After leaving Society to desperately seek The Rising, and each other, Cassia and Ky have found what they were looking for, but at the cost of losing each other yet again. Cassia is assigned undercover in Central city, Ky outside the borders, an airship pilot with Indie. Xander is a medic, with a secret. All too soon, everything shifts again.
Hardcover, Dutton, 512 pagesPublished November 13th 2012 by Penguin
(info grabbed from GoodReads)
This review is pretty spoiler free, so if you haven’t
read Matched or Crossed there’s really no risk reading.
The ending to the Matched trilogy was truly beautiful. All of the pieces came together like a
puzzle, finally showing a bigger picture.
It was a superb ending to a great series. However, until the ending, I have to admit I
was kind of bored. I tend to like slower
paced books where I can get lost in the details and have the author paint a
vivid scene for me, but I didn’t get that so much from Reached.
Probably my biggest gripe is the switching of
characters. I don’t typically like
alternating perspectives and Reached
is no exception. There were three
perspectives (Cassia, Ky, and Xander) rotating each chapter and for a majority
of the book, with these characters were in different cities doing different
things. It was madly disorienting. They obviously did eventually come together,
and when they did the confusion was pretty much eliminated as you didn’t have
to remember what that character was doing in the last chapter they narrated as
much. I felt it made reading the book
much like a jerky car ride, with a speed bump placed at the beginning of every
chapter.
The reason I think I became so bored at points was
that there was very little going on. I
don’t know if it was intended for build up, because that is for sure not what
it did for me. There was simply a lot of
waiting for anything to happen. When
things finally did happen, well… If you were hoping for a blaze of glory
finale, you will be disappointed. It
could be said (and I am saying it) that Reached
exemplifies a quote of TS Eliot:
This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper
So why am I rating the book well if I was
bored? Well yeah, the ending was just that
good. Maybe part of me is just happy I’m
through it, but I don’t think that is the only reason. If you haven’t read the Matched trilogy at
all and were maybe thinking about reading it, TRY TO READ THEM CLOSE
TOGETHER. There are a lot of minor
characters introduced and minute details that are easy to lose track of between
books. There would be times were someone
from a previous book would be mentioned and I’d be sitting there like “Who?” Reading them within the span of a month or
two versus reading them over the span of a year or two would probably make all
the difference in that regard.
Final Thought: Reached gets 3 out of 5 toadstools
The
Matched Trilogy as a whole gets 4 out of
5
This review is also posted on GoodReads.
Mmmm I'm always interested to hear opinions on multiple points of view because I write them... And I'm very intrigued to know how the ending could be "just that good" despite the pacing issues--guess I should find out for myself!
ReplyDeleteIt is a great series. Slower paced than many of the other dystopian trilogies out there, but so worth a read! Though a couple books that are great examples of multiple POVs (in my humble opinion) are The Sweetest Spell by Suzanne Selfors and Sisters Red and Fathomless by Jackson Pearce.
Delete