Out of the series, I didn’t feel like this one really fit or was necessary. It was a little fluffy. There was a few interesting and mysterious moments all the way at the end but most of the story was about a little girl (no characters from any of the other books were included) keeping a puppy secret. I would have loved to know more about the prophet and have more connections made to the other 3 books. It seemed like it was meant to be a prequel to the first book. I thought it would explain things about how the world basically ended and we found ourselves in post apocalyptic circumstances. There wasn’t much...

When I finished this book, I was left feeling a bemused combination of "huh?" and "so what?" - feelings which had been growing on me since the beginning of the book.

In the first two books of the Ember series, there are deep and thoughtful morals that can be drawn, but this book's message was glaringly overstated. The heavy-handed moralizing in "Yonwood" made for a plodding pace and an anticlimactic conclusion. Worst of all, while there were several interesting "clues" throughout the book (her great-grandfather's notebook and the mysterious vision he had and his references to "M", the "sky splitting open", Nickie's father's mysterious post scripts, etc.), there was absolutely none of the engaging, endearing detective work and puzzling that I loved so much in the rest of the series. These clues either never lead to anything (the notebook), lead to nowhere (the sky splitting open), or were solved without the reader's having the privilege of following the characters as they worked out the clues (the post scripts).

Finally, I never really cared for Nickie because she didn't seem real to me. Grover was a little more interesting, but I was disposed to dislike him because when we first meet him he is something of a braggart. The wrap-up at the end felt rushed, and was a pretty lame tie-in to the rest of the series. All in all, this book was a huge disappointment.

به نکته ی جالبی اشاره کرده بود: همه طرفین جنگ و درگیری ، فکر می کنن خدا با اونهاست

I remember enjoying the first two books when I was younger and hitting a wall with this one. I now fully understand why I hit that wall.

This book was boring. I was looking forward to seeing how the city was built, but none of that was in there until the end. So, it really didn't feel like a prequel at all. It felt like a completely different series more than anything.

The plot wasn't awful and I didn't hate the main character, Nikki, but there was nothing spectacular about this book for me. I think it's one that would be better if it wasn't in the series as much as I hate to say that.

This book is a "prequel" to the City of Ember. I did not like it. This book is not essential to reading book four, which is again about Lina and Doon, so I would recommend just skipping book three. There is only one reference to book three on the last couple of pages of book four, and you don't really loose anything by not reading book three.

In a prequel to The City of Ember, I would be interested to learn more about the City of Ember and the Builders. I would like to know more about why the decision was made to create the city and conflicts surrounding that choice. In this book, no mention is made regarding the City of Ember until the last two pages. So, this book was a disappointment to my wishes.

Another reason I disliked this book, is the tone with which it addressed God and revelation. Religious fervor leads people to do many things, and this can be an interesting study in human behavior, but this book eventually seemed to treat the idea of God and modern day revelation as something only crazy people get caught up in. Not appealing to me. It was not an obvious theme, but considering I was already bored with the storyline, its dealings with prophecy bothered me greatly.

Very sweet (and honestly a little frightening thematically) but I wish the little blurb on the last page that actually related to the main series was the whole book instead. Love bug vibes and fighting against your cult-y town bUT HOW TF WAS EMBER BUILT AND ESTABLISHED THATS THE REAL QUESTION INNIT!

This story was a quick fun read. Possible spoiler, it also shows what can happen when you stop thinking for yourself.

The following review has SPOILERS. Lots of 'em. I can't talk about it without them, so consider yourself warned.

I read this because it was part of the series, but finished it not understanding why it needed to be written at all. I'd say there's no point to it, but that's not entirely true. There was a Point. A really big Point it was trying very hard to get across. Whether or not that Point needed to be made or if the book was successful in communicating it... well, let's talk about that.

