Wii Party U

When you buy Mario Kart 8, you get to choose a free downloadable game from four different options. I already owned two of them and am in no rush to play Pikmin 3, so I opted for the worst possible value and wound up with Wii Party U. So far, it's been quite enjoyable, actually. The game feels like a Mario Party spin-off with way more options, and also Miis. This is stupid, simple fun with quick minigames and a whole lot of bullshit luck involved with winning or losing the larger sessions surrounding those minigames. I have no regrets so far. I only wish that this and Nintendo Land were somehow combined into one game that combined the wide variety here with the first party Nintendo goodness in that game. Regardless, both games are little more than demonstrations for the Wii U's capabilities, and they're plenty fun in their own right. It's no Mario Kart 8, but this strikes me as a game I'll be pushing on friends and family members for years to come.

Final Fantasy XIII

So much to say here. Since I haven't posted in close to three weeks, here comes a doozy of a ramble. I will try to organize my thoughts to the best of my abilities here.

Reputation

This game's been out for a few years now, and plenty has already been said about it. "The game is linear as hell, and doesn't even really 'open up' until you're twenty hours in," said some. And this was absolutely true. "The game takes a hundred hours to beat," said others. This one is patently false - my clock sits shy of 52 hours, post-credits, and I wasted a good four or five hours of clocked time away from the TV. "The new and revamped battle system is incredible," said some. On this, I partially agree. But we'll get there. Bottom line, most things you have probably heard about this game are probably true, and it is so drastically different from what I've come to know as a Final Fantasy game. But hey - maybe that's just evolution.

Gameplay

Final Fantasy XIII introduces the "paradigm" battle system, a dynamic that allows you to switch character roles on the fly. It's similar to Final Fantasy XII in that you have very little actual control over your party members, but it's so much better. The six roles available to you are commandos (heavy hitting fighters), ravagers (mage-like fighters who chain together combos), medics (heal, heal, heal), sentinels (human brick walls who absorb all kinds of damage), saboteurs (weaken and destabilize the enemies and make them more susceptible), and synergists (strengthen and stabilize the party). Since only commandos and ravagers dish out any damage, they're the roles you'll use most almost by default; since healing is vital, you'll likely spend plenty of time in the medic role. I'll admit that I had very little use for the other three roles, at least until the end of the game when they became essential to incorporate into any winning strategy. Battles were extremely fast-paced and chaotic in this game, which stood in stark contrast to the Final Fntasy games of old, where lots of time was spent simply waiting for meters to charge up. I don't think the system was implemented as well as it could have been - I'd have loved the ability to control each individual character's role on the fly, for instance, instead of being limited to six trifecta set-ups.

Story

Complete batshit insanity, which really doesn't make it so different from Final Fantasy XII... or Final Fantasy X-2, or IX, or VIII, or several others, really. There's this floating continent of sorts called Cocoon, ruled by a theocracy called the Sanctum. Below here is the rest of the world - Gran Pulse - where the Sanctum is starting to exile a bunch of Cocoon folks for no real reason. Both worlds were created by these mortal god-like creatures called fal'Cie, who at times decide to turn people into l'Cie, servants tasked with something or other. Really though, it's that vague. It's up to the l'Cie to interpret their own focus, and then to complete their task. If they can do that, they're turned into crystal (but given eternal life, maybe), and if they can't do it, they just kind of become zombie things. All of this is clear within the first hour of playing, and then your party all turn into l'Cie, and they spend the rest of the game just bumbling around trying to figure out what their focus is. At any given time, it seemed like one party member wanted to save Cocoon while another one wanted to destroy it, and one guy spent half the game wanting to kill another guy, and one girl was lying to everyone, and none of this mattered because you still got to control all six of them as a team regardless of their purported intentions. Immediately prior to the final boss, one party member turns on four of the others, and then the sixth one makes a few statements or something, and then all is forgiven, and it's final boss time. That final boss? I'm pretty sure it was this ominous looking space-Pope guy who had malformed into something sinister. No effing clue. Of course, the story itself hardly mattered since the game was so damn linear. Which brings us to...

