Reached, Ally Condie

Holy-Freak! It's finally out. 

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.

So I finished this book the day I got it. It was so good. Such an amazing ending to an amazing series. I can't say much, but I'll tell you the main plot of the first books. The first two books are Matched and Crossed.

You never really learn the exact setting. There are lots of 'districts' I guess you could call them. Keya, Oria, Central, yadda-yadda-yadda . . . Lots. Then there are the outer Provinces, and the Carving, the stone villages and the Otherlands. So, I don't know where they are. But it's somewhere where the government controls everything. They plan out the meals and what nutritions everybody needs, they plan out exercise routines, they plan out the jobs of the people and everything else to avoid any trouble. It's in the way future, and you see this because they are always taking about the old, old, old days where people actually used pencils and pens. Which is this time right now. So it'd have to be in the future. In the Society, when a girl turns seventeen, she's matched by the government. Everyone in the Society has three tablets. A blue to survive if you're lost, a green to calm you down, and a red that everyone believes causes death. 

So that's that. Now the characters. 

The main character: Cassia. I think it could be pronounced Kay-shuh, but I pronounce it Cass-ee-yuh. I don't know. Any-hoo, Cassia is brave. Like, beyond brave. Even when she knows she'll get killed if she gets caught she still does what she wants or what she believes she has to do. There's always a reasonable amount of doubt in her head if someone tells her something. Which is good I think. I think it's okay to question things sometimes. So, yeah, I like her. 

Xander. The boy Cassia was matched with at her Matching Banquet. He's kind of . . . eh, I think he's a little sheltered, personally. Some people probably like him better than I do, but I don't know what it is about him. He's just not trying very hard. I'll explain later.

Ky! He's not even supposed to be part of Cassia's story. But thanks to a problem during the Matching banquet, his face pops up to be Cassia's match for a second before she sees Xander's face. So naturally she's curious and she meets up with Ky. Oh, I love Ky. Ky Markham. He's so wonderful. He's so mysterious. He's so poetic. I'll explain that later too. So, speaking of explaining later. Ky and Cassia are madly in love (I love it), and Xander wants Cassia to choose him, but he hardly does anything for her. In the last book he's a bit better about letting her know he's still there. So I approve.

Hm, after those main characters, I'd probably say the Pilot is a big one. He's the leader of the Rising. The rebellion against the Society. You can't really explain the Pilot. He's everyone that's ever taken charge and done what's right. Even if it means going against everything you've known.

Other minor characters include (but are not limited to): Cassia's grandfather, her family, Ky's family, Indie, Lei, Oker, any Officials, the head Archivist, Hunter, Leyna, and others.

There are lots of reasons I loved this series, but I really liked the poems. Like Cassia's, that she wrote for Ky:

Newrose, oldrose, Queen Anne's lace,
Water, river, stone and sun. 

Wind over hill, under tree,
Past the borders none can see.

Climbing into the dark for you,
Will you wait in the stars for me?

And so many more. I love the poems. I'm not very good at writing poems, and I don't really get into them (trust me) but I love the ones in these series. Like I Did Not Reach Thee by Emily Dickinson. I kind of really love it.

Ky is super poetic, I think. Cassia is too. They talk about poems all the time and they send little lines back and forth and repeat them in their heads over and over when they're not together. It's so cute!

Hm, where do I go from here? This book (and series) is amazing. Read it. Finish it. Love it. Live it.