Book #32 of 2017:
Messenger by Lois Lowry (The Giver #3)
The Giver series definitely offers diminishing returns as it goes along. This third book at least proves that the books are a single series by tying together the otherwise unconnected first and second novels, although once again there’s a new sort of magic that doesn’t fit with what we’ve been shown before. But the plot of Messenger is absurdly simple, the climax comes out of nowhere, and there’s a weird Needful Things subplot that could be interesting if it weren’t so underdeveloped. It’s neat to see Jonas from The Giver again, but we still get no further development or insights into the society that he left at the end of that book, and very little about the wider world of this setting. We don’t even get to see any specific reforms that Kira brought about in her community, even though that was the explicit promise that the second book ended on. So basically this book was a disappointment all the way through.
★☆☆☆☆
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 