Reached (2012) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

• Cassia Maria Reyes: She is part of the Rising and has been welcomed back into Central where she will work for the Rising while spying on the Society. Cassia remains loyal to Xander and in love with Ky. She also remains the best sorter. In addition, she becomes a trader for the Archivists. She manages to horde a stash of poems to trade off bit by bit to get messages to Ky and Xander and Bram. She also helps to find the cure for the mutated plague. She is the poet. She finds that she is not immune to the red tablet but can remember things she has been made to forget. She can survive the blue tablet, has never taken the green, and did not get the plague. No one knows why.
• Xander Thomas Carrow: In Crossed, it is revealed that he is part of the Rising. Xander spends most of the novel working for the Resistance helping to cure the still. He, with the help of others, uncovers the cure for the mutated Plague. Xander loves Cassia but after the events of the Rising and the Plague occupy his time and thoughts, he finds that he is capable of letting her go and loving someone else. His feelings begin to grow for Nea Lei, and the two decide to stay in the Stone Village together.
• Ky Markham: Ky remains a thinker and a skeptic. He still questions the Pilot and wants to be with Cassia more than he wants the Rising. He would leave it all behind to be with her. When he goes still, Cassia has to help Xander find the cure in time to save him and her parents. Ky's key role in the novel is that of a pilot who brings cures to the cities.
• Indie: She is in love with Xander although she never met him. She starts to love Ky when they are in the Rising. Indie trusts the Pilot when she meets him. Indie, like many others, catches the Plague. She refuses to seek help, flying her plane until she is too sick to do so, and dies from the Plague.
• Nea Lei: Xander starts to fall in love with her. She becomes "still" because of the mutation. She is the former girlfriend of Vick. In the end she falls in love with Xander, and they live together in the Stone Village. She is the girl "Laney" Vick fell in love with, but could never be with.
• Anna: She was the 3rd choice at the end of the book for the people. Cassia trusts her very much.
• Oker: A virologist who helped create the original plague, and then found the cure. With the help of many others, Oker finds the key ingredient for the mutated plague cure, but dies before he can put the cure together. His work is continued by Xander. Oker, at age 79, fled the Society before his final ceremony (where the Society would have him die), and continued to live into his 90s in the Stone Village.
• Hunter: Is in the Stone Village. He sabotages the cure that is being administered to the still in the stone village because he doesn't believe that it is fair that so many are trying to help the still, when no one tried to save his daughter when she was dying. Hunter is sentenced to exile in the woods as his punishment.
• Head Archivist: She is greedy and conniving, but she does not seem so at first. She helps Cassia, although she undermined her beforehand. She stole Cassia's poems, but used them to arrange safe passage for Cassia to get to Ky and Xander.
• Grandpa: Grandpa said his favorite memory of Cassia was the red garden day. She puzzles it out, recalling bit by bit what that means, and when she does, she is able to remember a memory that was removed (when she was forced to take the red pill to forget). She remembers that the Resistance asked her to add data to the next data sort - this results in Cassia having added abberations to the data for the Matching ceremony. Ultimately, she added Ky to the matching data of her own Matching Ceremony, and realizes that she had helped the Resistance when she didn't even realize it.
• Bram: Bram plays a very small role in this novel. He looks after his mother after she goes still, trading the horrible job of identifying the dead in exchange for nutrient bags for his mother. He finds his dead father. Cassia mentions him sometimes, wondering where he is and whether or not he is safe.
• Molly Reyes: She sends Cassia a torn paper flower lily. Cassia uses it to figure out the missing element for the cure. After Xander and Oker put together the cure, Cassia is given permission to cure her mother, who knows where more of the lily grows.
• Matthew Markham: Matthew is not really dead. His parents tried to give him a better chance at life outside the Society by having him taken from the Society and moved to the Stone Village. The Society, not wanting people to know about the disappearance of Matthew (they didn't want the citizens realizing that there were ways for them to leave) faked his death. After living in the Stone Villages, Matthew left for the Otherlands.
• Pilot: The members of the Rising are told they will know the Pilot when they hear his voice. He begins the Rising. He is an actual pilot. Indie is convinced at first that he is the real deal. Cassia's grandmother was once the Pilot. She saved poems during the Society's founding. Later, Cassia, Ky, Indie, and Xander come to realize there are many Pilots and that they are Pilots of a new beginning.
• Abran Reyes: Cassia's father. Is absent the entire novel, with Cassia sometimes wondering about her relationship with him. At the end of the novel Bram reveals that their father is dead, having died from the plague. It was also revealed that Cassia's grandfather tried to give the same poems to Abran, but he refused. Because of this, the Rising listed the Reyes as potential traitors, thus Cassia and Bram were not given the immunization at birth.
• Vick: Boy who died in "Crossed." Was in love with Laney. Became friends with Ky and Eli and traveled through the Carving with them.
• Leyna: Leader in the village Endstone. In charge of finding the cure.
• Tess: Workers in Oker's lab and is helping to find the cure.
• Noah: Works in Oker's lab with Tess and helps to find the cure.
• Eli: He goes to live in the Stone Villages and often watched Ky while he was "still". He ends up with Anna in the provinces.
• Great-grandma: She is the Pilot.
• Patrick and Aria Markham: They sent Matthew Markham to the Stone Villages.
• Leyna: When Oker dies, she turns on Xander and tries to exile him. Wants, badly, to get to the Otherlands.
• The Plague.: The Plague mutates and Cassia, Xander, and Ky go to Endstone to find a cure. Cassia's father, Indie, and many others die from the mutation. Ky, Cassia's mother, Nea Lei, and Xander's family recover from the mutated plague. The villagers at Endstone called the plague, "The Pilot". So the Plague was the pilot.

