Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren’t white or feathered; they’re green, made of green silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move—first in a circle, then in a line, finally in a shape of my own invention. The black behind me doesn’t worry me; neither do the stars ahead.

Most of the opening lines I’ve seen so far have been good. This marks a stark departure from that.

This doesn’t even have to do with what’s going on. As far as I can figure out, we’re coming in midway through a fantasy story she’s telling herself, but it’s set up terribly and there’s no attempt to make it a part of her character. This feels like lines the author wrote and found too clever to cut even though it didn’t fit with anything else. One of the many important lessons for authors to learn is to cut things that don’t fit, regardless of how nice they may be. Put them in some other story if you think they’re good.

Here, that’s just the clumsy lead-in to:

I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination. People cannot fly, though before the Society, there were myths about those who could.

So worldbuilding! …very cliche worldbuilding. It’s a society that crushes imagination and is full of atheists, just like the hundreds of other dystopias.

Because we’re a good Christian country (just like the founding fathers intended!), she goes on to make it clear that by “myths” she’s referring to angels and not any of the uncountable number of stories about humans gaining the ability to fly, and she tells us about a picture of them.

eyes turned up in surprise as though they couldn’t believe what the artist had painted them doing, couldn’t believe that their feet didn’t touch the ground.

Why would they turn their eyes up in surprise when they’re surprised about the fact they’re not standing on the ground? People generally look at what they’re surprised by. And by generally, I mean this is so ingrained in us that they use how long babies stare a something as a reliable measure of surprise. Just say shocked expressions.

But anyway. Next worldbuilding tidbit – the atheists who hate imagination have not suppressed the past, it’s still around but just weird and irrelevant to them. So I guess this wasn’t a big revolution type thing but a gradual shift as you see in some scifi. I always found those stories so soothing.

I am terribly fond of scifi fiction in general. I read a ton of these when I was younger, because they were usually the best bet for a story about a weird concept or setting.

The air train glides through the starry night so smoothly

Air train! What it actually is is unclear – maybe some sort of monorail that’s’ elevated well above the city for some reason, like space. Or it might actually be floating and it’s some sort of train/plane impossibility because science.

She’s grinning in excitement because she’s going to the Match Banquet where the titular matching happens. She explains that at the banquet she’ll get her first view of whoever the kid is, so apparently they have a large enough population that most people don’t know each other. So, not a population crash future where a few remnants of humanity huddle in bubbles, although no way of knowing how many there are yet. Also, yay, a currently non-rebellious heroine who makes sense for her culture instead of sounding like someone from ours!

But she’s also nervous, as her friend Xander can tell. He says he’s not, though.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re nervous, Cassia,” he says, gentle now. “Almost ninety-three percent of those attending their Match Banquet exhibit some signs of nervousness.”

That’s weird, Xander.

“Did you memorize all of the official Matching material?”

That’s weirder, this is apparently in the brochure. Presumably this means they’re a really homogeneous society if the numbers are so stable. Also, I’m not sure if this is meant to be a sign their society is messed up in their obsession with hard numbers for the sake of it, or if the author just thinks this makes them sound scientific. As someone who likes statistics, this makes them sound like people who’ve turned science into a cult.

Cassia (At least it can’t be turned into Cat, although this is the fourth book with a K or C name for the heroine) then responds with:

“So you’re in the minority,” I say. “The seven percent who don’t show any nerves at all.”

So +1 for societal consistency there. Hoping there’s more to these people than statistics, though.

Xander explains he can tell she’s nervous from how she’s fidgeting, opening and closing something she’s holding. Apparently it’s known as an artifact, which are ancient objects.

Though citizens of the Society are allowed one artifact each, they are hard to come by. Unless you had ancestors who took care to pass things along through the years.

Hm. This would suggest a very stable population. If it was expanding, she should say they’re rapidly getting harder to come by because of too many people competing for them, and if declining, you’d see artifacts freed as family lines dwindled.

Also, this is apparently a very controlling government. While my immediate response is to think it’s overly so, there’s something to be said for enforced egalitarianism.

She explains she only just got it as a birthday present, so it seems the Matched banquet takes place on her birthday. So I guess Xander must have the same birthday? I suppose they could plan births or something so all the kids are born at the same time, but that’s a terrible use of resources. Better to have one doctor handle one baby a day than seven doctors who only work once a week. Or maybe they just don’t record individual birthdays and have a set day where everyone counts as one year older.

“A compact,” I say. I like the name very much. Compact means small. I am small. I also like the way it sounds when you say it: com-pact. Saying the word makes a sound like the one the artifact itself makes when it snaps shut.

