Her world ends at the edge of the vast domed barrier of energy enclosing all that’s left of humanity. For two hundred years the city has sustained this barrier by harvesting its children's innate magical energy when they reach adolescence. When it’s Lark’s turn to be harvested, she finds herself trapped in a nightmarish web of experiments and learns she is something out of legend itself: a Renewable, able to regenerate her own power after it’s been stripped.Forced to flee the only home she knows to avoid life as a human battery, Lark must fight her way through the terrible wilderness beyond the edge of the world. With the city’s clockwork creations close on her heels and a strange wild boy stalking her in the countryside, she must move quickly if she is to have any hope of survival. She’s heard the stories that somewhere to the west are others like her, hidden in secret – but can she stay alive long enough to find them? (From Goodreads)
I was surprised how much I liked the beginning of this story. I was impressed with the concept of magic powering a city and mixing elements of magic with dystopia. In theory, this should have turned out to be a great novel - in execution, it fell short for me.
There were pieces that had so much potential. I love the concept of using humans as resources. Lark lives in a protected city that is entirely powered by magic harvested from its inhabitants. The architects who run the city take the magic out of citizens when they are young and then use that as a resource. There are people with renewable magic, but they don't live inside the city, so it seems everyone is worried about a shortage. This idea very much applies to our current predicament with dwindling resources. It brings up the questions of what does it really mean to abuse our resources and how would we treat those resources if they were used at a great personal cost?
There are a few other things that weren't quite explained and holes that were enough to shatter the illusion of another world. Lark seemed to have no attachments to anyone, other than her missing brother. She has parents, but they don't even make an appearance. They are talked about once or twice, but other than that she seems to have just sprouted out of thin air. She has no friends, until she's spurred into this journey and suddenly she has two boys in her life who she seems to like. I didn't really understand the concept of the monsters - who lived like they were wild, were cannibals, except when they were around magic they were perfectly human. The vague allusions to the "wars" that depleted the magic in the world, killed the birds, and brought the world into its current state, didn't really do it for me either. Lark claimed she liked studying the history of the wars, but she never talked about them. I had no idea what happened, because "war" is a pretty general term.
The book started out great and it felt different. I was really excited about where it was going, but it quickly fell into the same pattern of most post-apocalyptic dystopians out there. Girl is nobody, girl finds out she's very different, girl makes an enemy out of the government, girl goes on the run and meets a wild boy who saves her, girl tries to survive and figure out who she is. The pixies though, I did love the pixies - clockwork machines that are drawn to magic - designed to be a sort of law enforcement. Lark has one that follows her around, talks to her, and helps her out. That was really precious. Basically, it has potential and there are some things that are really great about it. If it sounds interesting to you then go ahead and give it a shot. I'm just sad it didn't quite do it for me.
