**Audiobook ** 0 stars. So bad, ugh! Nothing ties into the first two or last book; except for the last like 5 min of the audiobook. There was poking fun of Christians and making them look ridiculous, and lots of political underlings which became annoying.There are so many “but why?” moments and nothing progressing in the story! Skip it, just skip; even if your OCD says you need to read all 4 books. I read some of the other 1 star reviews on Goodreads; I agree with them all!

3.5 stars.

I went into this seeing people's negative reviews and expecting to not like it, but I was pleasantly surprised. I think maybe it was because I went into it knowing that even for a prequel it has only a fairly loose connection to the first two books. I don't think it was as good as the first two, but it was better than I was expecting. I think there are some smaller similarities and connections other reviewers didn't catch or think too much about that made it interesting for me.

I have to agree that this installment of the series was quite preachy and moralizing. There was a lot of discussion about what is right and what is wrong, but with the knowledge of the disaster lurking in the background, it makes sense. The disaster could have been avoided and was caused by humans fighting amongst themselves, each group thinking that they are right and everyone else is wrong. They don't see the humanity of the other group and that it is wrong to attack and kill them.

While the first two had a more hopeful tone, this one felt a bit more melancholy for me, I guess because I knew what would eventually happen. That even if the crisis was averted then, it would eventually happen, because otherwise there would not be a story. It wasn't totally doom and gloom, but there was a little more of that. It actually made me think about our own world and all the stuff that has happened. I realized I haven't really thought about it in a while, but we have had a lot of major things happen in the past few years, and it has felt kind of like the world could end at any time. During this global pandemic, though, I guess I've kind of felt desensitized to it. Maybe in the beginning I thought about major disasters and the end of the world, but now being more than a year in, I don't really think about it anymore.

Spoilers!

I do wish the story had gone into more detail on moral codes and how even though people might try to lead "good" lives, there are different ideas of what a good life is, and thus there will be conflict because not everyone has the same moral code. This does kind of go back to the idea of thinking for one's self instead of blindly following what others say, which is something the book implies but doesn't explicitly mention. That's really what the issue was, people not thinking critically and just believing whatever they were told by another person. I do think though that in the face of this major war that was supposed to happen there could have been more of a discussion on what a "good" life is and how that might look different for people. Crystal mentions this to Nickie, but it is oversimplified and dropped too soon.

I saw some similarities in Nickie and Lina and Grover and Doon. Nickie and Lina are explorers, they like going to new places. Grover and Doon both like nature; for Grover, it's snakes, and for Doon it's bugs. I do have one comment about the snakes, which is that while I don't agree with Mrs. Beeson and her methods, I think it was kind of wrong for Grover to have the snakes. He took them from their natural habitat when they were presumably not sick or injured so he could take care of them. Wouldn't they have been happier in the wild than in glass tanks? Also, it mentions that while he released them if they were sick or not doing well, two died in his care, and they might not have had he left them in the wild. It's kind of the opposite of the situation with the dogs. They were being sent out on their own into the wild, but they are domestic animals and do not know how to survive on their own in the wild. Yes some of them could learn and become strays, but it would not be a good existence for them. I wish the snake part had been brought up in contrast to this but it wasn't.

I would have liked to see more interactions happen between Amanda and Nickie during the story. Amanda was there at the beginning but then faded out and only came in at the end when it was necessary for the plot. I was expecting them to interact more and I think it would have been interesting to see a more gradual "brainwashing" where she changes her thought process from being around these people. Also, I was very confused at her age, which seems to be a thing that has been happening to me lately. I was shocked to find out she was 17, because I pictured her closer to Nickie's age, probably no more than 14. She just read really young to me, but maybe it was intentional based on the younger audience for this book.

On the topic of characters, there were other characters I wished were fleshed out a little more, particularly Hoyt. I wanted to know a bit more about why he is so bitter, but we don't get anything. I mean I guess living in the town with Mrs. Beeson would be reason enough, but I was hoping there was a bit more to it than that, like maybe there was something in his past that made him dislike people.

