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    The Sky Inside
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    The Sky Inside
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    The Sky Inside
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Sky Inside

    Written by Clare B. Dunkle

    Narrated by Bruce Turk

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

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    About this audiobook

    Martin lives in a perfect world. Every year, a new generation of genetically-engineered children is shipped out to meet their parents. Every spring the residents of his town take down the snow they've stuck to their windows and put up flowers. Every morning his family gathers around their television and votes, like everyone else, for whatever matter of national importance the president has on the table. Today, it is the color of his drapes. It's business as usual under the protective dome of suburb HM1.

    And it's all about to come crashing down. Because a stranger has come to take away all the little children, including Martin's sister, Cassie, and no one wants to talk about where she has gone. The way Martin sees it, he has a choice. He can remain in the dubious safety of HM1, with danger that no one wants to talk about lurking just beneath the surface, or he can actually break out of the suburb, into the mysterious land outside, rumored to be nothing but blowing sand for miles upon miles.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 25, 2008
    ISBN9780739362716
    Author

    Clare B. Dunkle

    Clare B. Dunkle is the author of the well-received Hollow Kingdom trilogy as well as the first volume in this story, The Sky Inside. She studied Russian and Latin at Trinity University, and also holds a a master's degree in library science from Indiana University. She was a member of the American Library Association and served on committees in ALCTS, ACRL, and LITA. She lives with her family in Texas.

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    Reviews for The Sky Inside

    3.5/5

    68 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Young adult, but not as young adult as it looks.

      The prologue is a great example of counter-productive prologues. It tries to get you interested in the story by showing what's at stake, but at this early point I have no reason to care about the characters who are suffering. Later on in the book, after the naive (understandably so; he's a kid) protagonist has sought and earned and found the knowledge of what's going on, we find ourselves confronted with the same situation, and this time we care.

      The book (ignoring the prologue) starts out simply, the setting almost cliched, but there's enough nuance to it that it builds into something quite powerful. Often I can't believe in the inhabitants of dystopias, but these characters were all real people leading real lives within their limitations - and it wasn't only the main character resisting those limitations. The ending, too, is hopeful without being unrealistic.
    • 3/5
      You must read the sequel or it is an incomplete story.
    • 3/5
      Everyone lives in a domed suburb, watching TV, buying more goods, voting in meaningless elections - a thought provoking look into our future. Martin's sister Cassie is one of the Wonder Kids, a genetically engineered group that are shipped away as their thirst for knowledge and ceaseless questions are viewed as a threat. Descriptions of this future world were not always well crafted, but there are many points for discussion in the book.
    • 3/5
      Honestly, I'm a bit torn on my opinion of The Sky Inside. While it was quite a page turner, I found myself feeling that it could have been better. The characters and ideas were intriguing and certain plot elements seemed perfectly done, but there were also parts that went too quickly to understand. As I neared the last twenty or so pages, I found myself wondering if it was supposed to have a sequel, b/c I didn't feel that the ending was even close to completion. As someone stated already, it seemed to end just before it should have.

      Overall, though, I enjoyed the experience of The Sky Inside. It really does make you think about how we live our lives and how what we do will effect the future.
    • 3/5
      [edit, 10/2011] Just re-read this for possible inclusion in the Tome O'Dystopia. I'm having trouble coming up with anything to say about it, because there's just not much to this. The sequel, IIRC, gets more into the world setting and what the political structure is like, but I don't have the investment to reread that one, too. This is just a boring book about a kid and his magical dog-bot.

