Messenger (Worlds of Lois Lowry, Book 3) (original 2004; edition 2006)

While The Giver remains to be my favourite book, this was a well written and overall good wrap up to the trilogy. It answered a few questions left up in the air from the previous two book, and was a fairly good story.

Although I had a few issues with it, including how the ending felt rushed to get there, and there seemed to be a few inconsistencies with what I learned in previous books, although my memory is foggy on the exact details behind Jonas' abilities, but I remember them being slightly different than what was shown in this book. Overall, it was a good book, and the author managed to tie all the stories together quiet well. I couldn't help but grin when I read about the sled.

I like how there was a big time gap between the previous book, but I also disliked it. Because there were a few things that weren't properly explained, while others were tied up an brought into the story to finally answer questions. I think the main issue here is that it is a book for children, so the in-depth answers I want, just won't be there. I was confused by "forest" although I liked that element of magical realism in the book, I was also looking for a better explanation in how it tied into the story as a whole - I think this is also an issue that it's meant for a younger audience, so a in-depth explanation and analysis is just not going to be covered in the book. But it was still a very enjoyable read, and a great book to end the trilogy.

Also found on my book review blog Jules' Book Reviews - Messenger ( )

Messenger is the third book in the Giver trilogy, and gives insight into the life of Matty. Living in the village of Leader, Matty awaits the day when he can be given his true name. As he is the only one who is brave enough to enter the forest, Matty often runs messages from the village to other villages. For this reason, he hopes he can receive the name “Messenger”. However, as the forest begins to grow darker, the people of Leader’s village turn away from their true names and seek pleasures in tangible, materialistic things. It is up to Matty to bring Seer’s daughter, Kira, home to him, through the forest. It is the journey that will decide Matty’s true name, and true purpose. Adolescent readers learn from this touching novel that their true purpose is not always the one that they foresee for themselves, but that they may have a deeper meaning to others than what the original perceive in themselves.

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Pretty good story. It was CLEAN... you don't see that a lot in YA literature. I'm putting this on the outside reading list for my 9th and 10th graders. I think they will enjoy it. It's a quick enough read, and it's fast paced (though the ending sucks), so it will keep their interest. ( )

A wonderful conclusion to "The Giver" trilogy. Lowry brings all of her main characters together in the climax of the story. The Leader's search for freedom, Kira's quest for expression, and Matty's pursuit of a place where all are welcome culminates in this story of Village. Village is the outpost of freedom and hospitality in a post-apocalyptic world where people are categorized and marginalized. In some places in this world life has been distilled and specialized so that while everything appears to be good, there are no challenges, no freedoms, and the creative processes have been surrendered to sameness. Individuality is discouraged and deviation from the norm is dispatched quickly. In other places order is determined by those who have political and social power and enforced by material reward. Some are haves and the rest are have nots. But Village is different, everyone determines their own true name and every gift is honored - all are welcome. But humanity's self-centeredness has not be vanquished and evil grows in the form of selfishness within Village and a threat from the Forest without. A sacrifice will be necessary to overcome the evil of humanity as Kira, Matty, and Leader strive to rebuild the world. Strong religious and political themes dot the landscape of Lowry's trilogy and while she leaves some loose ends, the characters and events come together nicely to move the reader into this world and struggle with the main characters to find their way through. ( )

The story is a bout a kind of utopian village. The main character is Matty which is the messenger, he is the only one who the forest likes. Matty haves a great power that will come in handy later on.I really like this book, it answer the question that the giver left my that was "what happened to Jonas?". It resulted that Jonas became the leader of the village and has mastered the power in seeing beyond.

I picked up Messenger looking for answers and closure. This will be a little spoilery, so read no further if that bothers you. This is the third book in a series of related books that began with "The Giver". I was glad to find that Matt, my favorite supporting character from "Gathering Blue" had returned to become the featured character along with Kira's father, also from "Gathering Blue". Both of the books that preceded "Messenger", "The Giver" and "Gathering Blue" left their stories unfinished.

Messenger proved to be an inadequate finish for me, and ultimately a disappointing one. I'm not sure what to call what goes on in this story, but the fantasy and mystical elements really spoiled it for me. We had bits of that referred to in the prior novels, but one could consider the elements in "Gathering Blue" as a form of artistic gift, and the memory transfer process in "The Giver" was in need of a rational explanation, I will admit. What goes on in "The Messenger" doesn't have any sort of rational explanation. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the story. It was just that there were elements to this that for me made it less than it should have been.

