黑暗之光三部曲黑暗之光三部曲小说

故事发生在一座因急难而建成的城市微光市，微光市的孩子在十二岁时，就要离开学校，开始工作。莉娜想当信使，可是，她抽到的不是信使，而是地下管道工；杜恩想待在地下，他打算研究、修复发电机，解决微光市的危机。但他抽到信使的工作！莉娜发现一份残破的文件，她和杜恩将它拼凑起来，发现那是一份走出微光市的指引……。

The City of Ember

Ember is a self-maintained city. All food and supplies come from giant storerooms under the city and a handful of greenhouses. All the books in the library, apart from the city history "The Book of Ember" and the schoolbooks "The Book of Letters" and "The Book of Numbers", have been hand written by residents over the years of Ember. All the light in the city comes from lamps and floodlights around the city; when these are extinguished, the city is in complete darkness. The electricity in the city comes from an ancient hydro-electric generator in the underground Pipeworks; keeping the aging generator operational is a constant task. Beyond the borders of Ember are the dark Unknown Regions, which are unexplorable because none of the citizens of Ember can produce a mobile source of light. Ember was constructed many years ago by the Builders, but nothing is known about them other than the fact that they built the City of Ember. The story begins after the construction of the city. Two of the Builders discuss what will happen when supplies runs low and conditions become bad, and decide to leave instructions for escape in a special sealed box, which will open automatically after 200 years, when it will be safe to leave the city. The box is entrusted to the Mayor of Ember, who passes it down to the following Mayor when he leaves office. While the Mayors do not know what the box contains, they keep it safe over the years and do not tell anyone about it. However, the box is lost and forgotten when the seventh Mayor unsuccessfully tries to open it, and then dies before he can pass it on to the next Mayor.

The action then shifts to the year 241 in Ember. After the box quietly clicks open deep in a closet. It is Assignment Day at the Ember school. On this day, the 12 year-olds finish their education and enter the workforce. They are assigned jobs at random by drawing pieces of paper from a bag held by the mayor. In room 8, one student, Lina Mayfleet, draws the job of Pipe-works Laborer; which will require her to work underground in the huge Pipeworks that power Ember and deliver its water, repairing lights and pipes as needed. Another student, Doon Harrow, becomes a Messenger. The Messengers are Ember's communication team, who run around the city relaying personal messages between citizens.

Both Lina and Doon dislike their chosen jobs, and therefore exchange them. Doon wishes to become an electrician because he is seriously concerned with the state of the city and the generator. And he says he has some ideas for the generator. Blackouts and power outages are becoming common in Ember. No one knows when the generator will stop. In addition, supplies are dwindling, buildings are crumbling and the city seems to be breaking down piece by piece. On the job in the Pipeworks, Doon explores the tunnels and tries to discover a way to save Ember. He even sneaks into the room containing the giant Generator, but realizes at once that he has no idea how it works, much less how to repair it.

Lina is thrilled to have the job of Messenger because it allows her to run and explore every corner of Ember while she delivers her messages. She works hard, puzzling over secret messages passed to the Mayor from a strange man named Looper. She also copes with her grandmother's ever failing health, and cares for her little sister, Poppy.

Poppy discovers an ancient piece of paper in a box in the Mayfleet apartment. By the time Lina manages to pry it out of the toddler's hands, the paper has been chewed and torn to pieces, and the writing has been obscured in many places. Lina hangs on to the scraps, and becomes convinced they hold a special message. She shows the paper to certain friends and neighbors, including her old classmate Lizzie Bisco, but nobody has any clues as to its significance.

Lina's grandmother cannot explain the paper either, but incoherently rambles on about finding "something that was lost". In the middle of one night, she calls Lina in. She mutters something about a baby, then falls asleep. That night, she dies. One of the Mayfleet family's neighbors, a kindly woman named Mrs. Murdo, offers to take Lina and Poppy in. Lina accepts this offer.

Eventually, and thanks to Clary, the greenhouse helper, Doon and Lina piece the paper together and a friend tells Lina that the message contains "Instructions for Egress"--instructions to leave Ember. They descend into the Pipeworks and discover that the instructions are indeed valid, and that the underground river holds the key to escape from the city. They also discover that a man named Looper is stealing the disappearing resources of Ember from the storerooms and giving them to the Mayor in a secret room in the Pipeworks.They report the Mayor's theft to City Hall, confident that he would be arrested.

However, the Mayor sets his guards upon the pair, and orders their arrest for "spreading vicious rumors." Before they can tell the residents of Ember about the Instructions for Egress, they are forced to flee the city. Lina manages to take her little sister Poppy, and, with Doon, goes down into the Pipeworks and flees Ember by boat on the underground river.

The river eventually leads to a great rock slope. Poppy discovers a book on the riverbank; Lina and Doon keep it and bring it along to read later. After a long and arduous climb, Lina, Doon and Poppy emerge from the rocks into a new world, where they discover sunlight, moonlight, stars and nature.

