Take a photo of a barcode or cover
theanswerisbooks 's review for:
Incarceron
by Catherine Fisher
Ever since I was forced to read Foucault's [b:Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison|80369|Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison|Michel Foucault|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170981805s/80369.jpg|1946946] (and reluctantly forced to admit I enjoyed it), I've been fascinated with the prison system: what it does to people, how it's created and what its function is, how it reinforces itself, how it's reflected in the outside world and society, and the lives of individuals . . . I could go on, but there's too much to talk about in just this tiny space. All you need to know is: endlessly interesting. You can understand, then, why I was so excited by the prospect of a book that takes place in an endless prison, a prison that seems to be alive, and which is constantly reinforcing itself. The metaphorical potential almost made my brain explode just thinking about it.
Maybe I brought too much of that expectation into my reading of Incarceron, but I strongly feel that Catherine Fisher took a great premise and mostly wasted it.
While there were some very interesting ideas brought up here and there, mostly her worldbuilding felt shallow and predictable, and the characters were uninteresting and also predictable. The actual words and phrases she uses to describe setting and action are both rushed and confused, and I found myself having to read several sections over and over before I could understand what was happening. Instead of developing a backstory and inner lives for her characters, and I'm finding this is happening a lot lately with books I read and TV shows I watch, she substitutes action and movement. The majority of this novel is spent moving characters from place to place, both literally in the context of the story, and structure-wise, for the sake of moving the plot forward. She never stops to go inside the story, just keeps moving forward. As for the prison stuff, she almost completely wastes the opportunity she created with the premise. The ideas she toys around with are at the same time too overt (her prison is literally alive), thus ruining any sense of metaphoric connection we might make, and not overt enough. There are several scenes in the book where she brings up something unexpected and really interesting, and then completely ignores it for the rest of the novel. So frustrating.
This isn't a bad book, but it's not a good one, either. It's a quick, entertaining read, but it's not the kind of book you cherish or re-read, and that's a shame, because it could have been awesome.
Maybe I brought too much of that expectation into my reading of Incarceron, but I strongly feel that Catherine Fisher took a great premise and mostly wasted it.
While there were some very interesting ideas brought up here and there, mostly her worldbuilding felt shallow and predictable, and the characters were uninteresting and also predictable. The actual words and phrases she uses to describe setting and action are both rushed and confused, and I found myself having to read several sections over and over before I could understand what was happening. Instead of developing a backstory and inner lives for her characters, and I'm finding this is happening a lot lately with books I read and TV shows I watch, she substitutes action and movement. The majority of this novel is spent moving characters from place to place, both literally in the context of the story, and structure-wise, for the sake of moving the plot forward. She never stops to go inside the story, just keeps moving forward. As for the prison stuff, she almost completely wastes the opportunity she created with the premise. The ideas she toys around with are at the same time too overt (her prison is literally alive), thus ruining any sense of metaphoric connection we might make, and not overt enough. There are several scenes in the book where she brings up something unexpected and really interesting, and then completely ignores it for the rest of the novel. So frustrating.
This isn't a bad book, but it's not a good one, either. It's a quick, entertaining read, but it's not the kind of book you cherish or re-read, and that's a shame, because it could have been awesome.