Review: Friendship under Fire
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 4, 2014
I wish this book had been available when I was a kid! I would have loved it -- so much better than the Hardy Boys series I devoured. With elements of Hunger Games and Ender's Game, ENGN stands on its own and shrugs off genre classifications in much the same way as A Wrinkle in Time: not entirely fantasy, but not strictly science fiction's Steampunk subgenre, either. The first third of the story is slow but necessary; the flashbacks (tree climbing, bullying, avalanche, the trio's adventures) set the stage for the friendships that matter most and make up the heart of the story. Younger readers may not have the patience to "get to the good part," but by the time Finn reaches ENGN, I found the last two-thirds of the book intriguing and engrossing. The descriptions are fantastic, making the machine city both a place of wonder and horror, and the inhabitants are puzzling, inscrutable characters that serve to amp up the mystery. Finn has to feel things out by hypothesizing and testing his theories on his environment since so few people are willing to give him a straight answer. Sometimes he ends up in horrible situations, but in the end, it's his loyalty that saves the day -- despite one character's honorable act of self-sacrifice. 5 stars for a debut children's novel from an author whose much shorter work I've enjoyed for years.