I can see the allegory here pretty clearly, a comment on modern society. The Village that accepted all who came, the hungry, the sick, the needy, the damaged was changing. For the worse. We are closing our doors. Greed and jealousy were replacing the old values of caring, of sharing and openess. Unfortunately the manner of the allegory, with the Faustian trades of one's self for material things and improved superficial changes to one's body pushed the magical mystery tour into high gear. Perhaps most importantly, I could discern no reason why all these good people would rather suddenly make bargains with the devil. The simultaneous appearance of Matty's magical healing powers and the Forest itself becoming evil turned this into something akin to a Brother's Grimm fairytale, and as a result, the story became a fantasy and a lot less believable. In other words, no one does something constructive to fix and repair what is going wrong, no one convinces people there is a better way, instead we just fix it all through sacrifical magic and presto chango all is better again.

If one has read the first two novels, or at least the second, then "Messenger" is going to provide some small bits of closure, but important storylines of the prior novel are still left unraveled. I don't think it would be all that worthy of a read if one had never read either of the first two books. ( )

While the final book in The Giver Trilogy is sad, it fits well with the rest of the books. The main character is picked from Gather Blue, and otehr characters from The Giver are also there. Adventurous, scary and mysterious. ( )

Messenger is the last in the trilogy that commenced with the ever popular The Giver, and which then was followed by Gathering Blue. Unfortunately the first two novels proved to be difficult acts to follow successfully, in my opinion. This story seemed somewhat contrived, haphazard and written with less creative flow. I was left with a lot of unanswered questions by the end, and felt slightly ripped off and let down. Ultimately I feel the story had the potential to be so much more. Ah, well, I would still recommend the series for children, as I do find there are a lot of morality issues addressed as well as an underlying meaningful social commentary.

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'm reviewing all three of these books (The Giver, Gathering Blue, and The Messenger) because I believe this is a series that really should be read in close succession. Also, it's a series that is strange in that I'm pretty sure everyone has read the first book (it's required reading in most schools) but never heard of the sequels. I think that's sad because the sequels are really great books and they bring some needed closure to the first book.

These books are truly wonderful dystopias. They each pick at a different non-working society, pointing out the problems with personal freedom. In The Giver the society has taken away personal freedom and is highly regulated for sameness. They've taken hardship, pain, loss, and even color from the daily lives of the people. In Gathering Blue the society is full of poverty, and personal freedom is pushed aside in favor of survival. Only a select few leaders have personal freedom, and even that may be an illusion. Messenger is about a society that is built on the flaws of the other societies and offers democracy and personal freedom, and it shows the benefits and the pitfalls of giving people the liberty to do as they please. Although each book follows a new lead character the leads are interconnected and you get to see their growth and reactions to the plot adversities. The characterizations are great, taking into account that the characters are children and yet matured through the problems they have encountered. The plots flow logically, full of suspense but with just enough breadcrumbs along the way to keep the plot flowing and surprising but not illogical. And it has a dynamite cliffhanger ending that gives you just enough information that you can imagine that everyone finally gets their happily-ever-after.

Whoa, I need something cheerful after this one. I enjoyed The Gift, and this sequel has one of the same characters but I have to be honest, for me it was a real downer. Matty, the main character, is a very likable and valuable part of Village. Village is having some serious problems and it seems to me Leader should have seen beyond and done something more to help stem the tide of the corruption. I was not alright with it being miraculously fixed by Matty's act of self sacrifice. Why should one fix it for all. Shouldn't the ones who brought about the sickness at least take part in the cure? ( )

While, as the others, this book tackled some interesting themes that deserve their time in the spotlight, I confess myself a little bit disappointed by just how much was left unsaid in Messenger. In The Giver and Gathering Blue there were undoubtedly some mysterious pieces that were left unexplained, but at least they were unexplained for a good reason. In The Giver, no explanation is given as to how a Receiver or Giver and transfer memories, but then it's made pretty obvious that the characters don't entirely know either. It just is. In Gathering Blue, Kira and Thomas don't quite understand how it is that they things they make can give them messages of things happening elsewhere, but they neither take it for granted nor try to come up with some explanation. It is what it is.

But in Messenger, it seemed like some potentially huge things were there only to drive the plot to a certain point, and that point had nothing to do with the issue. I'm talking about Trade Mart, mostly. People make trades for things there. A new thing for an old thing. Something they don't want for something they do want. But at some point, it goes beyond material objects and people start trading away pieces of themselves in order to improve their physical appearance, for example. How? It's most certainly a deal-with-the-devil thing, but while the negative changes occur in people because they traded away their souls for material possessions or a better physique to impress the opposite sex, I couldn't help but wonder how it was all happening, or how it started to happen. Was it the man running Trade Mart exercising a power of his own? Was it entirely metaphorical? So much more could have been done with this, but instead of was just used as a way to get people to isolate and close off Village so that Matty could have a reason to go into Forest.

