Messenger

Here's the second sequel to The Giver, or maybe more accurately the third part of the loosely connected Giver quartet. Two posts have already been made, and I don't anticipate much other interest from our little community, so I'm just going to proceed with some spoilers so as to more directly talk about the book with Marissa and Keith. (I never see either of them in real life, so discussion through blog posts is about all I have here.) Regardless, the rest of you have been warned.

I liked it. I thought it was way lighter and less consequential than either of the previous two books, right up until the end when Matty - nay, "Healer" - martyred himself for the good of his village - wait, no, it was just called "Village." I wasn't expecting that from what was ostensibly a kids book, even though the previous two had dealt with somewhat mature themes and ethics, and even though plenty of books we read in fourth and fifth grade were loaded with tear-jerking youth deaths. I did think the book in general was a little on the nose, especially compared to the subtleties from the previous two. Like, here, Matty is describing a "trading market" where all of a sudden a wife starts getting nasty with her husband; he connects the dots in his dialogue, overtly suggesting the overly beaten dead horse of a trope that the pursuit of material possessions brings out the worst in people. As a contrast, I recall, when reading The Giver, being blown away by the slow revelation that Jonas starts being able to see color, something unique among everyone in his village. It started out vague - "the apple... changed, in some way," or something along those lines - and maybe I'm retroactively giving too much credit to an author for blowing my ten-year-old mind, but that still seems a lot more impressive than a naive kid piecing together the "greed is bad" puzzle for the first time.

I also liked that this book severely connected the previous two, which were really fairly standalone stories up until characters from each one began to mingle here in the third part. The final book, Son, apparently takes place across a fifteen year time span, beginning concurrently with The Giver and ending beyond where Messenger did. I look forward to it as much as I look forward to any young adult books. My hunch is that I'll get to it before the year ends, but not necessarily anytime soon.