Atmosphere

On the one hand, absolutely gorgeous and impressive. On the other, holy shit, nothing but lengthy corridors. The first two thirds of the game consist of little more than running down corridors fighting enemies and then watching cutscenes. I cannot stress enough how vital hallways were to this game. Sometimes they were caverns, sometimes they were skywalks, sometimes they were a shoreline, but they were always nothing but corridors. Then, finally, in the eleventh of thirteen chapters, the environment opened way the hell up and got really expansive... which only made exploration and backtracking ridiculously tedious. (Chapter 11 was something like fifteen hours long; the other twelve chapters averaged around three in length.) Anyway, then in Chapter 12, we're right back to corridors, which we're in for the rest of the game, fighting strong baddies, entering the menu to level up our characters, and watching cut scenes. The thirteenth chapter took place in what appeared to be someone's idea of how to render cyberspace, with hot pink streaks all over the ground and the sky, and hexagonal white tiles to walk around in. In a game that made very little sense, it stood out for making no sense.

Characters

Credit where it's due - this aspect of the game was a highlight that I expected to be a lowlight. Lightning is the game's protagonist, often described as a "female Cloud Strife" - hardboiled angst and attitude, but little else. (And unlike Cloud, there's no really cool backstory reveal that retroactively explains so many of the character's actions.) She sort of learns to be a mother figure early on in the game, at which point her development arc is more or less complete. Her younger sister, Serah is a l'Cie who has been turned into a crystal, implying that she has completed her focus; Lightning wants to bring her back to this side of the mortal coil. So, too, does Snow, Serah's fiancé, an ego-driven but genuinely self-sacrificing guy. A lot of players hated Snow, apparently. I didn't mind him. Sazh is just a dude who wants his son back, which made him the most endearing and relatable character. Sazh was black, which had me worried right out of the gate - Japan isn't know for being racially sensitive - and my fears were realized immediately when Sazh revealed that he had a tiny little bird living inside his afro. Fortunately, it never got minstrel-y in the least, and Sazh could have just as easily been white, Asian, or whatever else. Whew. (I'll admit, it crossed my mind once or twice that he was basically Michael from Lost - "I want my SON back!" - which, hey, maybe I'm the one being racially insensitive here.) One more aspect of Sazh's personality was that he was the designated "old man" of the group, at the ripe age of what seemed like 35 or so. Hope is a teenager who sees his mom die within the first thirty minutes of the game or so; he spends the next five chapters falling onto his knees in despair every cutscene, and many series fans have declared him the very worst Final Fantasy character of all time. Again, I didn't mind him. Teenage kids are prone to get mopey, especially when, hey, Mom just died! Hope pulls his head out of his ass midway through the game and, like Lightning, ceases developing as a character at that point. Vanille is a quirky young woman whose default running animation included flailing arms. She was dressed in a bikini top and a fur skirt. She spoke with an accent that took me hours and hours to properly place - Australian! - that started out sounding like weird-fetishized-school-girl-with-a-speech-impediment British. Vanille served as the game's inter-chapter narrator, and she was hiding a big secret from everyone. I liked her! Lastly, Fang is Vanille's old comrade from Gran Pulse, that oh-so-dangerous world below Cocoon. Fang was a token female badass, which made her no different than Lightning whatsoever.

Other Isolated Thoughts

• The way weapons and armor were treated here left a lot to be desired. Most Final Fantasy games - hell, most RPGs - have you pick up better and better weapons as you progress through the game. Here, there was a nearly-broken "upgrade" system that involved dumping all kinds of "found resources" into upgrading your weapons. I hated it. Also, there was no armor.
• The way you leveled up was by advancing through the nodes of the "crystarium," a sphere grid spin-off for anyone familiar with Final Fantasy X. I liked it!
• Time was everything in Final Fantasy XIII battles; with a few exceptions, battles were never really unwinnable, but some of them took absolutely forever if you didn't have the right strategy or just weren't strong enough. Nothing like spending twenty minutes on a battle only to receive minimal experience points. Blech.
• The battle difficulty calibration felt way off, especially late in the game. Some of the game's final bosses were absolute pushovers, while some of the standard enemies late in the game were absurdly hard to defeat. Most surprisingly - and I'm not exaggerating in the least here - the very final boss took me one minute to beat. A minute and eleven seconds, really - they time the fights for you and everything - which made me just kind of drop my jaw a little bit, especially since the penultimate boss had taken me five tries and probably close to an hour to overcome. Even that fight, by the way, was really difficult until one time when it just sort of wasn't; using the same strategy for the fifth time resulted in a dead boss really quickly, whereas I'd spend three times as long chipping him down to half health in the other four attempts. Again, the battle difficulty calibration felt inconsistent.
• Dying in battle didn't lead to a "Game Over" screen and a reload from the last save point, thankfully; it meant selecting "retry" on the battle over and over again until you won. I was so thankful for this feature.
• The direct sequel to this game, Final Fantasy XIII-2, is already on my backlog. I'm cautiously excited! I didn't hate Final Fantasy XIII, and it sounds like the sequel is more or less the same game, but shorter and completely wide open. I'm not saying it's the next game I'll be playing, but I'm looking forward to it.