And then there are the parts that get amplified, once again seemingly so that the plot could advance toward a specific point.

We do, happily, get to find out that Jonas survived and that the ending of The Giver was not his dying hallucination, which now nicely ties all three of the books together. But his ability to "see beyond" has changed. It was kind of assumed in The Giver that it meant his growing ability to see colour, to perceive how things should have been. It tied in well with the Giver's ability to "hear beyond", which was him hearing music. But in Messenger, Jonas's ability has turned into the power to see across long distances. It serves its purpose, but that's my whole point. It serves its purpose, and much like the purpose of Trade Mart seemed to be to place Matty outside Village, the change in Jonas's ability seemed to be to put him in the right place to convince Matty to sacrifice himself to heal the world.

Moving, certainly, and Matty's sacrifice was definitely a touching scene that did bring tears to my eyes, but it seemed to be so pre-determined that it was hard to look back on anything before the ending and feel the same anxiety about what was going to happen.

I praise this book for the same reasons that I praised the others, for the author having the guts to assume that kids can handle more than bland notions about how the world really works beyond Saturday morning TV shows. But so much more could have been done with this that it's hard to close it without feeling a bit let down, like I've only read part of the story. It's a shame that what started out with a bang ended with a fizzle. Still a touching fizzle, but it didn't have the same drive behind it that the previous books did.

I do recommend reading this one, and I did enjoy it and won't say otherwise. Especially if you enjoyed the other two books in the series, you don't want to miss finding out all the little ways that they ultimately tie together. But if you liked the other two for the same reasons that I did, you may find yourself as disappointed as I am by this last novel in the trilogy. ( )

for the past six years Matty has lived in village and flourished under the guidance for seer who's a blind man known for his special sight and seemed to know everything that you think he is see things but he is not actually. Village was once a place that welcomed newcomers but something sinister has seeped into Village and the people have voted to close it to outsiders. Matty has been invaluable as a messenger. now he must make one last journey through the treacherous forest with his only weapon, a power he unexpectedly discovers within himself.

Now we know what happened to Jonas at the end of The Giver--and to be honest, I'd rather we didn't. The last two books in the Giver universe don't seem to mesh with the first one, and Messenger is too short to bring the stories to a satisfying close. Side plots are begun and left open--for example, the metaphysical aspects of the Trade Meet are never explained, nor is there an explanation as to why the Forest behaves as it does.

The ambiguous ending, which worked so well at the end of The Giver, just results in puzzlement and dissatisfaction here, and the world that Lowry created deserves a better conclusion. I would much prefer to consider The Giver as a stand-alone novel. ( )

This is clearly the weakest link in Lowry's loose trilogy of speculative YA novels. There's an air of unaccountable mysticism about--we receive no explanation for the Gifts of the main characters, the nature of the sinister Trade Market, or what, precisely, is going on in the Forest that leads our hero to eventually martyr himself. It's that ultimate sacrifice that leaves me mostly unsatisfied with the novel; if the Forest is an illusion, it's unnecessary for Matty to sacrifice himself, and the Deus Ex Machina results of his actions imply that he could have just done it much earlier, saving himself. Was Lowry trying to give us a Lewisian Jesus allegory? Who knows--but it's not really enough to satiate the reader. ( )

A good conclusion to the tale that began with The Giver and Gathering Blue. Having read the first two some time ago, I was glad to see a few memorable characters return and finish their stories. I liked the character of Matty and the message of the story, but I was a little disappointed by the book's conclusion. ( )

Subject Area: Language Arts
Genre: Fantasy
Critique/Summary:
Because this book has a time and place that are made up by the author (Village, forest, etc.) it falls in the Fantasy genre. The storyline is completely impossible in reality. For example, it would be impossible for a forest to start attacking travelers.However, the author makes the impossible seem believable in the way that she writes. It is also interesting to consider the metaphor that the author may be presenting.
(Stars for Setting)
Age: Middle School - High School ( )

This book is just such a page turner. You just can't help but be pulled in emotionally to Matty's life and problems. You almost with this was a movie at times so you could really get a feel of what's happening. This story is very emotional and fun to read.
4Q, 4P; Cover art: Awesome!
The book is best suited for Middle School on up.
It was selected since reading (and owning) the companion "Gather Blue."
Grade: 11th
(AB-AHS-NC)

Messenger continues the story of Matty, who was known as Matt in Gathering Blue. Matty now lives in Village with the blind man named Seer. His life has improved immensely in the time that he has spent in the friendly and welcoming community. Now, however, there is something sinister in the air. The once caring community has started to become selfish, a vote is looming to close the borders of Village to outsiders forever, and Forest is taking on a life of its own to harm and even kill those who try to pass through it. It's now or never for Kira to come to Village, and Matty, as Village's messenger, is the only one who can venture through the increasingly dangerous Forest to bring her.

