Son by Lois Lowry (The Giver Quartet #4) ~ Series Talk

Another review from THE VAULT! This time we are talking about the final book from The Giver Quartet: Son. YAY! We made it through the first series for Series Talk!

NOTE: These are content-heavy and spoiler-y discussion videos where we dive deep into a book within a particular series.

Title: Son
Author: Lois Lowry
Series: The Giver
Book in Series: #4
Year Published: 2012
Genre: Dystopic/Utopic

Series Status: Complete at 4 Books

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[LauraLittlePony]

Yay, finally thoughts on Son!! I can’t believe it’s been 8 years since I read the series (I guess 8.5 years, because I remember catching up and then reading the new book in nicer weather)... I thought I might be mixing up some of the books because of the Trademaster being a major antagonist in Messenger, but then I definitely remembered the showdown with him at the end of Son... I guess, in some ways, I find that kind of repetitive or unnecessary, though the heart of this book was much more Gabe and Claire finding each other.

I just accepted a lot of things in The Giver without much scrutiny, but I wondered why they didn’t know the effects of taking or not taking hormones, so that Claire would bond with her baby... you would think they would realize she needed to be on the pills even if she didn’t have Stirrings.
Also, speaking of the science aspect... I always kind of figured the Bithmothers would have a very sterile, painless experience (not one we can really replicate as of now in real life, like how we can’t make everyone colorblind), probably put under anesthesia for all the salient parts, because that’s how the Community seemed to roll. It was surprising to me that they had these leather (where did they get leather with no animals??) masks and restraints and it was all so traumatic!!

I thought the gender dynamic situation was a bit disappointing, too. The Community seemed like one of the worst places to be, and certainly not what we’re rooting for, but that was the one place where genders were on equal footing, other than some being needed for reproduction. That appealed to me as a kid, too. It occurs to me that it’s kind of odd that they stuck to mixed-gender spousal pairings... there was no reason same-sex couples couldn’t form a family unit. And since they are just inseminating these girls, not hand picking embryos like I assumed from The Giver, it would be more practical, since the random sperm factor would mean some years would presumably have different numbers of girls vs boys.

I so agree that “climbing out” took FORRREEEVVVVER!! I wasn’t sure what we were meant to get out of that. It just went on and on!!! I can only read so much about rock climbing!! Lol. I guess it really showed us that it was A STRUGGLE, but I feel like I could have understood that in fewer pages.

Overall, I also liked this one second-most (the other two are kind of tied at the bottom for me), and it did bring back a little bit of the magic of The Giver, but it seemed like Lois Lowry had kind of lost the spark that made the original so amazing. It was satisfying to see threads from the different books pull together, though!

[davidzhang]

My favorite book is Son (the final book of The Giver quartet).

[LauraLittlePony]

I was just about to reply to the Messenger thread begging you to post this. 😹😹