Lastly, this is the first time in my life where I can say I've beaten every Final Fantasy game in the main series. (Except for XI, the online-only enigma. Whatever.) Now that I'm here, I want to briefly offer up my rankings, from best to worst, of the twelve non-online main series games. No explanations necessary, but feel free to hit me back with your own rankings in the comments. Here we go.

1. Final Fantasy VI

2. Final Fantasy VII

3. Final Fantasy X

4. Final Fantasy IV

5. Final Fantasy IX

6. Final Fantasy VIII

7. Final Fantasy V

8. Final Fantasy XIII

9. Final Fantasy XII

10. Final Fantasy II

11. Final Fantasy

12. Final Fantasy III

These are, of course, subject to change.

Saints Row IV

I... I don't even know where to start.

How about this... this game feels like it was designed by a bunch of insane, ADHD children who are on Adderall and Redbull who all have a huge obsession with the movie The Matrix. Take all that in and you might just begin to get a sense of what this game has to offer. The killer, though, is that it's absolutely a blast to play.

Alright, so I have no experience with this franchise. I think I played a few minutes of Saints Row 2 back in the day based off a rare positive review from Zero Punctuation -- a gaming critic who rarely likes anything. Although the memories are vague, the second game felt like a buggy, crude version of GTA and my interest quickly faded after having a frustrating time trying to drive the cars (physics were poor at best). There was never any desire to play future games in this franchise, but I was bored last weekend and succumbed to curiosity when I picked this guy up for cheap. Instantly I was hooked. 

Let me break it down this way for any that are not familiar with this game or franchise. 

The game opens up with your character and their team (a street gang known as the Saints that have become so powerful and liked they are now a team of super, secret agents or something?) landing in the Middle East to stop a giant nuclear rocket from being deployed to blow up America. After a full assault, the rocket still manages to be sent off into the air. As it's lifting off, your character jumps on the side and clings for dear life as the rocket ascends. Suddenly, Aerosmith's "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" begins playing -- that right there got me -- as your character grapples up the side of the rocket pulling out various circuit boards to dismantle the thing. Once you succeed, the bomb blows up sending you free falling back to Earth. (Background conversations over your radio from teammates make it sound like you are giving your life to save everyone.) Next thing you know, you character crashes through the ceiling of the White House and lands comfortably in the Presidential chair in the Oval Office. Cut to opening credits. 

And that's just the first five minutes! The game is off-the-wall crazy in the best way possible. 

The crux of this game focuses on the fact that your character is not only the leader of the gang the Saints, but also the president of America. After the opening, aliens come down to Earth and begin abducting a bunch of people (you included) before destroying the planet. You then find yourself imprisoned in a cyber city having to save yourself and your teammates before you can pull your minds free from this digital prison and battle the aliens in real life -- eh, it's basically The Matrix. From waking up naked in goo after your mind is freed to having super powers in the digital world, a lot of this game borrows its themes from that awesome movie. And I'm fine with that. 

In fact, this game tips its hat to a lot of different franchises. There's a level ripped straight from Streets of Rage. Another that mimics Metal Gear Solid. And it all works! 

Most importantly, though, it's just plain fun and addicting. I picked this up Monday night and beat it at 90% completion by Friday night. I think about 20 hours total was put in -- nothing outrageous, but kept me engaged. 