This is cute.

(Small by what standards, I wonder?)

It has some initials (ACM) and 1940 on it, neither of which mean anything to her. I don’t know if that means they have a different dating system or if she just means she doesn’t know why someone would put a year on it. Inside is a mirror made of real glass so I’m guessing this place is really, really resource-poor. Although her dress is silk? So I guess they still have a perfectly good handle on the environmental situation in general, maybe most of the silicon is locked up in other uses or else there’s some recycling issue involved.

The powder that used to go with it is long gone. She keeps something else instead: the three emergency tablets that everyone carries—one green, one blue, one red. Ominous!

Xander’s own artifact is cuff links of platinum, and he’s jealous of her cool compact because it’s not like you can do anything with cuff links besides look at them. I like this society, they seem to have their priorities straight.

Cassia thinks they look pretty and that he looks pretty (another blue eyed blond).

Boys don’t have as much leeway in choosing clothes as girls do. One suit looks much like another.

So future society is still pretty traditional in its own ways. So far, I have the impression that this is society as built by the upper middle class/the non-aristocracy upper class.

And he thinks she looks beautiful. The parents are standing right here and don’t seem to see anything wrong with this despite the fact they’re apparently only supposed to be interested in their match. Maybe the whole matching system is so ingrained that teens can think about how much their friends are hot without anyone thinking it means anything?

Then they arrive at City Hall, which is lit up in celebration. She looks at herself in her reflection – she’s a green-eyed red copperybrownhair. Blue eyes tend to indicate prettiness while green tends to mean unusual.

She’s seventeen. For some reason I thought they were all sixteen, but seventeen makes more sense when it comes to referencing teenage sexuality while considering eighteen the only age anyone’s supposed to actually do things at.

Since my birthday falls on the fifteenth, the day the Banquet is held each month, I’d always hoped that I might be Matched on my actual birthday—but I knew it might not happen. You can be called up for your Banquet anytime during the year after you turn seventeen.

Ah, that makes far more sense. It’s just very special snowflakey of things. I wish books in general would stop making events happen exactly on the protagonist’s birthday. If they must have birthdays involved, how about someone else’s birthday for once?

give him the best greeting we have in the Society. “I wish you optimal results,” I tell Xander.

Yeah they seem like science cultists. Eurg. But maybe this is just teenager stuff where they’re trying too hard to act like adults and the actual adults don’t sound like this, the society itself actually seems pretty good.

She explains that only seventeen year olds and older can go to the ceremony, so while she’ll be able to go to her younger brother’s matching, he can’t come to hers (they’re seven years apart, also. So maybe they like to space out their kids).

Apparently only the matched kids dress up, so, this society really discourages dressy stuff. Odd she’s wearing makeup, then – when would she learn?

I am a little surprised to see Lea there. I would have picked her for a Single.

Code for gay?

The banquet has china, which is apparently a big deal, and we learn about her dad’s job because he notices the details there.

My father spends months working in old neighborhoods that are being restored and turned into new Boroughs for public use. He sifts through the relics of a society that is not as far in the past as it seems. Right now, for example, he is working on a particularly interesting Restoration project: an old library. He sorts out the things the Society has marked as valuable from the things that are not.

Huh. So maybe they did have a population crash. Sounds like they’re slowly expanding into abandoned areas. I wonder why there isn’t looting? Maybe they’re full of zombies.

Also, if the china they have looks like the china they get from restoration, that’s kind of worrying. It suggests they don’t have the capacity to make these things at all, and china is not really that hard to produce in resource terms. A lot of its cost comes from the time it takes to make and much social value comes from the fact it’s breakable, so it shows you can afford to maintain/replace it.

The mom works as an Arboretum worker so what she notices is that the flowers are lilies. It’s possible there’s some intended symbolism going on here (on the book level, I assume no one in-story cares), but lilies have built up a lot of meanings. They symbolize innocence, which means they also get used for women and funerals, so now they can mean death and female sexuality. Thanks, culture.

(Apparently purple ones in particular mean first love, but the color wasn’t mentioned.)

Then someone tells them to sit down so they can eat, and everyone rushes over because omg food. So I guess they are a bit deprived, then.

“They say this dinner is always wasted on the Matchees,” a jovial-looking man sitting across from us says, smiling around our table. “So excited they can’t eat a bite.”

Luckily Cassia has a decent appetite for the…rather modest food. I suppose it’s very well made, but still:

roasted vegetables, the savory meat, the crisp greens, and creamy cheese. The warm light bread.

