Preliminary Scan:

In search of a future that may not exist and faced with the decision of who to share it with, Cassia journeys to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky – taken by the Society to his certain death – only to find that he has escaped, leaving a series of clues in his wake.

Cassia’s quest leads her to question much of what she holds dear, even as she finds glimmers of a different life across the border. But as Cassia nears resolve and certainty about her future with Ky, an invitation for rebellion, an unexpected betrayal, and a surprise visit from Xander – who may hold the key to the uprising and, still, to Cassia’s heart – change the game once again. Nothing is as expected on the edge of Society, where crosses and double crosses make the path more twisted than ever.

-synopsis and cover art courtesy of goodreads.com

Atmospheric Analysis: I was a big, big fan of the cover design of Matched, the first book in Ally Condie’s dystopian series. When I heard that the cover for Crossed would (uh) match it, I was excited.

Unfortunately, though the photographer and cover model are the same for Crossed, the design didn’t work quite as well for me. The casual, modern clothes on the model look more like they belong in a mall than in a dystopian environment (particularly the wild environment depicted in the book), and the pose is just a little cheesy.

Planetary Class: Crossed continues the straight-up dystopian setting of the first book.

Mohs Rating: This is by-and-large social science fiction. All of the science depicted within–eReaders, airships, pills of various sorts–would be possible today. 6 on the Mohs scale: as real as real life.

Planetary Viability: Sigh.

The universe of the Matched series mostly fails in small ways. For example, despite a very literate, educated populace, no one knows how to write letters by hand–and it never seems to cross anyone’s mind to try copying words from their eReaders. Later, the importance of the job of “sorting” is reiterated again and again, but it seems like the term is a catch-all for whatever Condie needs the characters to do at the moment, including decrypting code instantly. Both the dystopian society (called “the Society”) and the rebellion within it are largely left undeveloped, and what little is there is hazy or strange. Because of that, the Society never congealed into a real, recognizable world for me.

Xenolinguistical Assessment: Make no bones about it: Condie knows how to write. Her prose is lovely and well-controlled. However, it’s also a touch plodding and monotonous. In Crossed, she writes in two voices, but they weren’t quite well-differentiated enough and I often found myself checking back to see who was speaking.

Expanded Report: I was a bit hesitant to read Crossed after having had a mixed experience with Matched, the first in the series. While reading Matched, I was initially thrilled by the strong, lavish writing; an early scene even moved me to tears. Unfortunately, a lukewarm romance eventually tempered my enjoyment of the novel. Condie had us take a few too many walks with her chaste teenage couple, Cassia and Ky, and I found myself fairly bored by the novel’s conclusion.

I’m sad to say that I had an almost identical experience with Crossed.

Crossed also began with promise. Now removed from the safety of the Society, Cassia Reyes is living on the outskirts in a work camp, where she’s taken an assignment in the hope of finding her sweetie, Ky. Ky, meanwhile, is living in a decoy city meant to fool the Society’s enemies into thinking they’re more prosperous than they really are. There were interesting shades of “we’ve always been at war with East Asia” here, and I thought that, if Condie was going to mature the dystopian society of her first book (which seemed to borrow liberally from Lois Lowry’s The Giver), then there are worse authors to riff off of than Orwell for that growth.

Soon, Cassia and Ky begin two separate journeys across the wilderness to find each other. The chapters prior to their reunion are nicely paced and lively. With the focus turned to survival, rather than the love triangle of the first book, I found myself riveted.

But then Cassia and Ky reunite, and all that wonderful tension unravels. While the romance is a shade more passionate than what’s found in the first book (the kids kiss more than once), it still didn’t feel like the epic love story needed to carry a novel like this one. Condie also seems shy about addressing the desires of her adolescent characters. It’s not that I mind that Cassia and Ky’s romance is unconsummated–plenty of teenagers don’t do it. But they don’t struggle with this choice at all or even meaningfully contemplate it. For Cassia and Ky, abstinence is easy–even when their lives are at stake and they spend all of their time unsupervised. This aspect of Crossed, and Condie’s approach (there’s one scene that could be read as a sexual interlude, but where, as we later learn, the teens merely hug) puzzled me.

But in truth, many aspects of Crossed felt similarly muted. Cassia still doesn’t have a very strong personality, and she can be frustratingly obtuse sometimes. There are a host of minor characters here, and all but one are conspicuously underdeveloped. The teenagers should be preoccupied with survival, but instead countless pages are spent contemplating poetry. These are odd choices for a book about a rebellion and a forbidden, star-crossed romance. Ultimately, Cassia and Ky’s journey felt slow, and by the end of the novel I was more frustrated than entranced.

If you enjoyed Matched whole-heartedly, Crossed should work for you. If you were frustrated by the first book, you might not want to dive into the second. Crossed comes out on November 1st, and it’s available for preorder from Amazon or your local indie bookstore.