Prison and Finn
Book Review on: Incarceron Author: Catherine Fisher Number of pages: 442 Publisher/Year: Dial Books 2010 Imagine a living prison so vast that it contains forests, towns, and even seas. This is Incarceron. It is a self- sustaining prison like no other. Incarceron’s prisoners live in cities, not cells, and they live normal lives. The prison has been sealed for centuries and only one man, in legend, has ever escaped. The story starts with Finn, a seventeen year old, who is convinced he doesn’t belong in Incarceron.
This is because he has dreams where he sees stars, and there are no stars in Incarceron. He thinks he came from the outside and got stuck there somehow. The story tells that Finn is part of a tribe with his oath brother, Keiro. They just caught a prisoner who turns out to be a Maestra, or leader, of another tribe so they trade her back to them for her weight in goods like coins and treasures. Finn finds a strange key in the treasures and decides to keep it. The other “key” part of this book is a character named Claudia who is the warden of Incarceron’s daughter.
She sneaks into her father’s study and finds a key in one of the drawers of his desk. She quickly takes it and goes to her teacher, Jared. He says that he has never anything like it and that he will have to do research to see what it does. That is when the story really takes off because Finn decides he has to find a way out of Incarceron and Keiro, Attia, a prison girl who lives on the street and a prophet who always wanted to see stars and the outside named Gildas follow him. Finn then began to fiddle with the key and it started to glow. Claudia pops up out of nowhere as a holographic image because she also had a key.
She tells them that she wants to help them escape and their journey soon comes to an end near the edge of Incarceron, the wall. Claudia goes back to her father’s study to search for clues. She sits down in the chair in the middle of the room and is instantly transported to Incarceron. She had no idea what was going on but she soon found Finn and the others. Her father couldn’t stand that she was in there so he told them how to get outside. He said that the keys are actually transporters so that when you press the eye of the eagle on the keys you teleported out.
The dilemma was that there were only two keys and five of them. After a lot of fighting Finn and Claudia promise to return for the rest of them and they left. We later find out that the prison is actually inside the watch that the warden carries around with him. All in all, I truly believe that this is an awesome book. The way that the author melds two story lines into one plot amazes me and I had a great time reading this story I would recommend Incarceron to anyone that likes fantasy books with twists. I can’t wait to start reading the second one. Reviewed by: Andrew Caldwell ***** English IV Period 4
