REVIEW: The Messenger by Lois Lowry ( Giver #3 )

The Messenger by Lois Lowry 

Publication date: Aug 22, 2006 

Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers

Source: Bought Kindle Version

169 Pages

The Giver Quartet #3

Links : Goodreads / Amazon 

"Messenger" is the masterful third novel in the Giver Quartet, which began with the dystopian bestseller "The Giver, " now a major motion picture.
Matty has lived in Village and flourished under the guidance of Seer, a blind man known for his special sight. Village once welcomed newcomers, but something sinister has seeped into Village and the people have voted to close it to outsiders. Matty has been invaluable as a messenger. Now he must risk everything to make one last journey through the treacherous forest with his only weapon, a power he unexpectedly discovers within himself.

                    My Thoughts                   

I originally had issues with the second book in the series The Gathering Blue. While originally I felt that it came out of nowhere, I can now see and appreciate how everything is connected.

I was worried after reading The Gathering Blue that the rest of the series would not be as good or addicting as the The Giver was, but I was wrong.  The Messenger was great! Matt who was a secondary character in The Gathering Blue is now the Main character in The Messenger. The Messenger shows his life with the Seer ( Kira's father ) in the other village where Jonas is the leader. Matty is the only one who can travel through the forrest, and must do so one last time to bring Kira to the village.  

At this point I still wasn't sure how all this would come back and tie into Jonas and Gabe's story, but The Messenger was a much easier read than the previous book in the series and Jonas played a bigger role. 

Plot : Starting to pick up.  Better than book 2

Characters: Much more invested in these characters, I liked Matt the best in book 2, very glad that he was the main focus of book 3. Got to see Jonas play a bigger role. Very happy with the characters in the village. 

Cover: Matches well in the series

Rating: 4 Stars !  

Check out my review for the other books in The Giver Series 

The Giver

The Gathering Blue 

                           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.