Book-a-Week 6: Lois Lowry's Sequels to The Giver
See goldvermilion87 madly catch up!
(But as previously noted -- so far ahead that I can count three books as one week's worth! *pats self on back*)
Week 6: Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son by Lois Lowry
If you have never read Lois Lowry's The Giver please put it on your reading list. It is an amazing work of children's literature. It tells the story of Jonas, a boy in a utopian, well-organized society who, when it comes his turn to be assigned a job is assigned one he didn't even know existed. It's a story that teaches about free-will and the cost of freedom, beauty and the pain of discovering it. I cannot recommend it enough.
I only recently learned that there are sequels to The Giver, so I read all three of them.
Pros:
I more or less enjoyed these while I was reading them. The style is decent and the storylines could be worse.
Cons:
The Giver was a mainly realistic dystopian novel with one fantastical twist that made all the difference. Almost like magical realism, but not as flamboyant. It didn't work as a proper fantasy world, but it carries you along so you don't stop to ask "how can this be?". These three sequels utterly ruin the believeability, because you keep going to other regions in this world where the magical elements are different. In fact, Son is about a girl going from a country where there is no color or music to some weird fishing country where they can not leave the beach they live on. And then going to a country where moral aspects of oneself can be sold to some weird demonic sort of person. There is never any discussion of the girl seeing color. That's pretty characteristic of all three of them. I'd say Gathering Blue was ok, Messenger was dismally bad, and Son was pretty mediocre. She lost the focus of The Giver and got herself tangled up in a whole series of disconnected ideas.
MY RECOMMENDATION: Stay away, unless you're really bored. They are to The Giver what Star Wars I, II, and III are to Star Wars IV, V, and VI.
(But as previously noted -- so far ahead that I can count three books as one week's worth! *pats self on back*)
Week 6: Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son by Lois Lowry
If you have never read Lois Lowry's The Giver please put it on your reading list. It is an amazing work of children's literature. It tells the story of Jonas, a boy in a utopian, well-organized society who, when it comes his turn to be assigned a job is assigned one he didn't even know existed. It's a story that teaches about free-will and the cost of freedom, beauty and the pain of discovering it. I cannot recommend it enough.
I only recently learned that there are sequels to The Giver, so I read all three of them.
Pros:
I more or less enjoyed these while I was reading them. The style is decent and the storylines could be worse.
Cons:
The Giver was a mainly realistic dystopian novel with one fantastical twist that made all the difference. Almost like magical realism, but not as flamboyant. It didn't work as a proper fantasy world, but it carries you along so you don't stop to ask "how can this be?". These three sequels utterly ruin the believeability, because you keep going to other regions in this world where the magical elements are different. In fact, Son is about a girl going from a country where there is no color or music to some weird fishing country where they can not leave the beach they live on. And then going to a country where moral aspects of oneself can be sold to some weird demonic sort of person. There is never any discussion of the girl seeing color. That's pretty characteristic of all three of them. I'd say Gathering Blue was ok, Messenger was dismally bad, and Son was pretty mediocre. She lost the focus of The Giver and got herself tangled up in a whole series of disconnected ideas.
MY RECOMMENDATION: Stay away, unless you're really bored. They are to The Giver what Star Wars I, II, and III are to Star Wars IV, V, and VI.