Messenger by Lois Lowry

   Oct 14: I think this entry will only make sense if you've read the book. Sorry.
   Oct 3: I continue my quest to make this blog entry easier to follow. It's a bit more difficult than I thought it would be.
   I don't understand how this book could possibly be considered a successful conclusion to The Giver and Gathering Blue. Lowry went from having the slight impossibility of passing on memories of past generations to people having special magical talents and inanimate objects telling them if a situation is ok or not.I was fine with this because the two books weren't necessarily set in the same world... Here's the thing: in Messenger she completely lost her mind!!
   I'm sorry; I really really don't understand how you go from "I can give you my memory" to "AAAAH!!! THE FOREST IS ALIVE AND IT DOESN'T WANT ME TO WALK THROUGH IT!!!" I'm not making this up!... well I am paraphrasing. I'm a bit upset about this apparently. I thought waiting until the next day to write about the book would let me calm down. Guess not.
   So I hated the ending of the book. But I already said I wouldn't be spoiler which is turning out to be more difficult then I originally realized. Well, here's a partial spoiler alert: Hmmm... let me just say that if a character falls in love within the first 1/2 of the book he's dead by the end. If he says after 1/2 way through the book in a distracted way that a girl is pretty then the two are meant to be; yes, Kira(Gathering Blue main character) and Jonah(The Giver main character) end up together as far as I can tell. How contrived can you get? And how did "I can see color and no one else can" turn in to "I can see far away but, wait for it, THE FOREST IS ANGRY AND IT DOESN'T WANT ME TO SEE!!!" And then there was the whole trade/market thing that really wasn't explained at all. I mean, this book had one of the worst endings I've ever encountered; nothing was tied together. Matty just "healed the earth" and made everything magically better. That is not what I consider "the main character solves his own problems!" That's a case of the author wanted to end the book so she gave the main character a vision of everything being better and then killed him and had other people reflect on how he had magically made everything better. I mean, come on! I think I just quoted one of my profs.
   Good stuff: um... Shoot. I think I laughed. It wasn't inappropriate. (I hate saying something wasn't something so the fact that I did say it says something.<--here we see the worst sentence in the history of humankind.) Lowry is a good writer; I think she just, I don't know, tried too hard? The story wasn't difficult to read and though I did throw the book when I was done, I didn't throw it that hard.
   My friend just sent me a message saying she didn't understand this review. Well, I didn't understand the book. But I'll work on clarifying this if people let me know what exactly doesn't make sense.
   Rating: Ok.
   Read again: Haha no.
   You read: I guess.
   Other's comments: J.H. completely agreed with me and didn't see my blog or hear my opinion first. However he said what I said in a much more understandable/professional way: He thought that Lowry was playing off the popularity of the other books. He said that the ending felt rushed and was not a good example for kids. She went way overboard on superstition and had more of a magical influence on the story than her previous plots. This is paraphrase; if JH goes on and sees this he can leave his own comment and I'll delete this.