I finally read Matched by Ally Condie today. After initially feeling repulsed because of all the comparisons to The Giver, my friend read it and told me she had no quibbles with the world. (She did have other quibbles.) So I put a copy on hold and read it for myself.

Yes, the world-building is shockingly reminiscent of The Giver - dystopian society in which everything, including jobs and marriages, is controlled by the government - and yet that didn't bother me while I was reading the book. It was only when I considered those common elements once I finished reading that I was annoyed. I think it's because the writing is so, so different - so drastically different - that the two books do not seem at all similar to me. Lois Lowry is a good writer. Ally Condie has a smattering of good plot between the gaping plot holes, but it's swamped beneath the (at best) mediocrity of her writing.

So when, exactly, is it plagiarism? The Hunger Games, to me, was more reminiscent of The Quillan Games by D. J. MacHale than Matched was of The Giver; The White Darkness uncomfortably reminded me of L'Engle's Troubling a Star, but Matched didn't disturb me like that. (If it must be compared to another book, I'd put Matched down as oddly akin to Scott Westerfeld's Uglies.) Is that a tribute to Suzanne Collins' and Geraldine McCaughrean's writing skills? Or is it that I think of plagiarism as more than genre similarities - as an atmospheric similarity, a writing similarity as well?

And there's a difference, too, between plagiarism and genuine tribute. The Name of the Wind reminded me of A Wizard of Earthsea and Eon evoked Alanna, but despite the plot and writing similarities, those books came across as acknowledgements of their roots rather than as slyly copied material.

It's difficult to distinguish when genre books are characteristic of the genre and when their ideas are plagiarized. Of course there will be similar elements; it is those similar elements that comprise the genre. I think it's when the entire package - premise, world-building, writing style, characters - reminds me of another author's work that I'm most compelled to point a blaming finger.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.