Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to "Elsewhere," a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. The process is deeply disturbing for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as "release" is revealed to be murder. In the event, he is named "Receiver," to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories-painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder the Elder ("The Giver") now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. Father, a "Nurturer," cares for "newchildren" Mother works in the "Department of Justice" but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility.Īs Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. Yet when all the threads are pulled together in a splendidly apocalyptic finale of cinematic scope (film rights have been optioned by Disney), the satisfying resolution leaves plenty of room for sequels. Scenes of chilling abuse and gruesome death cast dark, macabre shadows over the adventure. Candy’s personality is particularly drab, when contrasted with the frenzied phantasmagoria all around her. Unfortunately, rather than trust his descriptive powers, he repeatedly tells readers how to feel, with a peculiarly flattening impact.
It’s all fantastically complicated and dreamlike, sensations intensified by the elaborate sonorous imagery, constant abrupt transitions, and Barker’s hallucinogenic jewel-like illustrations. Meanwhile, back in our reality, the inhabitants of quotidian Chickentown are troubled by ominous portents.
As Candy begins to uncover her hidden powers, Malingo joins allies old and new in searching for the lost hero Finnegan Hob. Candy Quackenbush and her loyal geshrat pal Malingo are on the run from Christopher Carrion, Lord of Midnight, still scheming to conquer the forces of Day. Picaresque digression yields to plot development in this second entry about the archipelago of the Abarat, where each island is ruled by a different hour of the day.
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