Book 2in DuPrau’s City of Ember YA series. After escaping from the dying underground city, the people of Ember find a beautiful but mostly empty land and need to learn how to survive, Stumbling onto village of Sparks which barely supports itself, how with they get along together, not overwhelm each other and build a future together? A well written fable type story.

I highly recommend this series.

The people of sparks is about Lina and Doon and how the emberiets are learning from the people of sparks. At the beginning of the book, the emberiets have to evacuate and for help so they go to the people of sparks. The people of sparks start to help them learn how to farm, cook, build, and more that later the emberiets can rebuild their city.

This book was a disappointment. It continues the adventures of Doon and Lina as they have left the city of Ember, come out from underground, and find the Town of Sparks. It has been realized by Emberites that humans were not completely destroyed after the great wars and disasters, and the people of Sparks have rebuilt some semblance of a life, though they do not have electricity as they did in Ember. At first the people of Sparks are kind to the Emberites, and provide them with food and shelter, but it doesn't last, as one of the Emberites, Tick, wishes for war. He instigates the people of Ember, poisoning them with poison oak and writing bad things about them in the public square. Doon is blamed for wasting tomatoes, and Torren blames him. Torren' brother, Caspar, is a roamer, and Lina for a while runs away with him. At times there are too many things going on, but the story as a whole is rather boring. Yes, the point is a good one - that people should not judge others and should try to be understanding instead; otherwise war is inevitable. When Doon saves Torren from a fire and Lina helps the people of Sparks to fight it, they decide not to ask the Emberites to leave and they decide to work together. The book was just too slow, and I really disliked that we heard almost nothing from Doon's father, and the relationship between Doon and Lina was not really established. Too much time was spent on Tick, and the doctor's character wasn;t really developed. It is also unclear how she is Torren's aunt, and Ben,one of the city councilmen, is also his uncle...At the end of the story, Doon makes electricity, and with the help of Torren and Kenny, makes light with a light bulb. Now, on to the prophet of Yarnwood...not really looking foreward to it.

In this sequel to "The City of Ember", 400-odd Emberites leave their dying city for the outside world. There, they find a village named Sparks, and ask for help. Of course, it's not that easy. The population of Sparks is only about 300, and is inclined to be suspicious of these strange, pallid, undersized people who seem to know nothing of the basics of life. Then, too, there's a limit to how much spare food they have... On the other side, the Emberites have difficulty coping with weather and have no experience of the hard manual labour involved in running a village without electricity. But eventually - mostly thanks to Our Hero and Heroine - the difficulties are solved.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I did "The City of Ember". The plot-line was simply less interesting to me, and the author rams home her messages of peace, tolerance and understanding with a very heavy hand.

we don't have the city of ember either??? this is the sequel!! i read it!! but for some reason i don't have the first book, and i feel like that one would be the only one worth keeping. this was another series that was huge in third grade (and another cover that was more adult/dark/mysterious to my nine year old self), but i was never as obsessed with it as other kids i knew.

3 1/2

Pidin tästä toisesta osasta enemmän kuin ensimmäisestä, etenkin koska eka oli jo tuttu elokuvaversiostaan. Tässä on jonkin verran ennalta-arvattavuutta, mutta yllätyksiäkin mahtuu mukaan.

Lina ja Doon löysivät tien maanalaisesta Ember-kaupungistaan ja johdattivat myös muut asukkaat turvaan tuhoutuvasta kodistaan. Maan päälläkään kaikki ei suju niin kuin Strömsössä.

Emberiläiset löytävät Sparksin kaupungin, jossa asuu reilut 300 asukasta, sata vähemmän kuin emberiittejä. Sparksin asukkaat auttavat luola-asukeiksi kutsumiaan emberiläisiä hieman vastahakoisesti, sillä onhan se ihan ymmärrettävää, ettei uusiin tulokkaisiin luoteta heti. Tämä aiheuttaa tietenkin kitkaa ihmisten välillä.

Teoksen parasta antia on Linan retki tyhjille maille, sillä hän haluaa löyttää unissaan näkemänsä sädehtivän kaupungin. Hänen kauttaan päästään näkemään lisää tuhon jälkeistä miljöötä laajemminkin.

Erittäin suositeltava sarja YA-dystopioiden ystäville. Ja kerrankin genressään sarja, joka ei ole trilogia, vaan neljäosainen!

This is the second book in the series. It's good, not great - a bit too preachy in places and the conflicts were overly inflated and deflated a bit to perfunctorily at the end.