I’m not entirely sure if it’s just that the author doesn’t care as much about rhapsodizing about food, but they start going on about the chocolate cake with fresh cream as an awesome topping, so yeah, sounding a bit deprived. It’s not like this is the only time they’ve had this kind of food, but the last time was “winter holiday” and she starts seriously considering if it’s possible to sneak some home for her brother to have. (Cassia so far has shown every sign of being a nice person. Let’s hope this continues.) She comes to the conclusion that she really shouldn’t and anyway, the only way would be to hide it in her mom’s purse and her mom wouldn’t agree.

I can’t save it for later. It is now, or never.

I have just popped the last bite in my mouth when the announcer says, “We are ready to announce the Matches.”

I swallow in surprise, and for a second, I feel an unexpected surge of anger: I didn’t get to savor my last bite of cake.

So I wonder why this is. Is it the government micromanaging things so that the production of certain goods is kept low for some reason? Or are they really struggling with food production? She is in a silk dress – I’d think that if growing space was at a premium they wouldn’t be bothering with trees for silkworms.

Poor I-thought-she-was-a-Single Lea is up first. She’s anxiously fiddling with her bracelet the whole time.

It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

Is that what the whole artifact thing is about? I’d think anxious people would fiddle with anything. The book has yet to explain quite what the artifacts mean – Cassia obviously likes that compact, but does it actually reassure her or is it just that she thinks it’s cool?

(As a sidenote, the jewelry all seems to be authentic precious metal/stone stuff. I was just in a craft store and they manufacture some pretty, pretty baubles these days. I spent a while gaping at the wall of beads, which came in a wide variety of shiny colors and designs. I suppose a lot of them may be less durable than stone jewelry and less likely to survive, but I’m sure at least some are some nigh-indestructible environmental nightmare. I do occasionally see costume jewelry pop up in post-apoc stuff, but it’s usually mocked as ugly trash. The reason people don’t value glass beads is because jewelry is largely about status symbols, not because it’s all ugly. If you can’t make it, it’d be more appreciated.)

Cassia explains the matching is announced in alphabetical order for the girls, while the boys get called whenever their match is called. This is a bit odd given that last names presumably are going to work the same way they do now, so the girl’s last name won’t matter shortly. Maybe that’s why there’s the emphasis on it now, though.

Lea is Matched, she and the boy on the giant screen smile at each other, and she gets a shiny silver box that’ll tell her about him.

Later, the boxes will be used to hold the rings for the Marriage Contract.

I’m not sure if the book wants all this stuff to sound ominous and loveless. But I like secular stuff, so.

Cassia compares the matching, which is designed to flow as smoothly as possible, to the intricate steps of the dances they used to do long ago so apparently they don’t have dancing either? How does that even work? If people see dancing enough to know what it is and be so familiar they’re using it as a metaphor, it seems hard to prevent anyone from ever trying it. Maybe they just mean elaborate formal dances are a thing of the past.

Then it’s her turn.

I stand and look at the screen, and, as the seconds go by, it is all I can do to stay still, all I can do to keep smiling. Whispers start around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mother move her hand as if to take mine again, but then she pulls it back.

A girl in a green dress stands waiting, her heart pounding. Me.

The screen is dark, and it stays dark.

That can only mean one thing.

Well, it’s presumably not that you’re single because you just expressed shock at someone being at the banquet at all when you expected them to be single. Unless being single is something you choose, and being called to the banquet doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve already found someone for you? But no, because they call teens up throughout the year, so presumably only when they’ve picked someone to match you with. Also just because generally, wow, getting someone excited and then publicly denying them would be a dick move.

Maybe it just means the acid raptors have invaded again. As usual, they’ve torn through the cables in the process.

Okay, so I’m not sure if this is deliberately invoking The Giver, (which had a similar wow, dick move in the handling of his work assignment, though given how homogeneous and emotionally flat the society was I always wondered if it was deliberate trolling.) but I can see the parallels. Unlike The Giver, though, this really doesn’t feel creepy. They just happen to have a stilted sciencey way of talking and a nannying government. So far the only objectionable bit is just our establishing premise about the marriages, and really, the issue there comes down to if the matching system actually works. If it does, then it’s a good idea. And all the adults so far seem fine with it, and for all the nervousness, no one seems to even consider the possibility of getting stuck with a bad match, they’re just excited and worried about presenting themselves well.

I’m hoping this dystopia isn’t planning to rely on “we don’t believe in angels” and “the government regulates things” to unsettle me.