There are a lot of references to past games and previous character arcs as the story progresses. Seems nonsensical -- like most other parts of the game -- and convoluted. By that I mean, you'll meet an old friend and as you learn their background story it's reveal that they twice tried to lie and kill you, maybe they were thought to be dead once themselves before they returned from the grave, and now they're fighting along side you... but can they still be trusted? Kind of makes your head spin. Also, a little curious to revisit the older games to connect the dots in the story lines and to see if the earlier parts of the franchise still hold up -- regardless of my past experiences. But, eh... I'd rather just hold out for the sequel. 

What's the sequel you ask? I won't spoil the ending to the game... but let's just say Saints Row V will be involving time-travel in the search to rebuild Earth. 

In case I haven't made it abundantly clear, play this game. Seriously. They even have it at Redbox for those not looking to actually own it. Any game with the Stan Bush in the soundtrack is a game worth playing. 

Oh, and there was a $1 million edition to this game as well. Brilliant (from an advertising perspective). 

Pacific Rim

When Pacific Rim came out it developed a bit of a reputation as being the "thinking man's" Transformers- a big-budget movie full of giant fighting robots, but with actual good writing and acting to go with it, and fewer dumb jokes. I mostly agree with the sentiment- Pacific Rim delivers some stunning and huge CGI fights, and surrounds the whole thing with a story that's at least much, much better than the first Transformers movie (I never bothered with later installments). Still though, that's a low bar to clear and I admit many of the characters were painted in pretty broad strokes- the retired veteran called in for one last job, the over-protective father figure, the dueling scientists- one is a zany American, the other a stuffy Brit. There were plenty of scenes in Pacific Rim where I got a bit bored and just wanted the action to start back up, and like I said before, when the robots start fighting aliens it's just as good as it should be. So while I'm not as big a fan of Pacific Rim as some, I think it's well worth a watch when you're looking for a big action movie that won't insult your intelligence.

Adventure Time: Season 1

Yup. I'm watching Adventure Time. I would judge me too if I were you. 

Now, before writing this post I should point out that I had seen episodes here and there when surfing through various TV channels, but nothing ever hooked me. The only thing I remember very clearly from the show was its pilot episode (if you can even call it that) which was a short that aired on Nickelodeon (I think?) back in like 2005 -- years before the the cartoon was actually picked up. It had a great scene where the main character, Finn, gets trapped in ice causing "his mind to mysteriously be sent back in time and to Mars for some reason" where he meets Lincoln who tells him, "He's just got to believe." Ah... memories. 

Point is, aside from that one fleeting scene, I kind of wrote this show off without ever giving it a chance. Until talking with a friend one day who really likes the show and told me something that completely caught me off guard. The show takes place waaay in the future after the apocalypse has wiped most of the human race from the planet and now magic and crazy stuff runs freely through the world. You follow a human child (seemingly the last of his race) who was adopted by a family of dogs (oh, dogs in the future can talk -- of course), and this human, Finn, lives with his adopted-brother and best friend, Jake. (As another side note, Jake has superpowers much like Mr. Fantastic -- can stretch and shrink his body -- after rolling in toxic goo one day.) With all that said, there was enough incentive to make me take a second look at the show.

The question is, is the cartoon any good?

Eh... yes and no. First off, while being another wacky, non-sensical cartoon in the vein of Spongebob, Adventure Time has a true dark side. The show seems to have this bright colorful exterior that when peeled away reveals horrifying monsters and nonchalant tales of death. It's actually really intriguing. A parent could put this on for their children and think they're watching something harmless and fun at first glance. Then, when their back is turned, the kids take in all these messages of despair and suffering and horror told with glitter and rainbows. For that, I approve the show. 

Then there are times when it feels really "kiddy," like when the characters are busting out in song and dance or how they live next to a candy village with its candy villagers. Simple stories that work for a kid's TV show -- maybe a moral message here and there for children to carry with them throughout life. Not that it's bad... but it can get boring. 