While looking at reviews before beginning the book, one of the biggest complaints I saw is that it's preachy and leans towards being anti-religious. Having read it myself, I can say it is indeed preachy and I understand why some readers feel that it's anti-religious. The plot revolves around a woman (the titular Prophet of Yonwood) having a vision of the world being destroyed in fiery explosions. She passes out, and then her half-conscious mumblings are interpreted by the people of Yonwood as messages from God about the things they should or shouldn't be doing to protect the town from impending doom and create a "shield of goodness".

Mrs. Beeson, (who had nothing more to her personality than a desire to dictate everyone's morals), is the one who does the majority of the interpreting...or rather, GUESSING at the meaning of the mumbled words of the prophet, which she claims range from instructions like "no sinning" to "no singing," and also, "no lights," and "no dogs." (Note that the first two came from a single mumble that sounded like "no sinnies" but they went with both interpretations just to be safe.) When not using the Prophet's mumbles to determine wrongdoing Beeson sometimes decides someone is doing wrong because she thinks they have a "feeling of wrongness" about them whether any of the many religious texts she reads specifically says that thing is wrong or not. She and the police punish those people of the town who are stubborn about giving up the forbidden things by strapping unbreakable bracelets on them that hum constantly, driving them insane, until they give in and do as they're told. And she never allows herself to truly question what she's doing because, to her, faith means unthinking, blind obedience to anything she chooses to believe is from God.

It is stated explicitly that the conflict going on in the world of the book is caused by different groups fighting over their various "truths" (implied to be their beliefs about God) to the point of threatening the existence of the human race. While no individual religion is named outright, the people in Yonwood are heavily implied to be Christian since they have their standard Christian church-type set up in a small town in one of the Bible belt states (North Carolina). And, when our main character Nicki visits Mrs. Beeson's house, the one book she specifically notes that Beeson owns is one with a black cover and gold lettering. (Interesting that this is the ONLY book Nicki specifically notices since Beeson is stated repeatedly to pour over multiple texts from multiple religions.) In addition, every time the President (a stereotypical white-haired older man) comes on the news for a report about the "Crisis" he tells people to pray for God's favor in the situation, though Nicki notes that he doesn't sound as if his heart is in these statements.

Meanwhile, "terrorists" are running rampant in America to the point the people of Yonwood are determined one is living in the woods, even though no one's ever seen anything of this person aside from a random glimpse of white. There's also one mention of a news report saying terrorists somewhere have taken a group of people hostage and won't let them go until they convert. (The religion they're supposed to convert to isn't stated.)

Despite all of this, I can't say that the book is specifically anti-religious because it never actually states or implies that God doesn't exist or that people shouldn't believe in anything. In fact, Nicki eventually rejects Beeson's version of God because Nicki can't believe that God would be so petty as to make people give up beloved pets because they supposedly "suck up love" that should all be focused on God instead. A specific quote from the book features Nicki leaving some precious belongings in the wood and saying to herself, "It’s for my God, the god of dogs, and snakes and dust mites and albino bears and Siamese twins, the god of stars and starships and other dimensions, the god who loves everyone and makes everything marvelous."

It also turns out that the Prophet wasn't mumbling instructions from God, she was just repeatedly seeing her vision of the earth being destroyed and mourning all the things that were destroyed with it, thus the mumbling about "no dogs," "no singing" etc, etc.

So, what is it this book was trying to say? While it never outright states that "God is dead" it DOES heavily imply that it doesn't really matter which version of God is the real one. It also implies that all religions are somehow believing in the same God. And it all but outright states that if we could all stop fighting and focus on more important things, like exploring this beautiful, wonderful world we live in, there would be peace. (This actually happens for a few decades in the world of the book. People stop fighting because of some big scientific breakthrough and excitement over exploration, only to eventually start fighting again.)

Even if I agreed with everything being stated or implied in this book (I don't), the messaging of this story was handled in a very heavy-handed manner that only frustrated me more and more the further I read. I also kept wondering why the author or publisher thought this was an appropriate prequel for an otherwise enjoyable and unpreachy series?