I felt as though a major purpose for this book was simply to provide closure to the previous two books in the trilogy- The Giver and Gathering Blue. Although this made the plot feel a bit off, I was personally thrilled to find out what had become of my favorite characters from the past books. I also felt as though the mysterious powers finally became clear to me in this book. It was a short read, but a good one. I'd recommend it, but only if you've read The Giver and Gathering Blue first, as you will be missing out on huge elements of it otherwise. ( )

I felt this book to be a wonderful work that speaks of how even communities conceived in the best of ideals can falter. It has a wonderful lesson that we can apply to our own situations today, but does not thrust it upon the reader. I love how Lowry takes concepts that are normally very difficult to describe, let alone defend, and works them into a world that we can understand their importance. ( )

The Messenger is the last companion book to the Giver. It closely follows Matty, a young protagonist from Gathering Blue. He's grown up some, and living in a village seperate from his childhood friend, Kira. This story focuses on his point of view, and though he is young, I felt it was a bit too juvenile. It seemed there was a lot less effort put into this last book than the previous two. The Giver was a hard act to follow, though Gathering Blue created a compelling new environment. I felt that Messenger fell short with its depection of Village and the people inside it. The trade market was an intruiging detail that I felt was underdeveloped and the end of the story felt cut short. It wasn't a horrible book, but I think the series could have ended much stronger. Good for a quick, light read, even if you haven't read The Giver or Gathering Blue. ( )

Messenger is the last in the trilogy that commenced with the ever popular The Giver, and which then was followed by Gathering Blue. Unfortunately the first two novels proved to be difficult acts to follow successfully, in my opinion. This story seemed somewhat contrived, haphazard and written with less creative flow. I was left with a lot of unanswered questions by the end, and felt slightly ripped off and let down. Ultimately I feel the story had the potential to be so much more. Ah, well, I would still recommend the series for children, as I do find there are a lot of morality issues addressed as well as an underlying meaningful social commentary.

Check out more of my reviews at BookSnakeReviews ( )

Matty is the messenger for Village, the one who can brave Forest to deliver messages between various settlements. The story begins at a pivotal moment in his life: he's discovered a wonderful and terrifying ability, he will soon receive his True Name, and Village, founded as a sanctuary for refugees, is considering closing its doors. It is the third of a loose trilogy that began with The Giver (a truly excellent novel) - that is, it takes place in the same universe and has some overlapping characters. I never read the second book, Gathering Blue, but I didn't feel like I needed to. Truth be told, I wasn't that impressed with this story. It was too predictable, even for a young adult book. Maybe I'd have liked it better had I read Gathering Blue (or at least more recently read The Giver) but I doubt it. Usually I like dystopian tragedies but this felt forced. All in all, not one of Lowry's better books. ( )

From almost the first sentence of the book, Lowry creates a world that is not like our own. Through the eyes of Matty, a boy who is entering adolescence, we learn about Village, its residents, and the changes that may soon change it forever.

Although [The Giver] is still my favorite Lowry book, [Messenger] was also an excellent read. Not only has Lowry created an interesting world, but she reveals it slowly. At first, Village is deceptively similar to our world. But gradually, the differences come to light. Lowry is also incredibly good at writing adolescent characters. Matty is faced with both with the normal challenges of adolescence as well as major changes in Village. As he faces both sets of challenges, he's stretched in ways that help him to grow. Perhaps because both sets of changes are presented together, they feel believable in a way that would not be possible without the inclusion of the typical adolescent changes (falling in love, negotiating an independent identity).

It is the third book in The Giver Trilogy, though not a sequel more of a theme sequence with a repeat character. The protagonist is Matty, who is no longer a boy and not yet a man. He lives in Village and his role is to be the messanger, though that is not the name yet given to him. Changes take place in Village and some are not as welcoming to strangers. Matty has to make choices to help those he cares about. Along with realizing what is special about him and what he should do about it. ( )