Ashes of Twilight

Gr 7 Up—In this first installment in a trilogy, steampunk meets up with dystopia in a domed underground world created to protect a frightened population and their royal family from the devastations of what we know today to have been Halley's Comet. Members of this society believe that the falling meteor set fire to the aboveground world and that they are the only remaining survivors. At the time of its inception, the technology used to create the domed world was considered advanced. Now, 200 years later, the mechanism is failing. Wren McAvoy, 16, has lived her whole life in this world as part of the lower-class shiner community, working day in and day out as a coal miner. After living complacently like this for years, she and others have begun to wonder what life beyond the dome is actually like. When her friend Alex attempts to escape to see for himself, he is caught, burned alive, and put on display as a public warning to others wishing to go against the society's way of life. Alex's final words, "The sky is blue," is woven hauntingly throughout the story as a motivational refrain for Wren and her friends as they are determined to find out for themselves the meaning of Alex's words. Tayler does an excellent job in the development of Wren and in the creation of the two distinct worlds. With an exposition reminiscent of Jeanne DuPrau's City of Ember (Randon, 2003), the plot at times can be somewhat predictable. Unlike City of Ember, however, Tayler's descriptiveness actually tends to slow the pace down, and it doesn't pick up until the final three chapters. Nonetheless, fans of Katniss will be able to connect with Wren's strong, defiant traits.—Sabrina Carnesi, Crittenden Middle School, Newport News, VA