Rating: 1/5 
 ***Minor spoilers*** 
 Incarceron is a prison world full of forests, cities, caves, and more. Nobody ever comes, and nobody ever leaves. Everything there is recycled, even flesh. When there is no more flesh, Incarceron creates its children partially metal. Finn, an inhabitant of Incarceron, comes across a crystal key which he swears he recognizes, and somehow the key connects him to a girl named Claudia, who has an identical key from the Outside. Her father is the Warden of Incarceron, and only he knows where Incarceron truly is. Finn believes he is from Outside and wishes to escape, and his best bet is getting assistance from Claudia. 
 I am so grateful to be finished with this book. I didn't like it at all. I had this book sitting on my shelf for around 3-4 years because I bought it based on a recommendation from a friend, but never felt the urge to pick it up. Based on that and some reviews I read on Goodreads, it seems that this is one of those books where you either love it or hate it, and I'm part of the latter. I had too many issues with this book. 
 This book had such potential. There's an entire prison world, someone is trying to escape, there's a girl on the outside who is yearning to learn about Incarceron, and so many other details that could've made this a great book (to me, at least). But I found the storytelling so dull, and descriptions lacking, and the writing style just wasn't for me. It was lacking suspense and excitement. Some things are given away much too early and leaves no mystery for the reader. To me, the entire thing was just boring. 
 My other major problem was that it was so confusing! So many things aren't explained well enough, or when it was explained, I still had so many questions. It seemed that a lot of the "what," "why," and "how" were all glossed over and it left me feeling really uneducated about the world. There are some terms thrown in that are never explained, such as something called Protocol which is some sort of law Outside that I still don't know the meaning of. I still had a ton of questions in the end. Also, what time period was this? Is it set on our Earth? An alternate Earth? There are no cars and barely any technology (something enforced by Protocol, I think) but they have electron microscopes? I'm a person who has a lot of questions, and I felt like this book overlooked too many of them for me to enjoy. 
 Overall, I'm glad that I've finally wiped this from my to-read list, but I didn't enjoy it whatsoever. I struggled to continue reading and a lot of the time I wanted to just give it up. It seems like a love it or hate it book so you may have better luck, but in my opinion there are much better sci-fi novels out there that would be much more enjoyable than this one.