The Dark Planet

By Patrick Carman
Little, Brown Books, $16.99, 350 pages

The conclusion to the Atherton trilogy, The Dark Planet takes a young hero named Edgar off of the small, man-made world he knows to return to the bleak, poisonous world that once was Earth. It is there that he must survive the hostile, polluted environment, the monstrous predators, and a survivalist outpost of child labor in order to follow a subtle set of directions left behind by a dead man. He’s not sure what will happen if he succeeds, but he hopes against hope that it will end in the restoration of this “dark planet” and a final revelation of the secret behind Atherton’s conception.

Don’t be fooled by this book; though it knows how to land a few emotional sucker punches that might keep you engaged up until the end, the dubious logic and the “because I said so” plot devices that this story relies upon will leave the thinking reader enormously dissatisfied. Combine this with a truly pitiful villain and a narrative that insists on amateurishly telling us what’s about to happen and you’ve got a book that’s ultimately nothing but depressing. Not a good recommendation for the intelligent young adult reader.

Reviewed by Micah Kolding