Checkmate (Noughts And Crosses)

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In this world, black people are ‘Crosses’ (always with a capital ‘C’) and whites are ‘noughts’ (with a lower-case ‘n’). Book 3 in the dystopian series in which a 360 degree turnaround focuses light from a different angle on racism, with the setting an alternative history in which Crosses, black people, have always been the dominant civilising force, with white people as former slaves only emancipated fifty years before the timeline of the story. Whilst ‘Double Cross’ is well-written and ostensibly does add value to the series, it does feel ultimately a little superfluous and does not provide the same impact as the preceding three novels. I was willing to let her off for the second book, assuming it was maybe a filler for better things to come, but I’ve never read such an unsatisfying book series.

Honestly this series had such potential to be a groundbreaking dystopian masterpiece in the analysis of power play and race in society, and the first book made a good attempt, and from here it’s just unreadable.She has been awarded numerous prizes for her work, including the Red House Children’s Book Award and the Fantastic Fiction Award. Sephy, her mother, has told Rose virtually nothing about her father, but as Rose grows into a young adult, she unexpectedly discovers the truth about her parentage, and becomes determined to find out more, to honour both sides of her heritage.

I just feel like the direction of the story has taken such a sharp turn from Noughts and Crosses, it’s completely not even the same story and I’m so disappointed. Finally, after 21 years, readers who fell in love with Blackman’s writing and characters in Noughts and Crosses and ploughed through the books that followed – Knife Edge, Checkmate, Double Cross and, Crossfire – are given the bittersweet ending they’ve all been waiting for in Endgame.

Blackman has already moved on to her next work: a memoir, her first nonfiction, which will be published by Stormzy’s Merky imprint. Here, like Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, she encounters her future self - bitter, twisted and hard-hearted - and she is thus jolted into taking responsibility for her reactions.

Bringing Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses series to its breath-taking conclusion, Endgame no longer leaves the reader on a cliff-hanger at the end. I only rated this book four and the others five as I just personally found the others more exciting and entertaining and this book dragged on a little, but this book was still great as a whole. women who have to pick up the pieces of their broken lives, women who have had very little power to act and affect, women who have had very little say and contribution in the outcomes, their voices echoing in the hollowness of deaf ears either because they are not the right color, not the right age, not the right gender. I watched my daughter conjure up the filthiest look in her vast arsenal before she turned away with complete disdain.After completing two of the novels, she summarised the central theme in each one: ‘ Noughts and Crosses was a novel about love, Knife Edge is about hate, and the third novel [ Checkmate, which was published in 2005] is going to be about hope’ ( The Times, cited above). A girl at my college, who's favourite books are this series like they are mine, said that Sephy was like Jasmine in Checkmate. You have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold on you, and the right to ask us to correct any inaccuracies in that information.