Incarceron (#1) by Catherine Fisher

Finn is trapped in Incarceron, a sentient prison designed to be a perfect place but that has disintegrated into a hell.  Claudia is on the Outside but trapped in her own prison as her impending marriage to the Prince moves her closer to the fake trappings of palace life and all its political intrigues.  Each finds a key to Incarceron and each finds obstacles as both the Outside world and the Prison seeks to stop them from opening Incarceron.

Only her stubbornness would keep a knife out of her father's heart.  She knew he was her enemy, her subtle foe, her cold opponent over the chessboard.  But he was still her father.  p.302

I'm actually really sorry I didn't read this sooner because I really liked it.  It moved at a great pace that kept me reading along and I had to resist the urge to stay up all night long to read it.  I even put the audio version on my Zune so I didn't have to stop with it when I couldn't read.  It was amazing how creepy both sides of the world were.  Incarceron is a hellhole of a prison where the actual prison is alive and thinking and watching, always watching.  It throws up obstacles and messes with the prisoners and generally screws with their lives for it's own amusement.  And on the Outside, the world has been put into a self-imposed stasis, hearkening back to a sort of Victorian Gothic Era, in order to belay violence and disorder in the world.  So the two words are vastly different and yet very similar in a way.

The two main characters of Finn and Claudia were very strong, very interesting characters.  They were both very clever and wily in their own ways and I liked how they each solved the puzzle of the prison.  There was more action on the side of Finn, but then he is stuck in a prison.  Claudia was much more clever and had to deal with more political maneuverings than anything. 

Conceptually, this was a great one and I really think that Fisher pulled it off.  I can only hope that the sequel is a good as this one.

Hogwarts: Charms
Dystopian
Library
YA