Review - Reached by Ally Condie

Reached

by Ally Condie

One sentence: sorry for the mess. I know this month was a crazy chaos on the blog with the Cinder review first, then the one for Crossed (that should have been up months ago), followed by my Scarlet review last week and Reaches now. I can only aplogise for this complete lack of structure and hope you guys can still enjoy the review :)

Happy Easter!

After leaving Society to desperately seek The Rising, and each other, Cassia and Ky have found what they were looking for, but at the cost of losing each other yet again. Cassia is assigned undercover in Central city, Ky outside the borders, an airship pilot with Indie. Xander is a medic, with a secret. All too soon, everything shifts again.

Hardcover, Dutton, 512 pages
Published November 13th 2012 by Penguin

A Long Story...Short!

Reached was a lot thicker than the previous installments in the trilogy but just as beautifully and fluently written, so that it didn't take me long to finish. It was great meeting the three main characters again and reading the story from those three points of view, but at the same time I didn't think the voices were any different or unique at all. There were quite a few events in the book when I really wanted to see some action, but it never came and sadly, the plot could not make up for that, either. Besides, the ending left me pretty unsatisfied, but still, not exactly wanting more.

Review for You:

I liked Matched, although some people were disappointed with it. I enjoyed Crossed a great deal, while many of you found it boring. I went into Reached with neither high nor lower expectations. Throughout the first half I had fun reading the novel. Then, I started to see it coming. My sudden disappointment with the author.

I know now what it was that made so many fans turn their backs on this trilogy. It's not Condie's writing  style, because it's pretty amazing how she poetically describes each character's thoughts without ever boring me. It's so easy to race through her books, you never have to take a break, you just seem to soar through the pages - that's how fluent and lively she tells a story.

The plot, you ask? Yeah...about that.

It doesn't exist. Not really. This book is about a revolution. However, the revolution takes place and no one even seems to notice! Sure, there is a believable explanation why we don't get any action or fights etc. But that is not how it works! We've been waiting for this to happen for two books! You can't just tell us that this is it!

Also, the characters. I had my problems telling Cassia's voice from Ky's in Crossed, but it was completely impossible to identify the three different voices used in Reached! When I got interrupted within a chapter and had to start over, I always went back to the beginning of the chapter to find out who was talking. 

I could go on and on here about what was good and what wasn't in Reached, but the result would stay the same - utter and complete disappointment. There was so much potential in this last book, but Condie (in my opinion) lost herself in beautiful words and descriptive writing and pages and pages of symbolism and metaphors, slowly making me fall asleep instead of coming up with that BAM moment that would have made her trilogy extraordinary.