Quotes edit see section history

• “For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.”

• “"Xander's not blind, just believing. It's so damn painful to see."”

  Ky Markham

• “But I also know that we can't plan on anyone else rescuing us. We have to do it ourselves. There can be no one Pilot. We have to be strong enough to go without the belief that someone can swoop down and save us."”

  Cassia Maria Reyes

• “...I do not know how I can feel this much pain and survive, and at the same time know how much I have to live.”

  Cassia Maria Reyes

• “I wanted to stay alive after my family died. But I didn't feel like I was living again until I meet Cassia.”

  Ky Markham

• “...because the sky seems too far. It doesn't feel like it will hold you the way the water can.”

  Lei

• “Cassia wants me to know that she loves me. The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have.”

  Ky Markham

• “The Rising is smart. They've matched me with the one person in camp I care about. Which goes to show that caring about anyone leaves you vulnerable. I've known this for years but I still can't stop.”

  Ky Markham

• “Some people think the stars must look closer from up here. They don't. When you've up here, you realize how distant they really are - home impossible to reach.”

  Ky Markham

• ““When we fall in love the first time, we don’t know anything. We risk a lot less than we do if we choose to love again.There is something extraordinary about the first time falling.But it feels even better to find myself standing on solid ground, with someone holding on to me, pulling me back, and know that I’m doing the same for her.””

  Xander Carrow

• “"...if you don't walk away from someone's silence, the just might speak."”

  Cassia Maria Reyes

• “In a story, you can turn to the front and begin again and everyone lives once more”

  Cassia Maria Reyes

• “You cannot change your journey if you are unwilling to move at all.”

  Cassia Maria Reyes

• “If you let hope inside, it takes over you. It feeds your insides and uses your bones to climb and grow. Eventually it becomes the thing that is your bones, that holds you together. Holds you up until you don’t know how to live without it anymore. To pull it out of you would kill you entirely.”

  Ky Markham

• “I draw in a ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can’t cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist.”

  Cassia Maria Reyes

• “The Pilot. The Poet. The Physic. They are in ALL of us. I believe this. That every person might have a way to fly, a line of poetry to put down for others to see, a hand to heal.”

  Cassia Maria Reyes

• “Writing, painting, singing - it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.”

  Cassia

• “Its just one person. Of course, one person can be the world.”

  Xander Carrow

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Central: The capital of the Society. All the main supplies that the other provinces need start from here.
• Oria Province: Cassia, Ky, and Xander used to live there.
• Endstone: Cassia, Ky, and Xander are sent there to find the cure for Plague mutation.
• Otherlands
• Camas: The Rising's headquarters.

Organizations edit see section history

• the Society: Society that controls everything based on facts and statistics.
• the Rising: Rebellion against the Society, deeply infiltrated into it.
• the Enemy: Society's original foes, long destroyed.
• Aberrations and Anomolies: Group of castaways and outsiders
• Archivists: They trade valuable items for other things people might need.
• Farmers: Lived in the canyons in Crossed.
• Traders: Worked with Archevists.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Crossed.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Ally Condie (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Teens

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