The City of Ember: The Graphic Novel

The City of Ember: The Graphic Novel

By Jeanne DuPrau

Adapted by Dallas Middaugh

Art by Niklas Asker

2 Out of Five Covers

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the book The City of Ember.  I did see the movie that came out a few years ago, which was entertaining but not great.  Sadly, this graphic novel is a step down from that.  The story takes place in the titular city of Ember, an underground city where the remnants of mankind have lived for over two hundred years after some great calamity.   But the city was only supposed to last two hundred years and now it is breaking down, with power outages and food shortages.  Doon and Lina enter the city city’s workforce with the goal of trying to fix what has gone wrong but instead discover the city’s greatest secret: that they were meant to leave.

The story has the potential to be engaging, with the reader puzzling out the clues alongside Doon and Lina.  And the author included many elements to make the characters well rounded and their story about more than just one mystery.  It just doesn’t translate to the graphic novel.

For starters, the character designs for Doon and Lina are too similar.  About the only thing that tells them apart is the hair style.  The heavy use of brown and yellow is overwhelming.  Yes, an underground city would be dark, but all the muted colors becomes ponderous.   And (spoiler alert) even after they reach the surface, everything is still in brown and yellow tones.

Lest you think it is only the art that I found uninspired, the adapter is fully complicit with the illustrator.  Many of the world-building elements that are important in portraying the plight of the city are glossed over in favor of the main storyline.  And in the main storyline, everything seems to be resolved a little too easily for Doon and Lina.  This is especially evident in one sequence where, after the pair have been declared criminals, Lina goes back for her infant sister and then just shows up with the child the next page; no explanation of how she accomplished this. 

I was very disappointed with this graphic novel and worse, it does not make me want to go read the book.