The City of Ember

My wife recommended this one to me; she'd been talking it up me for a while now, but when she mentioned that it sounded to be in a similar ballpark to what I was planning on working on for NaNoWriMo this year, I decided to take the plunge and check it out.

It's a really good book - one of those ones that isn't just a good YA book, but actually stands on its own as well. The city of Ember is a city located underground, with massive generators and storerooms to keep the denizens of the city safe and happy. Eventually, however, the city starts to come to a state of disarray, and only our two young protagonists seem committed to saving Ember from itself.

This is the first part of a trilogy, so there's a lot of set-up and world-building, but it still manages to tell a complete story within that, something that a lot of authors seem to have difficulty doing lately.