Too preachy and the connection to the other books is just tossed in at the end.

*sigh* why do I do this to myself? I saw the multitude of 1-star ratings...I considered them...and I chose to read this travesty of a book anyway. Uuuuuhhhh...
GOODREADS FRIENDS, DO NOT REPEAT MY MISTAKE!
I don't know what DuPrau was smoking when she wrote this crap, but it wasn't the same awesome stuff that created the first two. This was crap. I skimmed so much of it, after trying really hard to read thoroughly, and I still was able to grasp the basic, ridiculous plot. I didn't even have to try! There was no excitement, no thrill, no mystery... It's just a girl who comes to temporarily live in a town where religious cultists are using the people. Wow. That certainly doesn't describe a few dozen books.
Pretty much, this book is just DuPrau's rant on how people can use religion to hurt others. She doesn't even consider the possibility of good religion. Essentially, by the end, all the bad people are gone, the girl grows up and completes her very generic bucket list (which pretty much included enjoying life and getting married), and Ember is vaguely mentioned on the last page. There is nothing else to know about this novel.
It teaches nothing positive (unlike the last two). The characters are incredibly flat and unknowable (unlike the last two). The plot is stale, slow, and has no significant rise or fall (unlike the last two).
Pretty much, if you want a good book that has some effort put into it that isn't just an angry person's rant about religion, read the last two.

dumb... skimmed it

Summary From Goodreads:
It’s 50 years before the settlement of the city of Ember, and the world is in crisis. War looms on the horizon as 11-year-old Nickie and her aunt travel to the small town of Yonwood, North Carolina. There, one of the town’s respected citizens has had a terrible vision of fire and destruction. Her garbled words are taken as prophetic instruction on how to avoid the coming disaster. If only they can be interpreted correctly. . . .
As the people of Yonwood scramble to make sense of the woman’s mysterious utterances, Nickie explores the oddities she finds around town—her great-grandfather’s peculiar journals and papers, a reclusive neighbor who studies the heavens, a strange boy who is fascinated with snakes—all while keeping an eye out for ways to help the world. Is this vision her chance? Or is it already too late to avoid a devastating war?
Plot:
*MILD SPOILER*
At first, I was mildly bored with the lack of action, but the farther in the story I got, the more fond of it I grew. In a way, you could consider this realistic fiction, which I normally hate, but I ended up really liking this. It was just such a fun and short read. However, the plot was not that strong in itself, this was more of a character driven story. But seriously, this story didn't have ANYTHING to do with The City of Ember. It turns out that Nickie's dad was one of the builders, and eventually Nickie was a builder too. So basically only 5 pages of this book was related to the rest of the series. That didn't really take away the enjoyment in the least bit.
Characters:
The characters were... okay I guess. I liked their innocence and silliness, but they were just a bit immature for me. It was fun being in their mindset, but they were only 11. Also, Mrs. Beeson was the WORST person ever. She called herself a Christian when she had gossip patrols that judged people and if they ever sinned according to her, she put bracelets on them that were super loud and blaring like an alarm.
Overall & Recommendations:
As a story itself, this book wasn't that great. But it was just so fun! I don't even know why, but i enjoyed it immensely. I really like this series, and it's perfect for children and middle graders. This might have been a bit to young for me (I'm 13), but it was none the less enjoyable.
Quotes I Liked:
“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?”

“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.”

“Kept talking about how she's studying every holy book she can get her hands on, aiming to understand God's word. I quoted St. Augustine to her. 'If you understand it, it isn't God.' Gave her a cup of chamomile tea.”

It should be titled “Absolutely Nothing, Either Relating to The City of Ember or Otherwise”.

Mind-bogglingly atrocious. Don’t like anyone, don’t care about anything, waiting for things to finally happen, and then…IT DOESN’T HAPPEN! Nothing to do with Ember, nothing. All the upcoming war drama turns into “Phewf, glad we avoided that!”. Then there’s a footnote at the very end that says basically “and many decades later all the terrible stuff happened after all and then the city of ember happened, the end.”

Pointless and horrible beyond belief.

This book does not live up to the rest of the series. It's heavy-handed, moralistic, and full of dislikable characters. I'm sorry I read it as my last experience with the Ember series.

I would have given this book 5 stars, so why didn’t I? Coming into this book I thought they would be more details about how ember was constructed. The book went over the city of ember almost completely it was extremely rushed. I really like Nicki as the main character and I really liked Grover I wish they would have mentioned what happened to him after the war. We never get to find out about her grandfathers weird stuff as well, overall this book was pretty good but the author could have made it 10x better.

3.5

I'll agree with many of the other reviews. This book just isn't up to par with the really amazing stories in the first two books of this series. The City of Ember and The People of Sparks are much better than this book.

The author does have some nice and believable characters, but the action and drama within the story just fall flat in comparison with her other books. I guess the difficulty is the post-Apocalyptic world of the first two books is extremely compelling, but the pre-Apocalyptic world in this book just doesn't hold the same potential for an amazing story.

If you need 'completeness' in reading a series you can go and read the book, but it's not necessary.

Two stars because the writing style is the same very clean youthful story telling, but only 2 stars because the story lacks the compelling nature of the first two books.

I read the first 2 books and read this one not knowing it was a prequel. I honestly love the idea of a side story with new characters but it really distracts from the main story

I was expecting more detail into the city seeing that this was the prequel. It was almost like the last 15 minutes of the book She thought oh I need to mention it. It was a decent story but not much of a prequel.

At first I wasn't sure about this one. I couldn't really see the connection between this story and what had happened in the previous two books. Jeanne DuPrau is a good writer though and if you stick to the end of this one you do get the connection. It contains lots of social commentary about topics like war and religion and social constructs. The story of the nations at war isn't fully explained but that doesn't really matter. Only one more book to go in this series for me and I will finish, but I need to go read some other stuff now.