Today I just finished up listening to Sapphique, the sequel to Incarceron both by Catherine Fisher. Now, while I enjoyed each book, the former a bit more than the latter, I've come to one disappointing conclusion about them.I don't feel as if the characters really grew.
All of them were in their own way stubborn and all working towards their own plots and goals. This is pretty much on key with reality and even more-so in that there wasn't a Gandalf type character that really knew what was going on. Mostly the head didn't know what the tail was doing as well as the entire situation heavily reminded me of one of my favorite sci-fi short stories "The Machine Stops". Yet, unlike that tail where in the end as people stagger out into this new world without technology to do the work for them, gasping for breath in the harsh air and harsher reality they are aware of the task. This story felt as if the children in charge were pretty much still children. It feels like any scene in the beginning of the book could easily happen again after it all ended. That is saying a lot since essentially the framework of their world was totally destroyed. I'm still working on my overall rating of the story but I'm left a bit disconsolate right now.