Even ignoring the preaching, it's not an enjoyable or well-written story. All the characters are flat, with Mrs. Beeson being the worst of them all as there is literally nothing more to her than her obsession with enforcing her *cough* I mean "God's" will on the people of Yonwood.

Nicki herself was flat, uninteresting, and unlikable to me, which was a problem given that she was the main character. She had three goals in life: 1) keep her grandfather's old house that her family wants to sell. (Okay, that's a realistic enough goal for an 11 year old). 2) Change the world (Yeah, okay, she lives in a tumultuous world. Wanting to make it better is reasonable) 3) Fall in love. Uh... interesting goal for an 11 year old. And there's never a reason given for her deciding she wants to fall passionately in love besides... she just does. And she literally analyzes *every* boy she meets to decide if they'd be worth falling in love with. She also looks through adult romance novels she finds in the mansion as if they're instructional booklets on love.

My eye was twitching over all that, but I maybe could have let that go if she hadn't also been so easily manipulated. She goes through 3/4 of the book believing literally anything she's told by basic strangers, to the point of becoming Mrs. Beeson's "special helper." She does this simply because Mrs. Beeson asks her things like, "Do you love God? If you do, you should help me report wrongdoing in the town so we can create a shield of goodness that will protect us from war and bombs! How do you know what wrongdoing is? Well, it's something that just FEELS wrong!" And Nicki goes, "Well, I never really thought about it before, but that sounds like a positive thing, so yeah! I'll totally do that." Yet, we're given no reason for her being so easily manipulated by talk of God and morals given the fact that it's STATED that her parents don't take her to church and there's no indication that her family has a background of faith for her to care about loving God or not. The people of Yonwood are no better since they also buy anything Mrs. Beeson tells them with little more thought than Nicki, even when Mrs. Beeson says completely ridiculous things like insisting that a splotch of blood on a cloth is a message from God because she thinks it looks like a letter. *eye roll*

Truly, I reached a point where I skimmed most of Nicki's chapters because I was so annoyed with her thoughtlessness. When I wasn't annoyed, I plain didn't care about her playing with the dog and other such mundane things. The only times I didn't skim was when she was discovering things about the history of the house and her grandfather, or solving the codes in her father's letters to her and her mother, all of which were far less important to the plot than the idiocy going on in Yonwood. To Nicki's credit, she did finally reject the manipulations, but only after her behavior negatively affected the people she cared about. And her dog. Really, she cared more about the dog being taken away more than anything else.

Nicki's aunt was also completely flat. There is nothing more to her character than the fact that she's been married twice, is looking for husband number three, and is shockingly unconcerned about what her niece does during the many hours Nicki spends ALONE in a dusty old mansion. She's also completely oblivious to the fact that Nicki has been running around town alone and acting as spy for Mrs. Beeson until such time as Nicki tells her these things.

The only character I didn't get annoyed with was Grover, a funny, industrious, and determined kid whose chapters I actually enjoyed reading. But even his qualities and motivation in life all revolved around his fascination with snakes.

I don't give out many one-star ratings and I don't enjoy doing it. In fact, this is only the second I've ever given since I normally DNF the books that qualify for one star and I don't rate things that I didn't finish. But I truly didn't enjoy reading this book. I have nothing against prequels, I really don't, but WHY make the focus of the prequel for "The City of Ember" a heavy-handed preach-fest?

We could have focused on Nicki's father building Ember and sending his family letters with codes to tell them where he was, but that got pushed to the side as barely important. (In fact, the codes he sent didn't even matter in the end because his family was ultimately told he was in California before Nicki even told her mom that she'd figured the codes out.) We could have focused on Nicki's Grandfather's belief in other universes and crossovers between time and space, or Hoyt Mcoy's scientific discovery that was so amazing it ended the Crisis and pushed the nuclear destruction of the world back by decades. (It seems it has something to do with seeing a space ship?)

