Son

               by Lois Lowry

               Reviewed by

               Elizabeth Mosolovich 

      I am sure most people have at least heard of The Giver, a novel by Lois Lowry; it is about a dystopian society where there is no color or emotion or love. What people might not know, however, is that there is not just one sequel to The Giver, but three: Gathering Blue, The Messenger, and Son. The first sequel seems almost totally unrelated, and the second is more of a sequel to the first, but those stories are all tied together in the last book, Son.

      Son is about a mother, Claire, loving her son in a society where such a thing is foreign and forbidden. She does her best to see him and take care of him, all the while trying not to get caught. Because her son cannot conform to their society's rules, he has to be 'Released.' Claire is horrified and wants to save her son; she learns later that someone (an important character from The Giver) has taken her son out of their community, and hopefully to safety. Claire is still determined to be a mother to her son, and so sets out on a journey to finally, properly, meet her son.

      I thought the book was very interesting. The return to the community of The Giver was helpful in refreshing my mind (I read the first book in sixth grade), but it was also nice to see it from another character's perspective: the same story told differently. There were three parts to it, and the first and second part was detailed and even paced, though it could be a bit slow. The varying characters, especially of part two, were a nice touch, so it wasn't exactly the same story, and the old characters made it feel like the sequel it was. There's romance in here, too, and the antagonist is actually a personification of evil itself — this book makes you think. The end was a bit rushed, and the final action was squished together while something that seemed trivial was stretched. But other than that, I felt like this was a really good book. Give it a try!