Messenger, by Lois Lowry, is the third book in The Giver Quartet and the sequel book after Gathering Blue. This book shifts the spotlight to Matty, a side character (otherwise known as Matt) from Gathering Blue. Messenger takes place in Village where Matty and Seer, the same person as Kira’s blind father named Christopher in Gathering Blue, live a few years in the future of the previous book. Matty tries to discover his gift throughout the story and, similar to Kira’s experiences with her village, discovers dark secrets and fears with Village such as the dangers of the trade market and the Forest. Being, again, similar to Gathering Blue and The Giver’s plot, it does present a different depiction of a dystopian society where instead of using others to achieve goals in selfishness, it showed selfishness with trading away their valuable and/or intangible things such as appearance, family, and belongings for something that individual desires. For me, the plot in Messenger was a little less interesting than Gathering Blue’s plot since most of the interesting scenes happened during the last few chapters where Matty and Kira have to survive the Forest. Those chapters were very tense and kept me reading to the end where something amazing happens (I’m not going to say what happened for spoiler reasons). Otherwise, to a new reader to this series, this may be a mediocre book, especially if he or she does not notice the connectivity with the other books which is what made this book more interesting. For example, Matty meets Kira, the protagonist from Gathering Blue, again when he had to spread the news to the other settlements about the closing of Village. A more obscure character reference is the Leader, the leader of Village. Leader is Jonas, the main protagonist from The Giver! At first, I did not notice this until he mentioned he arrived at Village with his red sled. If you read The Giver, you should remember the mysterious ending of The Giver, where he traveled down a snow hill with a red sled with Gabriel and arrived at a village. This further confirms the books in The Giver series are connected and belong in the same universe! Overall, Messenger was a decent book to read, but I felt that Gathering Blue and The Giver were far more engaging and interesting to read for a few reasons. The Giver laid the foundation of the recurring plot and idea in its sequels, which the first time witnessing it was a lot more memorable. As you read the other sequels, it becomes repetitive and predictable to me what would happen unless Lowry decides to throw in some plot twists (which she did). Maybe because I can become bored easily when there is not much action or engaging scenes, so I recommend you take my opinion on Messenger with a grain of salt. You could like it a lot more than I do, which I say good for you! My opinion on Messenger or the sequels of The Giver should not determine what you think of the book because I know each book has the potential to spark some interest with some readers! For the last time, I highly recommend reading the series in order, starting with The Giver (yes, I have a natural bias with that book because I liked it a lot!).
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