Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language: Matty quotes Lady Macbeth, “Out damn’d spot!  Out, I say!”  He also quotes Macduff, “O hell…”

Violence: References are made to Matty’s childhood of being abused and beaten bloody by his mother.  A man from Village is found dead.  He has been mutilated by the forest and it is described. Seer’s story is told of being found in the forest with his eyes gouged out and left for dead.   Matty cuts his leg and heals it himself.  The forest is evil and attacks Matty and Kira.  Branches and vines cut them like knives,   dripping sap burns their skin, leaving sores that weep and swell.  Vines try to strangle them, insects attack them and rocks fling through the air.

Adult Content- There are references to child abuse and government oppression.

Synopsis

In this final book, following The Giver and Gathering Blue, Matty lives in Village with Seer, a blind man who took him in after escaping an abusive home.  People in Village eventually receive a true name, and Matty hopes that his will be Messenger.  Things are changing though, in Village, in Matty, and in the dark forest.  Matty discovers he has a special power to heal others but isn’t quite sure how to use it.  People in Village are changing and not for the better.  Where they were once kind and welcoming, they are becoming selfish and mean.  They want to build a wall to keep new people out.  The dark forest is becoming increasingly sinister and foreboding, killing people.  Matty must make a final trip through the forest as a messenger to others.

This book has so many layers and levels, I think.  I often found myself drawing parallels between the world we live in and the world in this book.  The forest is evil and scary!  The book  builds in suspense because you just know something really bad is going to happen.  I’m a girl who loves a happily ever after ending.  I want to feel good and content at the end of a book.  That didn’t happen for me with this book, but I will say that the story was well written and evoked emotion in me.  This book would be best when read and discussed with your child, or as a book club read.  A quote from this book, “there were communities everywhere, sprinkled across the vast landscape of the unknown world, in which people suffered.  Not always because of beatings and hunger, the way he had.  But from ignorance.  From not knowing.  From being kept from knowledge.”