My Favourite Book from My Favourite Series // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 4

It's now the fourth day of the 30-Day Book Challenge, and it's just starting to dawn on me that I should come up with a proper way to introduce these posts. But... that's clearly not going to happen today, so let's move on. 

Anyway, the prompt for today's post is "Favourite book of your favourite series". As those of you who read my previous post will know, the series I have chosen as my favourite for the sake of this challenge is The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry. If you'd like to know more about that series as a whole, I'd recommend reading that post. However, in this post I am going to be writing specifically about the second book in the series, my personal favourite of the four: Gathering Blue.

Like The Giver before it, Gathering Blue focuses on a young person growing up in a dystopian society that they gradually come to realise is worse than they initially believed. Whereas The Giver's protagonist was Jonas, Gathering Blue stars Kira, a girl with a disability who is viewed as a burden in her harsh, self-serving village. The only thing keeping her from being completely rejected from her community - and being literally left to die in a field - is her gift for embroidery, which catches the attention of the powerful village Council. While at first this seems like a blessing, Kira comes to realise it could be more of a curse.

I can't say much about Gathering Blue's connection to The Giver without giving away too much of either's plot, but I will say that the former is set in the same universe and chronologically comes after the events of The Giver. That said, you could theoretically read either book as a standalone novel without missing any important plot points. The ideal approach would still be to read them in order, though, as thematically they accompany each other well.

While, as I mentioned before, I like all the books of The Giver Quartet, Gathering Blue stands out as my favourite for a number of reasons. For one, I really like the character of Kira. She's compassionate, thoughtful, and quietly strong - all qualities I love to see in a protagonist, especially in children's or young adult novels. It carries on some of the major themes from The Giver, such as defiance of authority and the power of history, but it also strongly features themes which are not present in its predecessor - or at least not presented so prominently. For example, one of the key themes of Gathering Blue is the idea of social Darwinism and how we determine which people are of value in our society. Kira is initially seen as worthless by those around her, to the point of deserving to die, because of her disability, and it is only because she displays a talent seen as valuable to the community that she is deemed worthy of life within it.

To me, this element of the story felt particularly relevant to modern societies, especially those which have been impacted by the ideology of neo-liberalism. Perhaps this is purely my personal interpretation, though - you'd have to read the book yourself to see if I'm justified in this being my takeaway from the story.

In short, although I love every book in this series, Gathering Blue is my favourite for the strength of its characters (particularly Kira) and the relevance of its themes to society today. If you can only read one of The Giver Quartet's books, this is the one I would recommend.