This discovery is followed by another one, their history. The battered book turns out to be a personal journal; reading it, Lina and Doon learn that their city was founded by a group of one hundred adults and the same number of children as a measure to guarantee the survival of the human race in a disaster that obliterated civilization.

Doon and Lina explore a nearby cave. Looking down from a high cliff in the cave, they are amazed to see Ember below them--and realize that they have been living underground all along. In a last-ditch effort to save their city's citizens, the three write a note with the Instructions for Egress, wrap it in Doon's shirt, and hurl it down into Ember where it is found by Lina's caretaker, Mrs Murdo.

The People of Sparks

Throughout the course of the novel, DuPrau references many contemporary items and people, including the Harry Potter books. Some readers have theorised that both the village of Sparks and Lina's "dream city" refer to real locations, specifically Sparks and Atlanta in Georgia. However, in the novel, the settlers claim that they chose the name of their city after seeing sparks rise from an ancient truck engine. At one point in the novel, Lina visits a large, destroyed city on a bay. Characters also refer to a place called Sanazay, a homophone for San José, perhaps in California. Additionally, in The Prophet of Yonwood, the third book in the Ember series, it is implied that Ember is being built somewhere in California, and that Sparks may be Sparks, Nevada.

The People of Sparks picks up where The City of Ember leaves off. Lina and Doon have emerged from the underground city to the exciting new world above, and it isn’t long before they are followed by the other inhabitants of Ember. The Emberites soon come across a town where they are welcomed, fed, and given places to sleep. But the town’s resources are limited and it isn’t long before resentment begins to grow between the two groups. When anonymous acts of vandalism push them toward violence, it’s up to Lina and Doon to discover who’s behind the vandalism and why, before it’s too late.

The Prophet of Yonwood

The story starts off with a young girl named Nickie who is traveling with her Aunt Crystal to an old house in Yonwood, North Carolina. Nickie's great-grandfather has died, and the house where he lived, in a neighborhood called Greenhaven, is inherited by Crystal, who plans to sell it. Over time, Nickie begins to love the house and finds a girl named Amanda who lives there, She is there because she used to look after Aurther Green, the great-great grandfather. Plus, Amanda has a dog named Otis that she gives to Nickie. In Yonwood, there is a Prophet named Althea Tower who sees the future of the world in burning flames and smoke, and insists that the entire city quit their "wrong" ways and start to be good people, so God would be with them. During the time, verbal conflict between the U.S. and the Phalanx Nations is going on. The U.S. fears that the Phalanx Nations are trying to send terrorist spies to the U.S. and they take immediate action, although the U.S. never really goes to war with them until 50 years later. Nickie meets a boy named Grover who is obsessed with snakes, but has to give them away because the Bible says that snakes are evil and a sign of Satan. There is also an old, grumpy man named Hoyt McCoy, who is mean. In the end of the book, Nickie writes a journal that she hides behind a rock for someone to read later in the future. In The City of Ember, Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow find the journal when they are escaping/leaving Ember.

The Diamond of Darkhold

In the fourth book of Ember, The Diamond of Darkhold, Lina and Doon are curious when a roamer comes into town with a mysterious book. They trade the roamer a match for the book and discover it only contains eight pages. On the front of the book, printed in gold letters, it says, "For the People of Ember." Since they can't make any sense of the book, they decide to go back to Ember. There, a family who has moved into the city, captures Doon. While Doon is with the family they show him a diamond they found just outside Ember. Doon steals the diamond and escapes from Ember. When Doon meets up with Lina they find more diamonds and they figure out that the diamonds are lights. They bring back the new invention which earns the town money and food to last the winter. In the very end, a strange star in the sky, seen throughout the book, is really a satellite sent up by Hoyt McCoy which made contact with an alien race. There is also a glimpse into the future, when a new city has been built.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_DuPrau

Books of Ember

The City of Ember (2003) – This story takes place in a sunless, moonless city where the only light comes from electric lamps. As supplies run low and the electrical system starts to fail, the city is headed for disaster. Two children, Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, take on the task of finding the way out.

The People of Sparks (2004) – The story opens where The City of Ember left off, with the residents of the dying city of Ember joining young heroes Lina and Doon and making their way to a small settlement, where all at first goes well but conflict soon arises.

The Prophet of Yonwood (2006) – This is the third novel in the series. However, it is a prequel, rather than a sequel, to the other two books. It is set about fifty years before the Disaster and the establishment of Ember, and approximately three hundred years before the events of The City of Ember and The People of Sparks. The story focuses on a woman's frightening vision of the future and the townspeople's reaction to it.

The Diamond of Darkhold (2008) – The Diamond of Darkhold is the next book in the series. It picks up where The People of Sparks left off, during the Emberites' first winter aboveground.