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jedikermit 's review for:
Crossed
by Ally Condie
A few years back, like many of you, I fell in love with the young adult book The Hunger Games. That vision of a dystopian future had it all. Violence, a messy love triangle, a complicated but winning heroine. The success of that trilogy sparked a wave of publishing of Young Adult books that I've enjoyed, and last year's Matched by Ally Condie was one of my favorites. Similar to The Hunger Games in some ways, it has a female protagonist, two male heroes she needs to choose between, and is set in a dystopian future...but in many ways I liked Matched even more than The Hunger Games. It was a more thoughtful book, a more cerebral one that celebrated art, history, the written word. A recurring theme in the book was Cassia's drive to find poetry and literature that had been outlawed by the Society, and this led to a greater determination to plan her own future with her love, Ky. Xander, the other guy in her life was her "match" by the Society, and he's a great guy, but she loves Ky more.
Crossed, the second book in the Matched Trilogy, focuses narrowly on Ky and Cassia, leaving behind the characters and settings of the first book. Doing that, the series loses some momentum. Ky has been banished from the Society and taken to the wilderness outside. There, he joins other outcasts who will basically be sacrificial victims in a war that may or may not be waged by the Society against its own people. Cassia makes the difficult decision to get herself cast out as well, giving her the chance to follow Ky into the frightening outside world.
The Society has regulated all aspects of life, and for Cassia it's unsettling to be in the natural world. Dirty, unplanned, unpredictable. What she could gain, and what she hopes to find, is the self-determination that's been denied her. That freedom leads her to Ky, and they, along with some new allies, into a place called the Carving. The Carving is a hideout, based on the geography of Southern Utah (especially Capitol Reef National Park) filled with slot canyons, caverns and cliffs where they hope to avoid capture by the Society. Ky grew up here for a time in a village, which was destroyed along with his parents when he was a child. In the Carving they discover secrets about the Society, but we also learn more about Ky, and some of the secrets he's been keeping from Cassia.
As a native Utahn who spends a lot of time in Southern Utah, I was expecting to love this book even more than the first due to the setting, but the scenes in the Carving didn't move the narrative along enough. Condie's descriptions of the scenery are vivid and clearly from someone who's spent a lot of time there herself, but were extraneous to the story she's telling.
This is a good story, and well-told, but it's at times confusing. It wasn't the fast-paced read of the first novel in the series, and at times it felt like the characters were just wandering through the Carving with no real progress in their journey or their story. By the end of the book, I was excited to see where Cassia, Ky, and Xander's stories would be going, but for most of Crossed I felt like I was impatiently waiting for their stories to start. If you're a fan of Young Adult fiction, I still recommend Matched and Crossed, but be prepared for a slower, less compelling read with the second volume.
Crossed, the second book in the Matched Trilogy, focuses narrowly on Ky and Cassia, leaving behind the characters and settings of the first book. Doing that, the series loses some momentum. Ky has been banished from the Society and taken to the wilderness outside. There, he joins other outcasts who will basically be sacrificial victims in a war that may or may not be waged by the Society against its own people. Cassia makes the difficult decision to get herself cast out as well, giving her the chance to follow Ky into the frightening outside world.
The Society has regulated all aspects of life, and for Cassia it's unsettling to be in the natural world. Dirty, unplanned, unpredictable. What she could gain, and what she hopes to find, is the self-determination that's been denied her. That freedom leads her to Ky, and they, along with some new allies, into a place called the Carving. The Carving is a hideout, based on the geography of Southern Utah (especially Capitol Reef National Park) filled with slot canyons, caverns and cliffs where they hope to avoid capture by the Society. Ky grew up here for a time in a village, which was destroyed along with his parents when he was a child. In the Carving they discover secrets about the Society, but we also learn more about Ky, and some of the secrets he's been keeping from Cassia.
As a native Utahn who spends a lot of time in Southern Utah, I was expecting to love this book even more than the first due to the setting, but the scenes in the Carving didn't move the narrative along enough. Condie's descriptions of the scenery are vivid and clearly from someone who's spent a lot of time there herself, but were extraneous to the story she's telling.
This is a good story, and well-told, but it's at times confusing. It wasn't the fast-paced read of the first novel in the series, and at times it felt like the characters were just wandering through the Carving with no real progress in their journey or their story. By the end of the book, I was excited to see where Cassia, Ky, and Xander's stories would be going, but for most of Crossed I felt like I was impatiently waiting for their stories to start. If you're a fan of Young Adult fiction, I still recommend Matched and Crossed, but be prepared for a slower, less compelling read with the second volume.