Skylark by Megan Spooner

The Synopsis:

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?

My Thoughts:
The cover is what originally drew me in.  I mean, just look at that cover!  The colors are gorgeous!  I didn't know what to expect from the synopsis.  The idea sounded different, but I didn't know what to expect from it.  But what really made me want to read this book was all of the positive reviews and talk that was given about it.  I heard nothing but good things and I was extremely curious to see what everybody was talking about.

Unfortunately, I didn't get Lark sometimes.  She didn't seem to be a consistent character.  At first, Lark was this mature and reserved character, but then it all changed for the majority of the book, and that's when I found her to be the most annoying.  Then, towards the end, she went back to being something I would expect from her.  I get that she came from a very secluded area, but for a lot of the adventure, she was whiny and was always the damsel in distress.  However, she did grow as a character by the end and it was nice to see such growth and strength in a character.

In the beginning of the book, I would get so confused and have to reread sentences again and again.  It's not because of the imagery (I thought that the imagery was pretty good) but it was because the reader is bombarded with a bunch of futuristic terms that would throw me off.  It wasn't that big of a deal, especially when I started getting into the swing of things, but it is one of those things that made things a little less enjoyable in the beginning.

The story was something I've never come across before.  I can definitely pick out elements of other dystopian books, such as Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi, where Girl gets kicked out of the only home she's ever known and thrust upon this dangerous, uninhabited, unknown world where Girl then meets dark and dangerous and mysterious Boy.  But the mix of magic and dystopia was something crazy awesome and masterfully crafted.  The fact that neither the reader nor characters understood it completely was very interesting and made for a page-turning story.

Skylark was a different and highly entertaining book.  I flew through the pages, hoping that questions would be answered and became invested in the story and characters.  The plot twists were so surprising and I had some moments where I'd just have to put the book down to soak it all in, to process it all.  While we got off to a rocky start, I enjoyed the story.  Fans of dystopia, post-apocalyptic, and magical elements will possibly like this book.