Yes, it's another YA trilogy with a young heroine coming into her own and beginning to question the society she has been raised in although, unlike The Hunger Games, children in Cassia's world aren't forced to fight to the death. In Cassia's world, they're just told what to eat, where to work, when to play, and who to marry. Everything is coordinated for optimization - even lifespan. Disease has been genetically eradicated, but these people don't even know how to write. History has been shaved down to almost nothing so people have no understanding of where they came from. So, it's a corrupt place, full of guarded secrets, but the inhabitants are still relatively happy - for now.
We meet Cassia just as she's about to attend her Matching Ceremony where she'll be paired off with the boy she'll marry. The matches are based on compatibility generated through a machine. To Cassia's surprise, she's matched with her best friend, Xander. Unfortunately, she discovers she's also matched with Ky, another boy she knows. This anomaly in the system creates a fissure in Cassia's certainty about the life she lives and whisper of rebellion begins.
The flames are fanned by discovery of a Dylan Thomas poem whose words urge Cassia to fight against complacency (that gentle goodnight) leading her to reach out to Ky. The relationship she forms with Ky is full of "illegal" actions and knowledge. Equipped with information she isn't supposed to have, having feelings for a boy she's not supposed to love, Cassia really beings to question the system that has mapped out her entire life. We leave Cassia at a fork in the road - only book #2 will tell us which path she decides to take and I have a feeling the choice isn't so cut and dry.
This is an incredibly fast but entertaining read; on par with the other YA trilogies gaining in popularity. What I liked about Matched was that our culture is still part of the story. Whittled down but not forgotten, our reality still influences this fictionalized one. This story also focuses on choice rather than setting up a battle between the establishment and the underdog. There isn't any evil bearing down on Cassia (yet) rather the story is full of individuals simply making their own choices even though it's not something encouraged by the Officials.
There's a lot we don't know about Cassia's world and where her story will lead, but Matched has definitely got me hooked and looking forward to book number two.
I wanted to live this book. A spiritual journey of self-discovery feels right up my alley. Didn't I go through a period of self-examination (doesn't everybody)? Granted, I wasn't divorced, in my mid-thirties, and didn't need to travel around the world to find inner-peace, but shouldn't I connect with this woman on some level? I thought, Yes, but in truth, not even a little bit.
Elizabeth Gilbert is a broken woman in this book and an overwhelming whiner. Her personal hardships have no sense of importance to me so I just never cared if her journey of eating, praying, and loving worked out or not. So you had an identity crisis, so you felt alone in the world, so your heart broke - so what! Never once does she mention the good in her life before she leaves for her year-long journey and even while traveling she constantly corrupts the beauty and joy of her experiences by needless, dark thoughts. I wanted to yell at her to get over it already before she even left Italy.
I realize this was just who she was and this book is just what she went through but I fail to see how this journey transformed into such a popular memoir. You want to care about the person you're reading about and I honestly never did. I also learned nothing and I feel like a memoir should, in some way, be instructive or inspiring. I mean how obvious is the lesson that being happy with you = a happy life? DUH!
So Liz, thank you for introducing me to all the people you met in Italy, India, and Bali - I enjoyed them and learning more about the cultures of three countries I've never visited, but your story just wasn't for me and I should have known this was going to happen. I didn't even like the version of you they created for the movie and she was much less of a basket case.
This book is definitely Pratchett's homage to William Shakespeare. Even while our three witches toil and trouble around their cauldron, Pratchett has filled this story with allusions to Shakespearean plays. He even goes so far to have a traveling theater troupe complete with in-house playwright. A theater is being constructed toward the end of the story that reminds me of the Globe and direct quotes from Shakespeare weave their way into the narrative. I mean, "the play's the thing" here just as it was in Hamlet. I love that among the actual plot of the book this whole second layer exists full of literary allusion to keep watch for.
But the actual plot...it's your typical medieval story with a murdered King (now a ghost), meddling witches, roving performers, and an heir hidden in order to keep him alive. The difference though is the humor. This typical story is infused with so much humor the plot really is immaterial. The cast of characters is pretty traditional - there's even a court jester - but the stars of the show are our three witches: Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat. These complex ladies claim to never meddle in state affairs yet deftly manipulate time, space, and the strings of destiny for the entire kingdom of Lancre in order to bring the 'rightful' king to the throne. Expanding any further on the plot or the colorful cast of characters would almost give too much away, so I think I'll leave it at that.
I always laugh out loud when I read Pratchett. His wit and subtle humor and amazing control of the English language is a joy to read. And the extra perk of the Discworld books is that you don't have to read them in order to enjoy them - you can pick up whichever one you like whenever the mood strikes you. It's very nice to have such a stress-free series to read.
I wish this wasn't a trilogy. This is a family I could read about forever although they're getting too big to keep track of easily.
Into the third generation of the Lytton family we go as our matriarch, Celia Lytton's grandchildren begin to grow up and start lives of their own. Every bit as exciting and every big as much of a soap opera as the previous two books, No Angel and Something Dangerous, Into Temptation is slightly different only because there isn't a way going on to drive the action - everything happens to the family only with no global threat pushing them along.
Not that there are any dull moments to content with. This book is by far the busiest because of all the characters we're now keeping track of. Covering three full generations is a busy task - especially when characters keep getting married and having more children. And, nobody is safe from the drama of scandalous affairs, clinical depression, theft, tragedy, passionate fights - they're all there, written in such a realistic way to put you right in the middle of the action. There's really no much plot to share in specifics since I don't want to spoil anything and nothing should be stopping you from reading this third book if you've already enjoyed the first two.
I didn't want the trilogy to end. Who doesn't love a good literary soap opera? But, I love that I got to spend so much time enjoying these great, fully-formed, intricate characters and highly suggest you curl up with them too.
