her parents? I like sequels and series but I feel each book should be self inclusive so you aren't left feeling like you've read half a book. I had similar feeling after reading David Baldacci's The Finisher.
4.5 Wonderful mix of Orwell and Bradbury for middle grades to high school.
This one was just okay for me. I almost didn’t finish it, because the beginning was very slow and I was very frustrated with the storyline. (I also recognize that quite a bit of my frustration with this book was as a D/HH individual who uses American Sign Language on a daily basis and you will never convince me that there is a world in which humans, when their spoken language is being limited, will not use gestures to effectively communicate, but that is beside the point.)
I decided to give it a few more chapters, and it did turn a corner which made it much more interesting and engaging and I found myself very invested in what was going to happen. But while parts were gave you a lot to think about, some parts were very, very dark - almost too much so for what the story was.
But then…it was just disappointing. The ending felt forced and rushed and almost out of place and out of character.
It was fine, and I’m glad I finished it, but I won’t be recommending it too much.
I decided to give it a few more chapters, and it did turn a corner which made it much more interesting and engaging and I found myself very invested in what was going to happen. But while parts were gave you a lot to think about, some parts were very, very dark - almost too much so for what the story was.
But then…it was just disappointing. The ending felt forced and rushed and almost out of place and out of character.
It was fine, and I’m glad I finished it, but I won’t be recommending it too much.
This book just didn't quite work for me. I found it quite suspenseful, and the premise was intriguing, but unfortunately the main concept - that somehow people were losing language - was not developed enough or didn't come across clearly. Without that, the setting of a post-environmental disaster scenario with a world ruled by a fanatic was not sufficiently original to make the story out of the ordinary.
A copy was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
A copy was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This is going to be a book I think about for a long, long time.
3.5 stars
Recommend to middle grade readers looking for YA material.
Set in a post- man influenced natural disaster world (Melting), the story is told by Letta, the wordsmith apprentice. Her job is to collect and archive words from life before the disaster. She lives in a commune created by John Noa pre- Melting, called Ark. He's an extreme environmentalist who is trying for find a symbiotic relationship between humanity and the Earth.
While I was really drawn into the concept, the story fell flat. The writing was good and the plot progressed but the story was rather predictable.
Recommend to middle grade readers looking for YA material.
Set in a post- man influenced natural disaster world (Melting), the story is told by Letta, the wordsmith apprentice. Her job is to collect and archive words from life before the disaster. She lives in a commune created by John Noa pre- Melting, called Ark. He's an extreme environmentalist who is trying for find a symbiotic relationship between humanity and the Earth.
While I was really drawn into the concept, the story fell flat. The writing was good and the plot progressed but the story was rather predictable.
There are over 170,000 words in the English language. In Ark, however, people are only allowed to use 500 of them, deemed "The List" by their leader, Jon Noa. Ark was formed after global warming caused floods that ravaged the earth. Because global warming was explained away or played down by people in power, Noa decided that words were the root of all evil in mankind. Though most people are not allowed to use unlimited words, Letta is apprentice to the Wordsmith, who keeps records of all words-List and non-list-in case man becomes responsible enough to use them again. When her master goes missing and a mysterious boy shows up at her door, Letta suddenly begins to question the premise behind her beloved Ark and searches for the true value of communication and connection.
This book had a really interesting plot, but the story could have been better. It's about this community founded by a man (his last name is Noah) who predicted that climate change would lead to the end of society. He and his followers built a city that protected them from water rise that occurred when the polar ice caps melted. He believed that restricting language would ensure that humans never make the same mistakes again. The characters were well developed and parts of the story were good, but other parts felt forced. Recommended only to those in grades 5+ looking for climate-related dystopian books.