The little snapshots at the end were interesting, and reminded me of what you sometimes see at the end of competition shows where they give an update on what the people have done since the show was filmed. I liked learning what happened to the characters later in their lives, I am kind of glad that Nickie didn't end up falling in love with Grover because I've noticed this series avoids romance between the main characters and just has them as friends, which I appreciate. It shows that boys and girls can be just friends and not have any romantic interest in each other. In other series they would have been forced into some kind of relationship.

It did seem a bit odd that the story didn't end with Nickie as a child, but rather as an adult making the journey down to Ember, leaving the world behind. It seemed like this part was maybe aimed more at adults but had to be written at a level kids would understand and find interesting. I wanted to dig a bit deeper into her choice to go to Ember. It's difficult to imagine what it would be like, knowing that you are leaving everything you've ever known, going to die in darkness without ever seeing the sun again in the hopes of keeping humanity alive. I wanted to go more into the emotions of this. It mentions that Nickie had married and had children, but her husband was dead and her children grown up. Even so, the choice would not be easy. I wonder if she told her kids or if she just went and disappeared forever. I wonder what it was like for her to leave them behind and know that she would probably never see them again and that she was leaving them alone in this dying world, which is something no parent would want for their children. The book doesn't really hit on this. Instead it focuses on how doing it will finally achieve Nickie's goal of doing something good to change the world, which I guess shows kids that they can make a difference in the end, but it felt like a missed opportunity It also felt like it was just done to tie this in with the first two books, as Nickie wrote the journal Lina and Doon find on their way out of Ember. It almost seemed like the author worked backwards, imagining who the person who wrote the journal had been and what she had faced in the world before the disaster. I think the story might have been okay without the connection thrown in at the end of her being the author of the journal. It felt a little forced, to suddenly tie it in with the main series in the last few pages, especially since this story takes place about 50 years before the disaster. Readers might be able to figure out that the war is averted since the blurb even mentions Nickie will grow up to be one of the first citizens of Ember, but we know from the journal that these were either elderly people or babies, and she is neither during the main events of the story.

Highly recommend reading this last. The other three in the series follow the same story. This is meant box be a prequel. It wasn't my favorite of the series, but it told an interesting story.

{February 10th, 2015} MINI-REVIEW

2.5 stars (which is rather generous of me).

***MAYBE SPOILERS ALTHOUGH VAGUE SUMMARY SPOILERS***

n  “The idea seemed to be that if you prayed extremely hard--especially if a lot of people prayed at once--maybe God would change things. The trouble was, what if your enemy was praying, too? Which prayer would God listen to?”n


This book.... *sighs* ...was the boring way for the beginning of the end of the world to happen. There's 'terrorists' hiding in the woods, the prophet is very ill but has seen untold horrors, things must be done to stay the sinners' advancement to help the world end--something must be done.

Unfortunately our main protagonist, Nickie, is really too young so she's left out of this loop unable to do much of anything. After the first two chapters, the majority of the book felt bland. Boring so to speak. I didn't particular care for most of the characters and it felt like nothing really *did* happen until the much later chapters. You can look at my status updates and decide for yourself.

All in all it's the ending that saves me the most. And this starts when the dogs are ordered to be taken away and Nickie takes action and awakens the prophet and blah blah blah the rest is history, no really it is lol.

Going to see if I can get my hands on the final book, I'm assuming, at some point.

Not sure when, but hopefully it redeems this series for me.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about The Prophet of Yonwood.

Described as the prequel to The City of Ember, The Prophet of Yonwood really only peripherally relates to Ember, and the reader isn’t privy to that relation until the very last page of the story. I especially liked Nickie's growth throughout the novel, but the story meanders, and does it slooooowly.

Yonwood is another allegorical tale, but the message here is much more heavy-handed than in Ember or Sparks. A woman has a vision of future destruction that leaves her bedridden. One of her neighbors believes that the vision is a prophecy, and the residents of Yonwood must follow the messages hidden in the prophecy (that only the neighbor can decipher) to prevent worldwide destruction. Multiple events in town seem to reinforce the neighbor’s interpretations, and many residents are more than willing to follow blindly.

Eleven-year-old Nickie visits Yonwood with her aunt, who is in town to settle her father’s estate. While visiting, she meets many of the town’s more colorful residents, reads cryptic entries from her grandfather's notebook, receives postcards containing coded clues from her father, and learns that being good isn’t quite so cut and dried. Yeah, lots and lots of things happen, characters are introduced, but we’re never quite sure why because their stories are neither wrapped up nor tied into Ember or Sparks.