Also, I was surprised that the many skills that the people of Ember had were not put to use in helping to design more advanced technology. If they were able to fix it, they would have at least some idea how to create it (pumps, electricity, food production, etc.)

In addition, I felt that many of the characters were not that well developed and their actions served merely as stereotypical plot devices.

Lina and Doon were joined by the rest of the City of Ember people and they traveled for a long time in a world they did not understand. Thankfully, they stumbled upon a city full of people - just in the nick of time. Many people were sick, some were fainting from dehydration and lack of food, since they went through most of their rations days ago.

The people of Sparks were very shocked when 400+ people arrived at their town. They have never heard of Ember and realized that these people are not knowledgeable in anything important. They even have little knowledge about certain things that should be common sense.

Now Ember and Sparks are living together - at least for a little bit - until Ember can figure out how to survive on their own.

But there is tension rising between the two groups. And resentment. Both cities are not liking the situation they are in, and fights are breaking out over little things that seem to be the most important problems they've ever been through.

Lina went on her own mission to figure out what happened to this world. Doon is at Sparks, trying to figure out what is happening and which side is the right side to be on.

Because one thing is clear: the people in this world do not need to go through another War after what happened hundreds of years ago.

I was so glad to dive into this book because I had to figure out what happened after the ending of City of Embers. There were so many questions I had, and I'm happy to say that The People of Sparks answered almost all of them!

I did shake my head a lot during this book, because the Ember members were so...selfish... They thought that they expected more than they were getting, but the Sparks members were already giving up a lot to help these 400+ people. Granted, they were being petty about their rations and helping the Ember members, but they were still being kind and generous. I mean, they could have kicked them out of their town when they first met them, and Ember members wouldn't have been able to do anything to stop them!

So, yeah, I was a little disappointed in the Ember members. Granted, it was mainly Tick that was destroying their kindness and leading them to anger and punishment. I really hate that kid and didn't care for anything he had to say.

One thing that I have noticed between the two books is that Lina is the braver of the two. She is the smarter of the two. She is the most selfless of the two. Most might think that Doon is because he is always looking for things, but Lina is the one who decided to find the city and made a decision on her own. She is the one who was the first to help the people of Sparks when they needed help. Doon thought about helping, but didn't start helping until after Lina was already in the process of helping.

And that is what happened in Ember. Lina is the one who found the message and wanted to decode it. She is the one who was running around Ember trying to figure out a solution. And she is the one who made the first step to leave Ember.

So I definitely like Lina better. She didn't let the people of Ember or Sparks change her, unlike Doon who was swayed by Tick's group and wanted to fit it. The fact that Doon got mad because Lina left without asking him to go with, and didn't think that his attitude toward her had any reasoning is stupid and juvenile and made him seem much younger than Lina, even though they are the same age.

I found out that #3 in the series is a prequel, and after reading the description, made the decision not to read it. It won't do anything for me, so I'm just going to jump to #4 since it's about Lina and Doon again :)

I wasn't expecting to read this, and I'm not sure how well it moves the story. But it does offer a nice explanation of hatred and bigotry.

I am really enjoying this series. It continues to amaze me how simple the writing is and yet how complex the story is. This book is the sequel to the city of Ember where in a bunch of folk were raised in an underground city after a disaster… probably nuclear… of which the irony is not lost on me! Century later the folks of Ember are now out and about and they have stumbled on another village as refugees. They outnumber the original population and as humans are apt to do divisiveness begins to raise it ugly head amongst the people. I really love the idea of young adults reading these books and being introduced at a very early age to how quickly things can go south when people start othering others. Everything about the story feels so true to human nature and I and I imagine young people discovering it and seeing just how idiotic greed and hierarchy are. Apparently there's two more books left but I'm hoping the series ends up being all about promoting nonviolence and Socialism! I am definitely going to be getting this series for a few of my favorite 10 year olds!

Review to come. But very boring and dull. And what is it with DuPrau and her female heroes and male villains? It's one thing to have more male villains, it's another thing to have all but one of your important male characters to be jerks/evil/insane.

Good important female characters:
Lina
Mrs. Murdo
Dr. Hester
Mary Waters
Clary Laine
Maddy
Poppy (she's a kid, but still)

Bad female characters:

*yawns*

Good make characters:
Doon
Maybe Kenny? He was a bit too background I guess.

Bad/all things undesirable important male characters:
Torren
Ben
Caspar
Tick
Wilmer

Basically this book's male-female hero ratio was highly out of line. If all the men were good and the women evil, you know that people would be on the author about it.

Anyway, this book was boring as well as annoying, and I wanted to punch everyone (except Doon) many times.