      ***

      There's a lot of convenience here, plot elements that just fall into place as necessary--and disappear as neatly, too. It starts slow and keeps going, plodding along without creating any investment in the plot for the reader. Not a bad book, but definitely not great, either. [7/2008]
    • 3/5
      Sci-fi dystopia, good with The Giver. Martin is 13, and lives in the suburb of HM1, a domed community. Every day, all of the residents turn on the televisions and vote on whatever issues the president presents to them -- including what color drapes his office should have. In this community, children are created and sent out to live with adoptive parents, and the last batch that came were "super babies" with genius level intelligence. Martin's sister is one of these children -- and they have all been recalled. A stranger has arrived in the community to remove these children and take them away to a special school -- but Martin doesn't believe that's what will really happen. In order to leave, Martin must break out of his community and find a way to survive on the outside, in a world he has always been told is dangerous and poisonous. How much control would you give up for safety, and how much truth can you really take? 6th grade and up.
    • 4/5
      Martin lives in a world that's contained in a dome. He doesn't know what's going outside, and mostly he doesn't care. And then one day his sister Cassie is taken away. Martin must venture out of his home, outside of the dome, in order to find out what happened. I enjoyed the book, though thought the resolution was kind of weird.
    • 4/5
      Martin lives in a world of Stepfordian glory. All houses are the same, color coded and in neat little lines underneath a sky that is always blue. His neighborhood stays safe from Earth's noxious air by being always protected inside a dome. Every morning, the people in his community watch the TV to see their president and vote on important issues (the color of curtains) to help make his job easier. Babies literally arrive by stork and parents can select the model they want. School is... ok... school is the same, dull, monotonous, you get the picture. Martin is bored by this lifestyle and is constantly testing boundaries. Until one day his over-the-top smart sister is taken away. Then Marten decides he has to break through them altogether and risk going outside the safety of the dome-world he has always known. With his A.I. dog in tow, Martin becomes a fugitive in the hopes of rescuing his sister.Eh. Anyone who reads my reviews (yeah, I know there aren't that many of you but still) knows how I feel about dystopia's. And series ones at that. But this one just really fell short for me. The premise is full of social commentary, which I don't mind at all as long as it's accompanied by an engrossing story. I felt like this book had a distinct lack of decent descriptions. Scenes move quickly in the beginning with little explanation of characters, their backgrounds, or their personalities. You never get a sense of who these people are. This was really frustrating because, especially when you are creating a dystopian society, yes some things can be vague, but the reader needs to be able to catch on and follow from there. Also, as you can tell from my review, this story was a little dull. It was the same kind of story you've read a hundred times with little to separate it from others of it's ilk. There were two moments I really loved about this book: The first is when Marten sees what it is really like outside for the first time ever. His glee is believable and engaging. The second is when Marten gets his first sunburn and thinks he is dying. Hilarious. Otherwise, a predictable book with a predictable segue into a (most likely) predictable sequal about bringing down the government and it's ridiculously controlling hierarchy. Not a terrible book. But nothing earth shattering here, either.
    • 3/5
      A futuristic pied piper. A model of genetically engendered children are too intelligent for the comfort of the community. The children are recalled as a defective product. Martin a model 14 too old to be recalled, vows to find his little sister and keep her safe. He must find a way out of the domed city and brave the poisonous waste outside.
    • 5/5
      A fascinating book book for younger teens that careens back and forth between horrifying and hysterical as it looks at a Brave New Worldish future. A great deal of the joy is in the details, game shows where the contests are criminals who are terrified to lose, robo pets who change to whatever their owner wants, and adults who vote every morning on important issues such as what color drapes should hang in the oval office. But don't forget to vote - no one's sure what happens to less than perfect citizens. This book is not so frightening or difficult that younger readers can't enjoy it.
    • 2/5
      Far in the future, Martin Glass lives in suburb HM1 with his mom, dad, and kid sister Cassie. Martin's not big on school and prefers messing around with video games and bots to sitting in class. Cassie is exactly the opposite. She's a Wonder Baby, a new model of child engineered to be highly intelligent and curious. But something's not right in HM1. With the help of a modified robot dog, Martin discovers some weird things about his suburb and he starts to suspect that not everything is on the level. When the Wonder Babies are "recalled", Martin knows he's got to get to the bottom of things and save Cassie. Can Martin find a way outside? I really expected to like this more than I did. Dunkle builds up the futuristic world slowly and with tons and tons of detail. While some readers seem to have found this an effective way to build up suspense, I just wanted to understand their world enough that I could believe that it could have developed. I found all the extra details early in the story to be confusing and delaying the action that eventually unfolds. Although the origins of the suburbs are eventually explained, I didn't find it totally believable. The story does have its moments. Certain creepy scenes and moments of revelation were absolutely excellent and kept me from putting the book down. But at the end, much is left unexplained (like why Martin happened to get a modified robot dog instead of the standard toy, and who is controlling all the bots that come after him on the outside) and the origins of the world are quickly told to Martin by one knowledgeable person (rather than Martin finding out on his own in a more organic fashion). It may appeal to fans of dystopian books (The Giver, Uglies, The City of Ember), but, even though I usually love those books, it wasn't my cup of tea.