I think "prequel" is a bit misleading - "companion piece" might be a better descriptor of Yonwood.

I would love to read more about the creation of Ember - specifically, what events took place that precipitated the construction of Ember, what the journey underground was really like, and how the first inhabitants dealt with the change. That is what I expected from a "prequel."

I feel dangerously close to being cheated. This book was not what I was anticipating. The whole book read as a warning of what was to come, since this was a prequel and we know what the world is like in The City of Ember and The People of Sparks. But it was a whole lot of...nothing. Absolutely nothing. The book creates such tension and nervous excitement and that is what keeps you glued to it, just waiting for everything to blow to hell, literally, but nothing happens. In a super anti-climatic way, things get normal and life goes on until the last two pages when the connection to the sequels is made.
Whaaaaaat.
The talk of the existence of multiverses and the impending war that would supposedly destroy most of humanity comes to nothing. I was so sure this would be important but nah. The warring sides just happen to listen to a guy ramble about universes and knowledge and they just, stop the war because of that?
Whaaaaaat.
Maybe this was a sort of a heads up for the final book? I don't know. It better be or this would be the most pathetic plot device ever.
The suspense and anxiety that drives the book definitely wins and because of that I was able to enjoy the otherwise mundane plot.

DNF *** This book had nothing to do with anything. I'm frustrated it is title as the third Book of Ember or even a prequel. I can't think of a single thing tying this story to the characters or people in the previous two books. I'm going to skip to the actual next book in the series, the last one. Eye roll for me.

معمولا آدم ریویو بنویسی نیستم چون همون تایمی که کتاب رو می‌خونم شاید یه سری افکار در موردش داشته باشم و حتی به روز و ماه نکشیده، نظرم عوض شه چه برسه به سال! ولی وقتی یه چیزایی می‌خونی که هم‌راستا می‌شن با اتفاقات دور و برت نمی‌دونی که مسئولینِ کتاب نخون واقعا کتاب نمی‌خونن یا یه کسایی رو دارن براشون ایده‌های کتاب‌ها رو در بیارن (!) ناخودآگاه می‌بینی داری می‌نویسی!

اگه کنجکاوید بدونید در مورد چی حرف می‌زنم، صرفا از این‌که یکی توی کتاب به میل خودش یه سری دستورها در قالب خدا می‌داد و مردم هم اطاعت می‌کردن لجم گرفت. مخصوصا که رای داد باید سگ‌ها رو جمع کرد و تو جنگل ول کرد که بسیار شبیه قانون‌گذارها و قانون‌گزارهای مملکت به نظر می‌رسید!

تمام کشورهای در حال جنگ می‌گویند که خدا طرف آن‌هاست. چطور ممکن است خدا طرف همه باشد؟
نیکی فقط می‌توانست این‌طور فکر کند که یا خدایان متفاوتی وجود دارد که چیزهای مختلفی به افراد می‌گویند یا اصلا خدا با مردم حرف نمی‌زند و یا مردم وقتی چیز دیگری می‌شنوند فکر می‌کنند که خدا با آن‌ها حرف می‌زند.

ص ۲۵۹

I enjoyed the story overall but all of the things that were actually important were not explained much at all. The main problem in the story was solved so easily that I thought I had missed something. And the interesting things like the postcards and the guy with the telescope were just casually mentioned at the end.
I thought the message of the story was good and not too preachy like a lot of reviews are saying but I think it was not necessary and this book did not add anything to the series.

This book was horrendous. The whole time I was reading it, I kept asking myself, "This is really the prequel to the City of Ember?" I can't believe that the editors at Random House actually allowed Jeanne DuPrau to be so self-indulgent. That's what it felt like, reading this book, as though DuPrau was less interested in telling the story of how Ember came to be and more about forcing her political views down the reader's throat. DuPrau spouts off during the whole book about random nonsense. OKAY, we get it already, WAR IS BAD.

Reading these books as an adult, I realize the allegory. I realize it and I understand it, and in The City of Ember and The People of Sparks, I appreciated it. There were times when I felt that DuPrau was overstating things; issues were presented simplistically, whatever. I understood that because I also understood that these books were written for an upper-elementary school reading audience. However, The Prophet of Yonwood, also an allegory, was ridiculous. None of the characters were likable. Nickie and Grover seriously pale in comparison to Lina and Doon.

