Crossed by Ally Condie
My rating: 2/5 cats
no one told ally condie that the second book in a trilogy is not a resting place, not an opportunity to catch your breath and count your cash. you gotta write something, too. is that mean? probably. is it true? definitely.
even though i wasn’t crazy about matched, i wanted to read the next installment just to see where she was going with her brand of dystopia, and with these characters. and also, truthfully, because i am such a sucker for covers, and i love these. i think she might put more time and care into maneuvering the art direction than the book’s contents.
i am reading only YA fiction now, because it is fast and i don’t have to focus too much on it because i have all sort of school that is more important than leisure reading. but this. who told YA fiction it could be boring? and ponderous? and be basically a set piece to store your leftover overblown teen-angst poetry? it is still brisk-paced, but you never get the sense that anything is actually happening, it is just a collection of words broken up by flashes of descriptive writing in italics that is meant to sound poetry but instead just gives unpleasant flashbacks to me at 16, weeping into my journal.
everyone seems heavily drugged in this. there is a lot of ruminating on the nature of beauty and color and art and loooove and poetry (god such bad poetry) and it just seems lazy. okay, so you are going to use two narrators in this one – good move, ambitious, but this is a split-narrative between two people who have the exact same voice! no wonder they are in love, it is as though they are the same. exact. character. with the same. exact. way of expressing themselves. what are the odds of these crazy kids finding each other?
and it’s not just them – none of the characters come into relief, for me. they are all hollow-seeming, mouthing their lines and emotions, working towards this idea of rebellion without seeming to understand what that means. i just don’t get a sense of urgency. should we leave the canyons?? yeah, after the rain. let’s read some more poems. are people after us?? shrug, prolly.
ramp this up!
this is what happens to people taken out of the rigid confines of the society? they lounge around looking through old maps and remember their mommies and manage to have a love triangle even when only two of its members are even in the book? the rising is going to eat you alive, unless everyone in that group shares the same voice, too, which would not surprise me, actually.
matched was ersatz dystopia, this book is ersatz survival, as the characters evade what has to be the slowest threat ever, and huddle together in caves and go rafting and climbing like some outward bound program for extremely sheltered teens. but leaving them plenty of time to become dewy-eyed with love and scribble away.
i marked a map for every death
for every ache and blow
my world was all a page of black
with nothing left of snow
i bet xander’s “big secret” is that he is glad cassia is gone because she is so flimsily constructed, and he is going to go into another book and try his luck there. love triangle – collapsed!
i do feel bad, but i am not saying anything i don’t feel to be true, and this woman is going to make a ton of money with this series and the inevitable movie rights, so i don’t need to be overly charitable here. this book just isn’t very good. but it won’t matter.
and because of my nature, i will indeed be reading the third book. but it had better SHINE. and not just the cover art this time.
