Jeanne DuPrau – The Diamond of Darkhold

108. The Diamond of Darkhold by Jeanne DuPrau (2008)
Books of Ember, Book 4

Read my review of:
– Book 1, The City of Ember
– Book 2, The People of Sparks
– Book 3, The Prophet of Yonwood

Length: 285 pages

Genre: Young Adult; Science Fiction

Started: 31 August 2008, about 1:10 pm.
Finished: 31 August 2008, about 5:20 pm, but including lunch, an art fair, and a minorly flooded kitchen thanks to a misbehaving dishwasher. :)

My timing for this book couldn’t have been more perfect! I started reading the series last weekend, not knowing anything about it except the fact that the first book was being made into a movie. As I read, I realize that the fourth (and final) book in the series had just come out… as in last Tuesday! So, I immediately checked my local library, they had a catalog listing for it, so I reserved it. It officially made it into circulation yesterday, and I checked it out and got to be the first person to read it, no waiting, no hassle. I love that.

Summary: The Emberites have been accepted into the community of Sparks, but life is far from easy. Winter is upon them, food supplies are low, people are sick, and the hard work never ceases. When Lina and Doon get their hands on a book – mostly destroyed – that seems to indicate that there’s something magical that the Builders meant them to have that’s hidden in Ember, they sneak away to retrieve it. However, it’s true you can’t go home again… because while Ember is now dark and dead, it’s also hosting a family of squatters, who have decided that the city and all its resources, including the treasure, belongs to them.

Review: It’s certainly nice to get back to Lina and Doon’s story after the tangent that was The Prophet of Yonwood. However, this book just didn’t seem to have the urgency of the first two. The crisis that the characters are facing isn’t really all that threatening – Lina and Doon aren’t trying to save anyone, they’re just trying to make life less hard – so there’s not the urgent build-up of tension that I so liked in the first two books. It was very cool to make a return to Ember, and it brought the series around again to a mostly satisfying close, but the story just lacked the “oomph” that would have made it special. Besides the somewhat tepid plot, the main problem I had was this book was the incredibly rushed epilogue/conclusion. Much like in The Prophet of Yonwood, the last few pages seemed like she was desperately trying to tie up all the loose ends and make everything fit together, when it would have been a lot stronger either to let us draw our own conclusions, or to let these details unfold more naturally over the course of the story – it’s a serious case of “tell” instead of “show”. Also, I really, really didn’t get the point of the aliens. I mean, really? 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: A quick-reading and (mostly) satisfying conclusion to the Ember series, although it doesn’t recapture the magic of the first book.

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Links: Jeanne DuPrau’s website

Other Reviews: Bending Bookshelf

First Line: Around the middle of the twenty-first century, when it seemed that a great catastrophe was about to engulf the world, an underground city was built as a last refuge for the human race.

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