Nope! Those things were not nearly as important as turning religious people into caricatures and beating a Message into the reader's heads. Even the addendum at the end of the story showing that Nicki was the daughter of one of the Builders of Ember, grew up to be one of the first inhabitants of the underground city, and wrote the journal that Lina and Dune discover many years later when they lead the people of Ember back to earth's surface, was NOT enough to make wading through the preach-fest worth the headache, nor is it enough for me to raise my rating to two stars. So, one star it shall remain. I believe I will be giving my copy of this book away as I will never read it again.

Decent, but, it feels like a huge departure from the rest of the series. It felt a bit jarring to read this right after People of Sparks. Maybe it would have been better reading it at the end of the series instead.

This is a prequel, but, not necessary to understand Ember and People of Sparks. I think this would have been better enjoyed after the series instead of in the middle of it.

I read this because I'd read the first two books in the City of Ember series and enjoyed them; this is the 3rd book and a prequel to the events in Ember, so I expected a good story about why the city of Ember was built and how it all began. Instead, this book introduced eleven-year-old Nicki, who moves to her great-grandfather's old mansion in the city of Yonwood and discovers there is a woman regarded as a prophet living there, whose words are interpreted by another woman and the city follows her instructions accordingly, trying to be so "good" that "evil" wont come to their town.

The writing in the book is about the same as it was in the previous books - that is to say, it is light, easy, and has a good tone. I liked Nicki as the main character and I sympathized with her wanting to be good and do good. I even thought the plot was decent: the country may be on the brink of war, and everyone hopes that by following the prophet, they will be saved from destruction. However, this book felt barely connected to the earlier two book in the Ember series. It's not until the last two pages of this book that we find out how Nicki and her story tie in to Lina and her story in Ember. In that regard, it's not much of an installment in the series.

Rounding out my complaints about this book is the fact the some of the most interesting aspects of the story are not fully developed. For example, while exploring the mansion, Nicki finds old photographs and letters and even her great-grandfather's old notebook that he recorded strange observations in. These were interesting to read about, but we never get to find out their purpose or what, exactly, her great-grandfather was recording or who the person he mentions in his writings is. I wondered, what was the point of even mentioning these things if they go nowhere? Just to pad the book and add another layer of "charm" about the mansion and area? Futhermore, while I thought the story itself was decent, it was almost too much of a parable about religion and politics at times, and I hate reading fiction that the author uses as a venue to project his/her political views, no matter what the view are (unless, of course, these views are seamlessly intertwined with the narration and serve only to strengthen it - which is not the case here). The author's views are certainly present in The People of Sparks, but I overlooked it there in favor of the good story it encompassed. In The Prophet of Yonwood, it is almost too much, and I was not able to get lost in the story enough to ignore it. So, that was pretty irritating too. One more complaint: Nicki goes to Yonwood with one of her goals being to fall in love. What?!? She's 11! I kinda rolled my eyes every time this was mentioned.

Overall, this was a decent installment in the "series" (and I use that word lightly because, as I mentioned earlier, it barely ties in to the other books...) but nowhere near as enthralling as Ember or even Sparks. If you're a fan of the series and want to keep reading, go into this book not expecting its plot to really coincide with the others. This would have been so much better if it'd focused on the events right before people went to Ember (this book takes place 50 years earlier!) or even focused on the first people who went into Ember and how they coped. This book ends (in the epilogue) where it should have begun...

I was not a huge fan of this one. It felt very preachy.

The story was good and well written. However, I was left to wonder how this story fits in with the City of Ember? 289 pages and only the last few had any relevance to the first or second book. I was disappointed and felt tricked into buying book three. Why the prequel before the conclusion of the story, after all this is a four book series

I don't like or read prequels that often. I guess, I always felt if you had something to talk about before the first story, then why didn't you start there? I was hoping to learn more about Lina and Doon in the prequel, maybe who some of their ancestors were. Guess we will never solve that mystery. I wanted the story to explain how the world ended, and what steps were taken to protect the human race. How the City of Ember was built and learn more about that instead of this side story that I read. I give the book 3 of 3 stars because it was well written.