I am totally stoked for the Youth Literature Seminar in November. Ally Condie is coming to town, and to distract myself from all the other books I have to read for school, I picked up Matched and Crossed. I'm waiting on my friend to finish Reached so that I can finish the trilogy.
In a future where the Society has deemed culture too cluttered, art, music, poetry, novels and more have been trimmed down to 100 key items each - 100 poems, 100 songs... Cassia Reyes has never known anything different and she is excited to be attending her Match Banquet. From the time they turn 17 young men and women are matched to the person with whom they will have the most optimum compatibility. Cassia has chosen a beautiful green silk dress for her banquet, and is only slightly surprised when she is matched with her best friend Xander. What does surprise her, is the face that appears on the microcard given to her after the match. It should contain information all about Xander for her to review. Instead Ky Markham's face flashes before her. Ky shouldn't have been matched. He's an aberration and not eligible to be matched. Suddenly, Ky shows up everywhere in Cassia's life. She sees him at leisure time, they are paired during hiking, and through these interactions, she starts to fall in love with him.
Crossed focuses on the consequences of Cassia and Ky's relationship, and develops the subtext of the Society and the Rising. A lot of these two books remind me of 1984. The idea that citizens are always being watched, and individuality is not a thing to be valued. Citizens don't even know how to write anymore - they can only type. The Society has trained the citizens to be skilled in only one trade to better manage them.
I admit, Matched was difficult for me to get into at first, as I was listening to it on CD in my car and the narrator was using this annoying, breathy voice. It was just bad. I also expected more from it. I felt like it was supposed to be a dystopic fiction with action and drama, but it was trying to be a romance. It felt like the story was a little schizophrenic. Crossed made up for that though. Cassia is a total dingbat who can't read the expressions on her companions' faces, but the reader can clearly understand the darker nature of what is going on, despite Cassia being unable. I love the world building in this series. I think Ally Condie did a fantastic job of recreating a world with which we as readers can be familiar, and then making it changing it just enough to be almost unrecognizable and sinister. I have lots of suspicions about who the Enemy is, and what the Rising is really about, but I'll have to wait for Reached to find out.
