Book Synopsis:
Matty has lived in Village and flourished under the guidance of Seer, a blind man known for his special sight. Village once welcomed newcomers, but something sinister has seeped into Village and the people have voted to close it to outsiders. Matty has been invaluable as a messenger. Now he must risk everything to make one last journey through the treacherous forest with his only weapon, a power he unexpectedly discovers within himself.
My Review:
4.5/5 stars. I’m really torn on what to rate this, but I’ll settle for 4.5 stars. On the one hand, the book was quick and kept me interested the whole time. I also liked the connection to The Giver. On the other hand, the writing style itself wasn’t the best, as well as a few other things I’ll go into. I will be reading the final book right away, though, after that ending.
I first read The Giver back in sixth grade and loved it. To this day, it's still one of my favorite books of all time. I read the second book, Gathering Blue, years ago, but I really don't remember much about it. Early on in this book, I had to look up a plot summary on Wikipedia just to remind myself of what happened in that book. The specific events of that book, though, don't matter too much to this one. Plus, any details that are important are explained/recapped when they come up, anyway.
The first thing I noticed about this book is that it seemed like the most stereotypical dystopian of the three. Not necessarily with the plot/world, but with the way it's written. Nouns are capitalized, like Village, Forest, Mentor, etc. It was almost kind of annoying to have everything be a title.
As a huge fan of The Giver, I loved finally getting another connection to Jonas and Gabe. Gabe only had one off-hand mention. I wish there were more mentions of him, but it cool to have him directly named. Jonas is a somewhat big character, but he's called Leader in this book. Even though he's never named as Jonas, it's obvious that's who it is. It talks about how he came to the city on a sled - exactly the ending of The Giver - came from a world with no color and no emotion, and the apple from his first time with The Giver. I loved all those little nods, knowing exactly what it was talking about.
Talking about the connections to the other books, though, I'm a bit confused about what the overall world is like. The village that Matty lives in, the place Kira is from in Gathering Blue, and the society in The Giver all exist simulaneously, connecting by a forest? What that makes me wonder, though, is how each place can be so different. How is there no color in Jonas' home, but there is color everywhere else?
The weakest part of this book was the writing style. I can't remember if the other books were like this as much, but this book was very heavy on telling over showing. All throughout the book, it was "he looked worried", "his face looked ill" etc. Rather than describing expressions and postures to show how people are feeling. The book also seemed to have a decent amount of passive voice over active voice. These writing things were somewhat distracting.
One small theme of this book is disability. This was probably a bigger plot in the last book, but I noticed it a couple times in this book, too. When Matty first goes back to Kira, he offers to heal her leg. She refuses, saying she doesn't need to be "fixed" and that her disability is a part of who she is. This is so realistic. A lot of people with disabilities, myself included, don't want a "cure" for our conditions. In the book, Kira explains how she's had to live with a bad leg her whole life, so she's learned how to manage. Taking it away would be taking away part of who she is. I relate to this. I wouldn't want to have perfect vision. I've learned how to adapt and it would be so overwhelming to suddenly be able to see everything.
Another disability related part of this book is the man that Matty lives with, who is also Kira's father. He's blind. This part, though, I didn't feel was very good representation. It was kind of annoying at times, like the discussion between Matty and him about using words like "see" and "look" being weird. Just because someone can't see doesn't mean you're going to offend them by using vision related words. That's such an annoying idea that sighted people have. Also, at one point, he touches someone's face to know what they look like. Blind people don't do that.
The plot of the book kept me interested the whole time. The parts with Kira and Matty in the forest were the best. Things seemed to be going very badly for the characters, so I had to keep reading to find out how it got resolved.
Speaking of the ending, I saw a most likely unintentional Biblical allegory with how this book ended. Matty sacrificed himself to fix/save the world from all the evil and brokenness that had come out of people damaging their souls. Like I said, I doubt that's what the author was intending, but I couldn't help but make the comparison.
In general, I would say this book is very plot focused rather than character focused. The characters moved the plot forward, but they didn't have too much depth or internal conflict. They were good characters, but not great characters. Even Jonas, an already established character, didn't have much. From personality alone, you wouldn't be able to know that Leader was Jonas.
Content:
There's no language. There's no romance except for a girl that Matty has a crush on. Feelings of him liking her are described, and at one point she kisses him, but that's it. In terms of violence, there's a lot of wounds/injuries described. It's not like Hunger Games level of violence, but it still might be too much for some people.
Comments