Matched Chapter 1

So here we are again, taking a little break from the “house of night” series. Though we haven’t strayed too far off the path as this is yet another book aimed solidly at the same crowd that ate up the four books by Myer. This one is called “matched” by Ally Condie.

I suppose we should begin with the cover, as I often do. It shows a mostly faceless girl sitting in what looks like an oversized hamster ball looking off to the side. Maybe she just realized that she put her cell phone down before getting in and now she’s trapped until the ride is over. Also, there’s something about her posture that says she’s unhappy. Which is lame because who the hell doesn’t want to take a ride in a giant hamster ball? Angsty teens, stuffy bastards and anyone who’s never wanted to pretend they’re the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark and chase down Harrison Ford.

Flipping to the insides, there’s the usual disclaimers about being a work of fiction. Whenever I see that I think of MST3K where Tom is mocking it and saying that any resemblance to persons living or dead is very sad. Then there’re copyright notices for two Bob Dylan songs which means that if this book were a person it’d be sporting muttonchops and a fedora. At the very least, the dedication is very simple and not particularly obnoxious.

We begin the first chapter in my favorite perspective, first person. And our main character is in the middle of a dream or something. It’s about her flying around with green wings. It has that tone that says Ally is trying very hard to convey symbolism to us. Yes, yes, freedom and blah blah blah.

I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination. People cannot fly, though before the Society, there were myths about those who could. I saw a painting of them once. White wings, blue sky, gold circles above their heads, 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.

Oh no, we’re not doing that. No, Ally, we’re not accepting the Capital letter Common words which have replaced proper nouns. I’ve seen people put more effort into making Pop Tarts than that. This means that they all live by the Code or some other such stupid nonsense. Do any of these hacks realize that people prefer proper names that aren’t just repurposed words from the popular lexicon? The people who show up on scene at an accident aren’t Healers, they’re paramedics. World leaders meeting to discuss important international issues isn’t referred to as the Meeting, it’s called the U.N.

So our main character, Cassia as we’re told by another character, is riding along in an “air train” thinking about how silly it is to picture people flying. Though we’re only on the first page, I must assume that she’s not talking about flying in airplanes. Her best friend, Xander—because it’s the future!—tells her she doesn’t need to be nervous. Death will come swiftly for her if she looks away for even a second. She says she isn’t nervous.

“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.”

Really? And where does the “society” publish that number and why? Ah, I know. It’s because these matches are life and death tennis games. This is a dystopian future where they’ve replaced the score with death and the weak aren’t allowed to breed if they can’t hold their own on the court. Andre Agassi and Serena Williams each rule half the world in an endless struggle for total dominance. Or it’s going to be something completely boring and I’m trying desperately to see something that isn’t.

Much like PCK, Ally isn’t content to show us a damn thing. Cassia asks how Xander can tell she’s nervous and he says because she keeps opening and closing “that” and he points to her “artifact”. “Artifacts” are things from ancient times and everyone gets just one. It’s a compact which she uses to store three emergency tablets. Xander also has one artifact, a pair of cufflinks. Wait, Ally, that’s a pair. So you can have two “artifacts” as long as they’re a matched set? Does that mean you could have an entire record collection and a player if you could articulate that they belonged together like a pair of cufflinks? I’m so confused.

Cassia says that guys are stuff with limited choices in clothes because suits all look alike. Though she says Xander has always been good looking. Then it’s a few sentences spent on her dress, it’s silk and frilly, before they tell each other they both look good. Glad to know as I was worried that they looked like bridge trolls in potato sacks.

Next to me, my mother and father each draw a breath as City Hall comes into view, lit up white and blue and sparkling with the special occasion lights that indicate a celebration is taking place. I can’t see the marble stairs in front of the Hall yet, but I know that they will be polished and shining. All my life I have waited to walk up those clean marble steps and through the doors of the Hall, a building I have seen from a distance but never entered.

Cassia’s mom and dad must be world record holding snorkelers. Have they been waiting to breathe since they left the house? And really, Cassia, it’s just a government building. That’s like getting worked up over going into civil court for passing of a counterfeit TransAm.

Cassia tells us that it’s just the three of them, her parents and her. I guess Xander doesn’t count. Maybe he’s a product of her imagination. They’re on their way to the Match Banquet, because, again, people in the future have forgotten how to be creative. She says that it’s her night and her brother Bram is too young to come along but she’ll get to go to his ceremony. Yeah, knowing Bram, that’ll really burn him.

They wander inside and Cassia says it’s easy to see who’s there to get Matched because they’re all done up like it’s senior prom, 1999. Her dad notices that the banquet china is just like the “Wedgwood” pieces he found last year. Dad is apparently Scott Jones, the cousin of Indiana Jones. He specializes in restoring old, our modern, artifacts. Right now, he’s working on a library and deciding what’s useful for “the society” and what isn’t.

Are we really going with “the Society”, Ally? I mean, at least drop the and just call it Society. At least then, when the people are repeating it, it sounds like it includes them. As it stands, Cassia sounds like an outsider commenting on how well her human disguise is working. ‘The human society has accepted my mask and taken me in. Phase two, I’ll fill the corpse of a dog with bees and see how they react.’

“Please be seated,” an Official tells us from the podium. “Dinner is about to be served.”

An Official? Not an official, like a government representative, but an Official? He must be related to the Officials of Westerbury, the oil barons. It takes confidence to carry a name like Official, that or money. Or is this just Ally randomly capitalizing things because creativity is hard? I will give Ally this, she uses the word comical to mean funny instead of ironic like Chris, Myer or PCK does. Either she has a better grasp of language or her editor wasn’t asleep at the wheel.

Boring story short, they eat. There’s expensive foods and then it’s on to the sorting…I mean matching ceremony. A girl gets called ahead of Cassia, she goes up and gets matched with the boy for her. Cassia says that it’s done by the girls last names and she’ll be somewhere towards the end of the middle. The boys just have to wait until they’re called to meet the shrewish girl they’ll be shackled to at random.

The hostess presiding over the Banquet brings Lea a small silver box; the same thing happens to Joseph Peterson on the screen. When Lea sits down, she looks at the silver box longingly, as though she wishes she could open it right away. I don’t blame her. Inside the box is a microcard with background information about her Match. We all receive them. Later, the boxes will be used to hold the rings for the Marriage Contract.

This is the first chapter and we’ve had at least six Pointlessly Capitalized words. I’m surprised it wasn’t a Box that would later be used to Hold the Rings. Do these hacks really think that by adding a capital letter that it becomes important? Some of the scariest words in the English language don’t get a capital letter if they’re not the beginning of a sentence.

I know it’s really just Ally being lazy. Coming up with names for things that don’t sound silly, is really hard. The temptation is to avoid it instead of sounding stupid but people will accept silly sounding names and “the Bunny People” is easier to take the something like “the Society”. At least it shows an effort.

Cassia gets called up, she stands there trying to look pretty. I guess she wants her match to be fooled by her appear so he’ll gets close enough for her to inject him with the fangs hidden in her throat. She waits and nothing happens.

The screen is dark, and it stays dark.

That can only mean one thing.

That can only mean that “the Society” will have another month to prepare the sacrifice. For now, the sons of Society are safe. Or, it just means Ally is trying to get a cliffhanger out someone not finding any matches on the future version of eharmony.