Skylark (Skylark #1)

I actually truly enjoyed this book. Although I did feel a slight disconnect at times, my overall enjoyment was great. The writing was very whimsical and descriptive which allowed this story to soar. Yes it is a dystopian and sometimes I feel like I am completely burnt out from these types of stories. However in the case of Skylark, I truly enjoyed the premise and the characters. This story takes place in a very distant Earth where people live in Barriers and are cut off from the outside. They also harvest their kids for energy to keep these Barriers powered up. The world building, although it took place on Earth, is very rich and engrossing. I never once felt bored but always wanted to know and learn more. Lark as a main character was very determined and rebellious, which I always love in a character. The side characters were really great as well. Oren and Nix were a great contrast to Lark. Should be very interesting to see the dynamics change throughout the series especially after how Skylark ended. I for one am very eager to get on with the rest of this series to see how things will change and evolve throughout.

MINOR SPOILER ALERT It\’s an ok book it\’s well within my wheelhouse but it has a lot of issues in the middle. It manages to be fast paced and repetitive at the same time and the book mentions a couple of thing about the past and never explains them. It explains very little at all actually you go in knowing nothing amd come out honestly barely knowing any more. I got the kindle edition just to get a discount on the audible version and I listened to it in one go during my 12 hour shift and I gotta say it could have been a lot better. And then in the ending it\’s just a huge let down because when she finally gets where she wanted to be and the bad guys are stopped she just up and nopes off like really I feel a good series of books could have been written about her just in that place shes heading to for most of the book. I get that this was long and rambling and kind of repetitive I did that on purpose so you could see what most of the book felt like to me

I want to give this book a high rating, but I do know that there were a few flaws with this story, and at the same time I don\’t really care. The story was unique but not at the same time. It had many of the same plot devices that many YA dystopian books have, but the way they were presented felt new. There is a test at the start that brings to light that there is something different about the MC, the thing that makes her unique also puts her life in danger. There\’s an escape, a mysterious boy that helps her. A secret city, and a mysterious war that caused everything to become the way it is in the book. For the most part, I didn\’t feel like I was reading a carbon copy of any other book regardless of the similarities it shares with the genre. But I really do hate when the genre uses a vague and undisclosed war to try and \”explain\” why people live in walled cities and need to be harvested. It\’s a macguffin, and doesn\’t need to be vague. I probably wouldn\’t dislike the idea of a war, if it was actually explained. Lark is a…..I\’m not really sure how to feel about her. She is just pretty average. And fairly useless with out help of some kind. The supporting characters were mostly there just to fill out cast rolls of the genre. The character that I liked and was interested in learning more about was Oren. He was an interesting character, and I hope to see him in the other books. From this review you might gather that I didn\’t really like it, but I did. I read it really fast, the writing flowed nicely, and it had just enough mystery that I wasn\’t able to predict what was going to happen next, most of the time.

Recall that old movie trope – the hero finds a friend or loved one dead or happens on some other disaster and there is a beat and then he/she tosses their head back and screams \”NOOOOOOOOOO\” and the shot pulls back from the closeup to the immediate vicinity and then to the outside as the wail echoes through the night. That was my reaction to reaching the end of Skylark and thinking about the wait for volume 2. If Spooner pulls a Rothfuss (how many years between The Name of the Wind and Wise Man\’s Fear?) we will have to organize parties to hunt her down. I recommend that you start by going to John Scalzi\’s blog \”Whatever\” and read Meagan Spooner\’s account of how she came to write this book as it will give you an excellent background. It is here: […]. Then open this book and prepare for the outside world to disappear. Hire babysitters, do your homework ahead of time, call in sick – do whatever you need to do in order to have the time to be immersed in Lark\’s world. Lark is born into a closed, one-city society in a world where there was once an all encompassing energy field that humans could tap to perform magic. The wars and massive overuse of the Resource have left precious little. Every person is born with a little and the City \”harvests\” that power from children to keep the city functional and to power the Wall that protects the City from awful things that are reported to inhabit the outside world. Spooner tells a tale of a 15/16 year old girl who has not been harvested and discovers the terrible costs of maintaining the City and the price she is expected to pay. She flees the City and is on a voyage of discovery where little is what it appears to be, survival is terribly difficult and threats are everywhere. She can never be sure of the agendas of even those who ostensibly are helping her and the close of this volume tests her in ways that leave her withmore questions than answers – but with the courage to try to find them. My only criticism is that in the middle of the book as Lark goes on her walkabout her inability to accept the reality of what she sees reminds me of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever who drove me nuts with his constant whining. Lark isn\’t that bad and you may not react the same way but that is a very small nit to pick for a wonderful story. I hate the designation of books as \”YA\” because it almost seems as if grown-ups should shy for fear of being accused of juvenile tastes. But i am definitely not a \”youth\” and I believe that great stories have no designation and no proper demographic other than those who can read. Buy this book – read it and start pinging Meagan Spooner to publish volume 2.

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