Book Review: Catherine Fisher's Incarceron

As I was scanning the shelves of the bookstore one day trying to kill some time (and where better to do that than in a place with lots of books, eh?), I came across Incarceron, by Catherine Fisher. The cover as well as the title interested me, so I read the summary:

Imagine a living prison so vast that it contains corridors and forests, cities and seas. Imagine a prisoner with no memory, who is sure he came from Outside, even though the prison has been sealed for centuries and only one man, half real, half legend, has ever escaped.

Imagine a girl in a manor house in a society where time has been forbidden, where everyone is held in a seventeenth century world run by computers, doomed to an arranged marriage that appalls her, tangled in an assassination plot she both dreads and desires.

One inside, one outside.

But both imprisoned.

Imagine a war that has hollowed the moon, seven skullrings that contain souls, a flying ship and a wall at the world's end.

Imagine the unimaginable.

Imagine Incarceron.

Incarceron is not just about a prison and its prisoners, but about a prison that is alive. Its captives doubt that there even is anything outside, and that maybe Incarceron is all there is. But when Finn discovers a key—something that the others don’t even have a word for—he knows that Outside exists. He can remember things from a time when he was Outside.

While I really enjoyed this book, about a quarter of the way through it I became skeptical as the plot took a turn towards the obvious. The writing left me wondering who said what on more than one occasion, and I think there should have been more description (it’s a living prison, what’s it look like!), but it was very entertaining and had some plot twists thrown in towards the end that I wasn’t expecting, which somewhat made up for the obviousness at the beginning. But overall, it was a good book. I've read it twice, and it was almost better the second time.  

This is one of those books that I wish I'd read slower, but that at the time, I couldn't put down. Fortunately, the sequel Sapphique was just published in the US yesterday. Thirty-five pages in, it's turning out to be just as good as Incarceron. It even looks like Fisher is going to twist the clichés from book one.

I've read other books by Catherine Fisher and never particularly liked her novels, yet Incarceron is one of my favorite books, and I'm sure Sapphique will be, too. If you're a YA fantasy fan, I highly recommend you read this series.