This is the third and final installment of the Matched series of dystopian YA novels by Ally Condie. The three main characters, Cassia, Xander, and Ky, have all left the Society to join the Rising, but at high costs. Cassia is stationed as an undercover sorter working in Central. Ky is a Rising pilot, flying airships here and there and everywhere to aid their cause. And Xander is an undercover medic working in Camas. A major outbreak of a strange illness catapults the entire world into chaos, and the three friends have to rely on each other to survive and to save others.
I
enjoyed this enough, but the ending just didn't satisfy me. I felt like
the love between Cassia and Ky wasn't believable, probably because
they were so rarely together. I couldn't understand why they were so
completely devoted to each other when the last time they had any true
quality time together was on the hill...in the first book. And the fact
that all three of them - Cassia, Ky, and Xander - were so altruistic and
completely selfless in their total devotion to one another was
unbelievable to me. They are still teenagers, right? Their selflessness
and sacrifice to each other (well, at least the boys' to Cassia and to
each other) was just not believable. Maybe living in conditions such as
those (in the Society), and seeing all the death and destruction that
they saw caused them to grow up really fast, but I still feel that there
would have been some hint of jealousy or selfish notions on someone's
part.
There was too much external conflict in these books, and not enough of
an internal conflict to make it compelling. I kind of started to feel
like the Plague parts were dragging. I'd had enough of that story line
by the end. My feelings toward Cassia were consistent throughout - she's
my lest favorite character in this story. I like Xander and Ky more, by
far. I wonder if that was the author's intent. All in all, an
interesting premise for a dystopian story, and pretty well executed. I'm
glad I read this one, but I believe the first book was the strongest of
the three. Three stars from me.
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Read about the author, Ally Condie, on Goodreads.com.
Matched is a pretty
formulaic dystopian novel that smacks of The Hunger Games and older,
Orwellian speculative fiction. But it's well-written and pretty quickly
paced, so it sucked me in and held my attention the entire book. You
have to suspend belief for a good portion of it, but if you just read it
for entertainment and enjoyment's sake, you shouldn't be disappointed.
It's easy to feel depressed reading about the world of Matched; I had a
particularly difficult time reading about Cassia's grandfather and his
Final Banquet. The whole world seems bleak and hopeless, the characters
all just robots. But then there is a spark of hope, and that spark
ignites something in a couple of characters that makes them yearn to be
different, to make their own choices. And it's good enough to make you
want to root for them, and ultimately read to the end.
I want to
know how these people can read and type and use computers, but they
don't know how to write. That makes absolutely NO sense to me. Also,
everyone is matched and their future spouses chosen for them (and all at
the age of 17? Is there no possibility that someone's perfect match
might be older or younger than themselves? Ridiculous.), but it's
apparently okay for them to have flings with others on the side. What?
Okay, and what exactly IS a sorting job? Cassia spends all her time
"working" and preparing for her final job placement and she sorts. Sorts
what? Into what categories and for what purpose? What exactly does
sorting DO again? None of that is explained. I guess you just have to
gloss over it. Another thing that bothered me is the "war" in the Outer
Provinces. Who is warring against whom? And why? And why doesn't anyone
seem concerned about it? Why doesn't anyone in this "Society" try to
break or even bend the rules a little? Has human nature been perfectly
Match-bred out of them? That seems unlikely. So yeah, there is a lot in
the book that you just have to not question or look at too closely. But
even with that, it's a pretty well-written, interesting story
appropriate for the audience for which it's written.
I'm
definitely game for reading the next books in the series. I give it 3.5
stars.
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Read more about the author, Ally Condie, on Goodreads.
I enjoyed this (3.5 stars); I
am enjoying the series as a whole. I hated all the running in this one
though. I wish we had spent more time in one place, like at the end - I
wish we'd gotten to see more of the Rising. I liked Ky in the first book
and like him even more now. I feel like what we learned of Xander
doesn't really fit with the character that he was in the first book. Can
he have changed so much? I find it interesting that I do not like
Cassia as much as I feel I should, though I cannot exactly put my finger
on why. One issue in this part of the story that I felt was
unbelievable was how Cassia risked everything to chase after Ky, and
then almost as soon as they were reunited, it was so easy for her to
decide to be separated from him. Likewise, he, who apparently had
nothing but her (and whose thoughts of her were all that kept him alive
in the beginning), said mid-way through that he would NOT join the
Rising for her. Not even for her. And then two seconds later, he's all,
"Yeah, okay. I'll join too!" But then he's totally okay being away from
her. Huh? This middle installment opens up many new questions that
aren't answered, but I felt it wrapped up others from the first book
sufficiently enough that it didn't leave me unsatisfied. I'm still
trying to figure out though...how many different groups are there again?
The Farmers, The Society (are they humans or robots or aliens?), The
Rising, and The Enemy? Or are some of these one and the same?
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Learn more about the author, Ally Condie, on Goodreads.