The main kicker -- the one thing that completely sells me on the show -- are the irreverent and abrupt endings to most of the episodes. There will be a story of Jake and Finn helping their tiny elephant friend find this legendary apple so she can make the apple pie of her dreams (see what I mean about the kid-themed stories). After a long battle, the episode culminates with the heroes retrieving the legendary apple and offer it up to the elephant for her to taste. She bites in. Pauses with a smile. Then, BOOM! She explodes into nothing leaving Jake and Finn with the horrified looks on their faces. Credits. No explanation at all. It always catches you off guard and makes me laugh out loud even when alone -- which I always am while watching this show. 

Do I recommend? No. Not really. With so much great stuff out there to consume this certainly doesn't rise to the top of my list, and I doubt if I will continue any farther than past the next season or two. Still, I'll hold out for those surprise dark twists that have me in the stitches. 

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

I heard two things about this before playing. For one, everyone said it was super easy. But, they also insisted that it was amazing. I think the game suffered a little for me only because it didn't have the nostalgia factor for me. I have never played the original (other than the first fifteen minutes or so). The gameplay was super solid, the graphics were stunning and the puzzles were satisfying. However, the puzzles were also pretty easy, the dungeons were too short and the bosses were easy (I only died on one of them out of the 10 or so bosses in the entire game). Also, I didn't figure out that you could capture fairies with the net until the last boss (so I never got that magic last-minute save). But with all that being said, the charm far outweighs any shortcomings. Just like games of the past, you are after the Triforce. However, before you can go after it you need to get a red, blue and green medallion to unlock the Master Sword. You then have to beat 7 dungeons to unlock the 7 stages. We've heard this before. What ties this game together and makes it feel fresh is the fact that you can turn yourself into a 2D painting and travel on walls. Because of this, the puzzles feel entirely fresh and because of that, so does the game. The game is short at about 15 hours, but it's an awesome 15 hours. This is just one of the many reasons that the 3DS might be the best system of all time. Play this. Anyway, it's always great to log a Zelda game This one lives up to the games that came before it.

StreetFighter X Tekken

Well here's a combo that doesn't make sense. Was anyone clamoring for this? Anyway, it quickly won me over because Pac Man is a playable character. So is a giant stuffed bear. Naturally, that was my team and we fought Red Necks in a jungle full of dinosaurs. Like most fighting games, I beat this in about 10 minutes. It still counts.

Urban Trials Freestyle

Well this game was a treat. It's a little bit elastomania (last game I played like this) with a bit of a heavier focus on finishing in a certain time. Because time is such a factor, the obstacles aren't quite as difficult as I would've expected. However, some of the scores required to open up other levels are pretty high. Anyway, it was a great mobile game because you could pick it up and play a level or two and put it down. I was impressed with the graphics and would recommend it to just about anyone. It was super addictive.

The Newsroom Season 1

So Danielle and I chose this as a show that we might both like. It's okay television. But that's about it. The dialogue is ridiculously unrealistic (which is to be expected) and it is about as fair and balanced as Bill O'Reilly. It makes the news out to be some super important, courageous profession. Jeff Daniels spends most of the time fighting the network to make sure he can tell the "unbiased" news. With having the benefit of perfect hindsight when telling the news (the show focuses on actual events), The Newsroom gets to get super political and make their stance known on things like the Casey Anthony story and how it was covered. It's sorta annoying because I don't watch shows to get all political and shit. It's mildly entertaining and season 2 seems to be a bit better, but I'm not too impressed so far.

Fast & Furious 6

I was foolish last summer and didn't go out to see the latest Fast and the Furious movie in theaters. This was a mistake. I readily admit this. Finally after all these months I was able to right this wrong and see what Dom, Brian and the gang were up to lately on a much smaller screen, my tv. Still though, this movie like the last few Fast and Furious installments has just turned up the insanity; there's far fewer underground street races, but they're replaced with huge big-budget action sequences that still manage to suit the series well. For instance towards the end of the movie our heroes were chasing a speeding military tank down a highway, and I thought, yeah, that's a pretty ridiculous chase to end the movie. I was wrong! A chase that was about 100 times more ridiculous came a few minutes after that one ended! I assume everyone reading this has seen this movie, but if you haven't, please correct this problem immediately.

