Product Description
The People of Sparks picks up where The City of Ember leaves off. Lina and Doon have emerged from the underground city to the exciting new world above, and it isn’t long before they are followed by the other inhabitants of Ember. The Emberites soon come across a town where they are welcomed, fed, and given places to sleep. But the town’s resources are limited and it isn’t long before resentment begins to grow between the two groups. When anonymous acts of vandalism push them toward violence, it’s up to Lina and Doon to discover who’s behind the vandalism and why, before it’s too late.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Amazon.com Review
When teenagers Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow lead their people up out of the Earth, fleeing their dying underground city of Ember, everything is new and a little frightening to the refugees--the sun and the moon, birds, trees, fire…and the people of Ember are strange to the 322 citizens of Sparks, one of the few towns on Earth to survive the time of The Disaster. How can they feed and house the 400 Emberites, the leaders of Sparks wonder, when they have just begun to be able to feed themselves comfortably? But if they don’t, these underground people with no survival skills will surely die in the wastelands. They take them in as best they can, but grumbling and bad feeling grows on both sides. Lina returns from a failed search for her persistent vision of a city of light to find the town, egged on by the power-hungry young thug Tick, once again at the point of war, forgetting how the Earth has been destroyed before. But Lina has seen the devastation left by The Disaster, and so she risks a brave move of reconciliation, and when Doon exposes Tick’s trickery, the two sides join as the new people of Sparks. In this exciting and solidly constructed sequel to The City of Ember, Jeanne DuPrau moves the story on entrancingly, bringing along her cast of characters from underground and adding new dimensions and relationships as the action escalates to a satisfying conclusion that still allows for further volumes in this fine fantasy. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell
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 the people of sparks
The people of sparks is a really good book. It has a lot of suspense. It is not as good as the city of ember, but it follows close behind. If you are looking for a suspensful, non-violent book, this book is for you.
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 Not gonna say it's the worst book I've ever read... ( pastordmoo )
But I can't think of a worse one...
Let me just say that I bought the first book on a whim and was not dissapointed in the least. The characters were not fleshed out as well as they could be (or not at all really) but the idea of Ember, this underground city that is slowly dwindling away was just so enchanting that I had to keep reading. I really enjoyed the first book, and have read it several times over.
So, in saying that, when the People of Sparks came out I was extremely excited to see what Duprau had come up with this time.
Nothing. That's what she had come up with. The idea of the city of ember, which is what attracted me to the book in the first place, was completely gone, replaced by a completely worse setting, horrible characters, and a quite unintelligent plot. Reading this book was like reading a child's idea for the reason some people might go to war, and what ridiculous things they might go to war over.
Don't read it, and if you are going to read it for the sake of the first book, don't buy it. At least get it from the library. It was absolutely horrific, and uninspiring, and had zero plot. I tried to read it. I tried to like it.
I couldn't even finish the novel. And I know that is going to get reactions like, how am i saying all these things when i did not finish it. I couldn't finish it! That was how bad it was. If you do buy it you will feel like someone came up and stole 9 bucks out of your pocket. Promise.
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loved it!
I so value Jeanne DuPrau's writing as she manages to convey the golden truths in a simple way that even children can understand. I think we're seeing classics in the making.
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creative and also uncomfortably realistic
I'll let the kids' reviews decide how good this book is for its target audience. But it definitely spoke to issues I'm wrestling with as a middle-aged mother, living in a neighborhood that is struggling with sudden racial and economic changes. Sentiments expressed by the people of Ember and of Sparks sounded uncomfortably familiar--not just from my immediate situation but from far more infamous parts of the world and of history. I think the author has done a great job of addressing multiple issues of nonviolence in a creative setting that portrays human nature very realistically. Nonviolent problem solving is so much more complex than "make love not war." This book recognizes that and gives some sobering food for thought.
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 Out of the lightbulb and into the light. ( deeallen40 )
And here we are folks back to Ember, kinda.
Jeanne Duprau's sequel to her thoroughly satisfying 2003 novel "The City of Ember" takes place in fresh surface air, in stark contrast to it's subground predecessor. Though the setting may have changed, the pieces of genius throughout it's pages are far from gone.
The People of Sparks begins shortly after "City of Ember" in the small and grungy aboveground town of Sparks. The towns citizens, unlike those of ember, are people of the land, wise in the ways of manual labor. The newly shelterless Emberites seek to take refuge in the town, and the townspeople accept the city-citizens plea. But tensions soon begin to rise, and differences between the two groups begin to tear them slowly apart, eventually escalating into open hostilities.
As with the first novel, Duprau manages to paint an iconic picture of a world where humanity has killed itself, presenting many images of human greatness reduced to nothing. The book sends powerful messages of redemption and how human selfishness can only lead to destruction.
The novel does contain, a however, a few cliches in it's character developement. These include characters not being honest with each other for no reason particular reason. Some specific parts seem to put the moral point before the literary one, causing some of the more powerful moral points to be somewhat underwhelming due to the slight cheesiness of the event.
This novel is a major success for Duprau, it's sets her apart from other authors, making her mark in young adults literature. A masterpiece? Not quite, but a great book by most standards.
B+
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