This is the third book in the loosely-related trilogy including The Giver and Gathering Blue. It is more of a sequel to Gathering Blue, but ties The Giver in and answers all the questions I had at the end of both books. The protagonist, Matty, is Kira’s friend in Gathering Blue. He has left their community to live with Kira’s father in a community called Village. Village is a place where the wounded, abused, hungry, and outcast come for refuge. In the world where some sort of disaster has happened, allowing various communities with different rules to sprout all over the place in little mini-governments, it seems many communities are harsh and unforgiving. Almost primitive. But in Village, there is compassion and harmony.

That is, until about six years after Matty comes to Village. Something dark begins to seep into the community and its people. People begin to trade their “true selves” for material objects, leading to all sorts of cruelty among them. A band of them get together and vote to close Village to outsiders. Kira still lives outside the village, and Matty knows he must bring her back before the borders close, or she and her father will never see each other again. He sets off through an increasingly treacherous Forest on a dangerous and tragic mission.

I admit, I breathed a sigh of relief at the end of this book. The other two ended with so many questions left unanswered. Their endings felt rushed, as if another 5,000 words or so were needed to feel right. Messenger, while still rushed at the end, at least resolved itself. Sure, there were some questions unanswered – like what the role of Tradesman was, and how that interplayed with the selfishness and cruelty seeping throughout Village – but those questions were less important in the grand scheme of things. By the end, it’s clear this book is mostly metaphor, less grounded in reality than the other two were. Despite the fact that we don’t have all the answers, we do know what happens next, and where the future will go. I liked that. I liked the closure.

On the other hand, what I didn’t like about this book was the amount of mysticism in it. The other two had a certain amount of psychic fantastical elements. Jonas can “see beyond,” and psychically receives memories from his mentor in The Giver. In Gathering Blue, Kira can see the future through her weaving, and a couple other characters have similar abilities. In this book, Matty has the ability to heal. That, I can deal with. What bothered me was that in this book, Forest became a magic element. Plants grew at amazing speeds; twigs would visibly grow, sharpen, and attack people; swamps or rivers magically appeared where they’d never been before. When Forest decided villagers should no longer enter it, it gave them warnings, then “entrapped” them in vines, killing them, the next time they came in. At first, I thought this was all just superstition, and when people got lost/killed/hurt in the forest, people assumed it was due to magical properties. However, it becomes clear during Matty and Kira’s journey that the magic in Forest is not imagination or superstition. Forest is a living creature that can think and act for itself, hence worthy of a full name and not just a location (i.e. “the forest”). The book became too magical for me. Too fantastical. I was disappointed by it, because prior to that, the trilogy had obeyed primary logic, with only the psychic abilities thrown in. I liked that. I didn’t like this.

However, despite not really liking Forest and its role in the book, I still didn’t want to put the book down. Lowry is great at capturing my attention and demanding that I read all in one sitting. Her books are fairly short, which is good considering I probably wouldn’t sleep otherwise. Once I pick one of her books up, I don’t really put it down until I’m done. She is a really, really good writer.

Of the trilogy, I think I like The Giver the best, and it will be interesting to go back and reread it now that I know what happens to Jonas beyond the end.