Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Overall it was good. Claudia is the head strong female lead outside the prison in a false 17th century area and Finn is more level headed but inside a living prison. It starts out in the belly of the beast with Finn experiencing an 'episode'. His oath brother Keiro watches over him despite his selfish thieving ways. Finn explains to Keiro that he feels like he wasn't born in Incarceron the metal prison world. Rumor has it that only person was ever able to escape from it and no one has come in. The prison reuses people, animals, bug, and structure parts to recreate people. Nothing is wasted. In a raid lead by Keiro is when Finn decides to take a hostage. Luckily he picked a woman that is in a high position outside their sector and in trade for her they give his clan gold, clothes, weapons, and last of all a crystal key. Finn takes nothing from their ransom except for the crystal key that has the same symbol as the one tattooed on his wrist. Perplexed and excited he toys with it eventually making contact with Claudia.

Claudia was betrothed at a young age to Giles who experienced an 'accident' a few years before their marriage and his half brother then became heir and the betrothal was transferred to him as well. Claudia is the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron. They are rich and lack nothing. Despite her riches she is unhappy and uses her rigorous study skills to crack the code for the gate to Incarceron. Her father is distant and rarely shows a liking towards her. Claudia with the help of her Master Jared break into his secret office and find the crystal key. She replaces the real key with a hologram and takes it searching for the gate. Alarms sounding and panicked she flee's the room before being found by her father. Jared and Claudia study the key and make contact with Finn. After seeing Finn through a hologram from the key Claudia suspects that Giles never really died but was put into Incarceron. Upon digging for information the Queen future mother-in law gives warnings to Claudia of sticking her nose in the wrong places.

Once Claudia and Finn make contact they try to find the gate to Incarceron with Finn looking from the inside following child stories of Saphique who was the one that escaped. And Claudia breaking into her father's office and 'off limit' rooms. Its not until the wedding day that Claudia rips her wedding dress to shreds discovering her father isn't really her father but rather he took her out of Incarceron so that he would have a daughter. Enraged from the discovery she breaks into his office and finally discovers the gate right before Incarceron itself is trying to kill Finn and his adventure buddies.

Overall it was good. It had a simple plot and somethings were not predictable. I would say that its good for ages 12-15. There wasn't any inappropriate material which was enjoyable as well. The characters were well developed but they didn't seem to change as a person. Either way its a good book for the readers who don't like reading books with females in it since it contains both sides. Below is the youtube video of Catherine Fisher telling her version of the story.