Workaholics: Season 4

Four seasons in, and Workaholics is still going strong. "Strong" is, of course, a relative term here; the show is one of the least essential and overall dumbest things I've seen. But it's still something I watch, which says plenty about me, but also at least a little bit about Workaholics itself. The humor here is juvenile and disgusting and all, but it's a fairly consistently rewarding juvenile and disgusting humor. I don't know if this should be attributed to the editing, the production, the sound-mixing - truly, I don't know. But there's something about Workaholics that, after forty-three episodes, I still enjoy. Plenty of shows have aimed far higher and come up much shorter, I guess.

The Handmaid's Tale

Here's a dystopian "speculative fiction" novel from thirty years ago that deals heavily in gender politics. In a not-distant future, a super-fundamentalist Christian sect has taken over the government and ushered in a new world order. Abortions, homosexuality, and all religions other than this "Sons of Jacob" sect of Christianity have been outlawed and are punishable by death. Women are no longer allowed to own any property, they must always cover themselves from head to toe out in public, and if they are unable to bear healthy children after six years of trying - with old and mostly sterile men, it turns out - they're shipped out to "the colonies," a vaguely terrifying prospect. Correspondingly, all women are perpetually on suicide watch.

As with any piece of dystopian fiction, the difference between a compelling read and some forgettable tripe lies largely with the world-building, and perhaps more specifically, the way the world is revealed to the reader. My biggest gripe with Nineteen Eighty-Four was how its entire second act was basically just a long-winded essay on Orwell's future world. It's impressive and important to flesh out your imagined setting in any work of fiction, but beating the reader over the head with nothing but details and histories is ill-suited for story-telling.

Margaret Atwood passes that test easily here. Although the novel mostly consisted of the main character slowly revealing more and more about this new society, it unfolded in an interesting and easy-to-digest manner. It would have been one thing for her to say, "imagine, one day, a super-Christian nation where…" and then expand upon such a hypothetical totalitarian state for forty pages or so, but here we're able to connect with a woman from that world and to see it through her eyes.

The whole thing ends grimly and without much of a conclusion for several of the characters, beyond those who things end poorly for, and at first I was a little annoyed at the open-endedness of the story. But I soon realized that the story itself, and its ending, didn't really matter here; the purpose of the book was to come up with a frightening satirical super-Christian society and then breathe some life into it in the form of relatable and understandable characters.

I was a big fan of this one, and I'll surely be back with more from Margaret Atwood in the future.

A Song of Ice and Fire: Book I: A Game of Thrones

Looks like I'm about to tumble down this rabbit hole. Hopefully I'll be slow enough when reading these books that GRRM will be done with the series by the time I'm all caught up. 

So, this book is more or less accurately represented in the first season of HBO's adaptation. While there are a few differences (at least I thought there was only a few until I checked A Game of Thrones' wikia page), the most glaring -- and slightly disturbing -- difference is how young Martin wrote all the kids to be in books. Daenerys in particular bothered me. In the show, Dany seems to look in and around the age of 18 -- considering we see her naked, she should be. Then in the book, it's revealed that she's something like 13 years old. AH! I feel so dirty now. I've been told a reason why Martin may have wrote the kids so young is that the series is intended to follow them for years, watching them as they grow up. Not having read any further into the series, I have no clue if this theory holds true. The only thing I can say based off my impression of the TV adaptation is that not much time has elapse in these past four seasons (which has roughly covered up through books III and IV, maybe?). Feels like maybe a year or so at the most. Who can really tell? 

All that aside, the book was really enjoyable and provides the much needed context to really help understand the characters in this world. Names and faces fly past you in the TV show to the point where it's easy to get lost or forget more minor details. The book helps cement those details. I am looking forward to the rest of the series as the plots for the books and TV show begin to depart more from one another. 

Ah, there's one other big difference that bothered me. The final scene of the book that has Dany emerging from the fire with the three dragons not just hanging in her arms, but nursing on her breast milk. Taking the whole "Mother of Dragons" title a little too serious? You know what? I respect the storytelling and I respect the writing, but maybe don't write tales of prepubescent, little girls getting slammed by a barbarian and breastfeeding dragons...

...when you look like a pedophile who lures children onto his tugboat with promises of candy and tickling. Just saying. 

#pleasedontsue

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.