Second installment to Youth classic, "The Giver." Required in numerous 8th/9th grade English classrooms. Introducing the idea of a utopian society to youth for the 1st time. The well known Trilogy also includes a third book, Gathering Blue. Only recently for the 20th Anniversary of "The Giver" author, Lois Lowry has written a 4th book called, "The Son" now available as of Oct 2012. Which makes the series a fourquet and answers the many hanging questions left by the "The Giver" Reading the two, middle books is not entirely necessary as the "The son" is more a sequel to the 1st book, "The Giver."
I’m very conflicted about this book... as a “companion” to The Giver it falls totally flat. As a novel it its own right it’s... fine. I enjoyed The Giver and Gathering Blue as separate works, and was excited to read this to tie them together but it feels so disconnected from the worlds of both.
There were also passages that directly conflicted with the previous book, really disappointing from an editing standpoint.
If this was presented as its own story I may be able to give it a 3 or 4 star rating. But it’s the third book of a quartet and it just doesn’t hit the standard that The Giver sets.
The last two books in this series ([b:The Giver|3636|The Giver (The Giver, #1)|Lois Lowry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1342493368l/3636.SY75.jpg|2543234] and [b:Gathering Blue|12936|Gathering Blue (The Giver, #2)|Lois Lowry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388195391l/12936.SY75.jpg|2134456]) were completely different stories involving distinct characters and set in different locales. This is the book that brings those two together: we get to meet Jonas again, and Matty, and Kira, and Kira’s father.
In the first two books, the villages started out feeling idyllic and utopian, but as we got deeper into the story, we discovered that things weren’t as they appeared and it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. In this one, the village IS an idyllic utopia, but something happens that corrupts everything.
And all I can say is... wow. It’s amazing. It shows us that, no matter how perfect things are at the outset, human beings will always screw it up with their own selfish greed. Something’s going seriously wrong in …
The last two books in this series ([b:The Giver|3636|The Giver (The Giver, #1)|Lois Lowry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1342493368l/3636.SY75.jpg|2543234] and [b:Gathering Blue|12936|Gathering Blue (The Giver, #2)|Lois Lowry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388195391l/12936.SY75.jpg|2134456]) were completely different stories involving distinct characters and set in different locales. This is the book that brings those two together: we get to meet Jonas again, and Matty, and Kira, and Kira’s father.
In the first two books, the villages started out feeling idyllic and utopian, but as we got deeper into the story, we discovered that things weren’t as they appeared and it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. In this one, the village IS an idyllic utopia, but something happens that corrupts everything.
And all I can say is... wow. It’s amazing. It shows us that, no matter how perfect things are at the outset, human beings will always screw it up with their own selfish greed. Something’s going seriously wrong in the village, and the author knows just how to pace it so it seems benign and easily fixable in the beginning, but escalates to horrors that nobody could have imagined possible.
The world-building is, again, perfect, the story is perfect, everything is just... perfect. And that ending just about left me literally gasping for breath!
