REVIEW: The Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

The Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry 

Publication date: Jan 24, 2006 

Ember

Source: Bought Kindle Version

240 Pages

The Giver Quartet #2

Links : Goodreads / Amazon 

In her strongest work to date, Lois Lowry once again creates a mysterious but plausible future world. It is a society ruled by savagery and deceit that shuns and discards the weak. Left orphaned and physically flawed, young Kira faces a frightening, uncertain future. Blessed with an almost magical talent that keeps her alive, she struggles with ever broadening responsibilities in her quest for truth, discovering things that will change her life forever.

As she did in The Giver, Lowry challenges readers to imagine what our world could become, and what will be considered valuable. Every reader will be taken by Kira's plight and will long ponder her haunting world and the hope for the future.

                    My Thoughts                   

After reading The Giver and loving it I went to see the movie, which was such a powerful film!!! I was definitely riding a high from this book and was eager to continue the series. Before I started reading The Gathering Blue I learned that it did not however,  follow Jonas, nor was it based on his community that he lived in. So, I approached this story, saddened, but with the knowledge and understanding that it was to be a completely different story. 

 There were some things that I did like about The Gathering Blue, but overall I thought the story was very slow, and it took a long time for things to happen, or events to unfold in this story v.s. The Giver. 

I did like that this story took place I guess you would say in the same "world" as The Giver, but in a different community with its own set of unique rules. 

For those of you wondering if you should read The Gathering Blue to continue the series my answer is still yes, while this book is harder to get through, I can see where certain characters will play an important role in the books to come. I have already started book three in the series , The Messenger, and some of the secondary characters from The Gathering Blue are now Main characters in The Messenger. I am not far in the book right now, but I can confirm that Jonas and Gabe both make an appearance. 

Plot : Slow and a bit dragging at times, but now after I started book 3, The Messenger, I know that a lot of The Gathering Blue was the way it was to help build up to The Messenger. 

Characters: Good, I enjoyed Kira and Thomas. Especially Thomas. 

Cover: This newer cover I like ( light blue with threads all over, very appropriate with the needle. ) I enjoy when series have similar matching covers, so I am glad the the covers got a makeover. 

Rating: 3 Stars !  

Check out my review for the Giver ! 

If you haven't read The Giver, book one in the series, check out this the movie trailer! 

                           About The Author                             

From the time I was eight or nine, I wanted to be a writer. Writing was what I liked best in school; it was what I did best in school.

I was a solitary child, born the middle of three, who lived in the world of books and my own imagination. There are some children, and I was this kind of child, who are introverts and love to read — who prefer to curl up with a book than to hang out with friends or play at the ball field. Children like that begin to develop a feeling for language and for story. And that was true for me — that's how I became a writer.

My books have varied in content and in style. Yet it seems to me that all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections. A Summer to Die, my first book, is a fictionalized retelling of the early death of my sister, and of the effect of such a loss on a family. Number the Stars, set in a different culture and era, tells of the same things: the role that we humans play in the lives of our fellow beings.

The Giver takes place against the background of yet another very different culture and time. Though broader in scope than my earlier books, it nonetheless speaks to the same concern: the vital need for humans to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment.

I use the Anastasia books to make myself laugh and to lighten up between serious books. But I also use them to deal with serious topics in a different way, disguised by humor.

I think it is my own children, all of them grown now, who have caused me to expand my view. One of my sons was a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force; as a mother during the Gulf War, I was newly stunned into fear for the world and a heightened awareness of the necessity to find a way to end conflict. One of my daughters has become disabled as a result of the disease of the central nervous system; through her, I have a new and passionate awareness of the importance of human connections that transcend physical differences.

And I have grandchildren now. For them, I feel a greater urgency to do what I can to convey the knowledge that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future as human beings depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another.