Skylark

Meagan Spooner

2012 • 348 pages

Ratings8

Average rating3.1

Sixteen-year-old Lark Ainsley has never seen the sky.

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?

Genres

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Series

Featured Series

2 primary books

#1 in Skylark

Skylark is a 2-book series with 2 released primary works first released in 1928 with contributions by Meagan Spooner.

Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

rogier caprino

i really liked it. it was not mind blowing but better than i expected . and I'm glad that the romance is slowly building

good book

April 29, 2013

Jessica Strider

Pros: very unique dystopian situation, very good opening, terrifying potential fate for Lark, end reveal of Lark's abilities was interesting

Cons: protagonist is conflicted, middle dragged, it became tiresome watching Lark get saved over and over again

For Parents: one swear word, some violence (killing), no sex

At sixteen Lark is older than the other kids at school, but she won't become a full adult until she's harvested for her magic and assigned her place. Magic runs the city and keeps up the wall that protects them from the ravaged outside world. When she's finally called, she's apprehensive about the procedure no one talks about and curious why they waited so long to harvest her.

An unescorted jaunt around the famicility shows her someone's horrific fate, a fate she soon realizes she might share. She's able to regenerate her magic, a lost skill and valuable - for harvesting. Fleeing for her life and her sanity, she breaches the wall and discovers how bad things outside really have become. She knows she will be hunted. She also knows there are other people outside the wall who are like her.

Kudos to Spooner for creating a dystopian setting that was substantially different from the rest. It has touches of steampunk and a truly terrifying fate for Lark should she remain in the city. After Lark leaves the city however, the setting becomes commonplace, post-apocalyptic (even if the apocalypse was caused by magic).

While I liked Lark, she waffled between competent and needing to be saved too often. I understand that she didn't know how to survive in the wild, and I was ok with Oren helping her, but having him leave and come back to rescue her over and over again became tiresome. This repetition made the middle section feel too long and drawn out. She also waffled between altruism and necessity when it came to violence and dealing with those she met outside the wall.

The ending picked up the pace again and returned to the high tension, and high stakes, of the opening. While I wasn't keen on Lark's choices at the end of the book, it was an exciting ending.

A good book for those who want a different dystopian setting.