Nickie was an immature and annoying main character. She's eleven years old and one of her goals at Greenhaven is to fall in love?! I don't buy it. Compared to Lina, Nickie is a wishy-washy brat. She blindly accepts Mrs. Beeson's request to spy around and report back anything bad. Nickie supposedly has a thirst for knowledge, but apparently is confused as to what to do with this knowledge and can't handle making a decision on her own as to whether or not people are good or "evil." I couldn't even force myself to feel sympathetic when Otis is taken away along with the other dogs because DuPrau was busy trying to force me to feel sympathy. I can't drum up sympathy for a character I don't like and think was only getting what she deserved.

The utter randomness of this book was also off-putting. Random teenager and her dog lives in the attic. Why? Nickie finds a picture of Siamese twins who visited Greenhaven. Why? Nickie's great-grandfather's journal mentions a mysterious vision. Why? Nickie finds a letter written in a strange manner, as though to conceal portions of the message, or to conserve paper? Why? Some people in Yonwood are condemned to wearing noisy bracelets. Why? There is an albino bear in the woods. Again, why? DuPrau takes the reader on these absurd sidetracks with no explanation. Why is any of the above important? Why am I supposed to care about any of it? Stop wasting my time.

I would feel comfortable allowing the students with whom I work (middle school age) read the first two novels in the Ember series, but there's no way that I would recommend The Propet of Yonwood. Children can't separate DuPrau's prejudices against religion from the story. Children can't come away from the story and form their own educated opinion. I, however, can, and I thought this book was utter crap. I've heard there will be a fourth book of Ember and that it will return to Lina and Doon's story. I will probably pick up a copy and start to read it, just because I like Lina and Doon, but if DuPrau starts going off on her pointless tangents, I don't think I'll force myself to finish it like I did with Yonwood.

This was a delightful read about faith, love, and doing what is right. This is the "prequel" of the Ember series and highlights one of the first people to inhabit Ember. A very rich story that is easy and quick to read. Highly enjoyable.

WTF is this? I knew I was in trouble when my suspension of disbelief was shattered on the first page.

Lets start off with the fact that this should NOT be labeled (Book of Ember, #3), this is a (Book of Ember, #0.1) pre-quel/side story.

I'm not sure if Jeanne DuPrau is a terrible writer or a gifted Authorial Troll. The Prophet of Yonwood is an exercise in exquisitely boring story telling. Nothing the two main characters do is of any consequence but Jeanne hangs tantalizing possibilities just out of reach the whole time.


The beginning. Some lady has a seizure and goes into a semi-coma. Her friend, a friend who can somehow command the obedience of every powerful official in town, finds her. For no reason at all she not only decides the lady had a vision and is speaking commandments from god, but manages to convince everyone else in town of it. She then goes on a crusade to carry out the none-sense instructions until the lady eventually wakes up and explains what happened.

That's it, that's the story. The majority of the story is REALLY REALLY basic and insufferable musings on god and religion. You could skip whole chapters and not miss anything.

The worst part about all this is Jeanne teases you with interesting story lines.

So the setting is some time in the future right?
Not really. It comes across more like a boring version of Pre-Great War Fallout. Everything has a 1940's-ish aesthetic and mentality, but with stupidly over complicated phones and nuclear batteries in some things. No robots, robots would be too interesting.

Is this going to be a town dealing with the world ending around it in the cataclysm we know eventually comes?
No, that's 50 years in the future.

Ooo, there's some paranormal stuff going on with the old Grandfather stuff, are they going to...?
No, goes nowhere

What about Mr.Hoyt? he's in contact with aliens or extra dimensional beings or something.
Never elaborated on, only used as a possible reason the war is postponed for 50 years.

What about the fathers cryptic messages?
California

*Face Palm*

Final Score: The setting sucks, the writing sucks, the characters are irritating, the plot line is nonexistent, and It has only the most tenuous connection to the first two books. I honestly can't find a single redeeming quality for this book other than that at least it's short. Easily one of the worst books I've ever read, and I've read Chuck Wendig books.

0/5