Review:the Matched trilogy, by Ally Condie

Book Review: the Matched trilogy: Matched, Crossed, Reached, by Ally Condie

Book Description of book 1 from goodreads.com: Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.

The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

My review:

Matched:
I like Cassia and her family, they are reliable, likable characters. The romance between her and Ky is also a good, productive one.  I'm even okay with the Cassia/Ky/Xander love triangle although I admit I don't always see why the boys love Cassia so much. Still Cassia actually grows and learns things about the world and herself from her romance, which is extremely rare in other YA romances. Poems, tales,  writing, the Sisyphus myth and art are meaningfully used.  The ending is also a good one.

The concept of the Society is a refreshing one. I like how the government in this dystopian world works, instead of giving us a cardboard cutout evil, violent government like The Hunger Games does, the Society uses a 'whip and candy' approach to keep people in check, they make the citizens believe that the Society is doing what's best for them while withholding information from them, and everyone seems to have a good, healthy life as long as they support the Society, don't ask too many questions and don't look too closely at what's happening to the second class or the third class citizens. I think it's a more believable  description for a  suppressing government that works.

Oh, yes. I simply don't believe that an evil government can stay in power by starving most of the citizens half to death for a long 70 plus years.

I also like how Cassia starts from being trusting and obedient to the Society, to slowly beginning to see the errors of Society's ways (of treating the second class and third class citizens, of stripping people of their choices), then to engage herself to small actions of disobedience. Her transformation is a believable one, since it'd be unrealistic for Cassia or even Ky to become freedom fighters right from the start.

Crossed:
Cassia goes through a journey of self-discovery in this book, and she makes a new alliance: Indie, who's a likable, strong girl even though not all of the things she does are innocent. Secrets are revealed to further the plot. But Ky's constant complains about his late father (a classical case of 'blaming the victim' here ) and how he doesn't want to join the Rising is tiring. Ky's bitterness is partly understandable but he spending years and an entire book to blame his father without gaining any insight beside 'resistance means death' makes him look like a whinny and a wimp.

What I found to be equally disappointing as Ky's lack of growth and insight is the lack of explanation on what is really going on in the Society. Why does the Society send second class teenagers to the outer regions to let them be killed by the Enemy? (I can understand the Society sending them to a labor camp, but I don't understand why they send those teens to be killed off by the 'supposed' Enemy) What's the purpose of sending those teens to die? Who're the Enemy, some invading foreign country or some rebels from within the Society? What's the Rising (the rebel group) and what they are up to?  We never know anything!

At the end of the book, it's slightly hinted that the Rising might not be what Cassia believes it to be, since it's noted that how the Rising runs business isn't so different from how the Society has ran it. I think it's a good idea to write that the rebels might not be a bunch of all good, all innocent people, still I hope the author would be able to explain her ideas more clearly in book 3.

Reached:
I'm seriously disappointed by this final book, I enjoyed the first two books of this series but Reached is as bad and messed up as Mockingjay had turned out to be. Starting from page 300 I must force myself to keep turning pages just to get the whole book over with. That's how bad the whole thing has become.

I appreciate that Ms. Condie's attempt to write something different in her series, I can tell she may try to avoid letting her final book fall into the 'everyone grips a weapon to take down the evil government' trapping, BUT SADLY MOST OF HER ATTEMPTS AT MAKING HER BOOK DIFFERENT DON'T WORK. And the rebellion I had waited for for so long gets reduced to the three main characters running around the clock to find some cure. Sorry, I don't think revolution and social reform can work out in this way!

As to the Society and the Rising, I barely know anything about neither of them even though I had already gone through three books. I'm so damn disappointed by this.

On the Society's side, all I have ever seen are a bunch of featureless Officials who are everywhere to do the Society's bidding, I've never seen a leader figure(s) who leads and runs the government. I'm sorry, how come an entire Society can be put into working order if it doesn't have a leader, or at least a council to run business!?

On the Rising's side, we finally meet the mysterious (current) Pilot in book 3, but once again I still know barely anything about him, saves that the Pilot has a great vocal, for most of the time he speaks to his people through a sound system, for most of the time I barely even know how he looks like! I'm sorry, but the leader of an rebellion is NOT allowed to have so paper-thin a personality! It's simply not acceptable!  Who would be willing to follow and fight for such a charmless leader if they don't even know him well enough!?

Outside of this two groups, we also got a bunch of exiles who make a bargain with the Rising for a one way ticket out of trouble. Those exiles are the people whom we see the most in the book, though I don't find any of them to be particularly likable and their 'stay out of trouble' mentality doesn't seem to be insightful to me.

Now, I must get down to what bugs me the most about Reached:

*major plot spoiler warning*

Surprisingly, the Rising takes the Society down within the first 100 pages, meeting barely any resistance. Oh really? So Ky and Indie, who are treated to be pilots for the Rising, don't even need to use a gun or any other weapons? What kind of rebellion is that!?

Okay, I know the Rising is supposed to use the Plague as a weapon against the Society, but COME ON! Even with half of the population being sick and immobile, still chaos would definitely break out under such situation and some of the Officials would try to fight back! I can't accept an rebellion can take over so easily.

I also think it's super dumb that an authority would try to become part of/overtake the rebellion once they realize there's an rebellion going on. Come on! Has anyone ever seen such a thing in history? Did the British government tried to take IRA over or become part of them when IRA was rebelling against the British government? No, right?  

We are also told that Indie died in the end due to some suicide stunt. But I can't believe Indie would just go killing herself after she learned she had the Plague. It's not like her.

By the way, I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks Ky and Indie would be better off together, instead of Ky and Cassia.

As to the love triangle, I don't care so much about it, we all know that Ky and Cassia are going to be together anyway. But I think shoving Xander to Lei is just....cheap.

As to the characters, Cassia seems to just follow things through passively. I don't find her to be interested. The drama about her being betrayed by the Archivist is just a very forced plot device to satisfy a teenager's 'all adults are bad and not trustworthy' mentality. I mean, supposedly the Archivist stole from Cassia, but why not make a bargain with Cassia first when Cassia clearly has something which she would desire in exchange for the precious items she possesses? By the way, the Archivist doesn't even act like she personally wants Cassia's items, she doesn't even ask to trade the items first! That's unbelievable.

Plus, I barely know what the Rising wants to do with Cassia by sending her back to the Society at the end of book 2. They don't ask her to do any task while she is back. Also I find it super dumb for the Society to take Cassia right back without any question after she had gone missing in the outer region.

Don't get me wrong, I think Ky is great in Matched, but he spends Crossed and Reached complaining about his late father and whining about not wanting to join the Rising and not trusting them is tiring.

On the other hand, Xander grows a lot as a character, I like how he goes through his journey of self-discovery. I also like how he and Cassia both came to realize their paths had been divided by their different experiences and choices. It's a realistic end for their relationship.

*end of spoiler*