Thanks to the wonderful Holly (
you remember how much fun she is right?), I recently picked up
The Knife of Never Letting Go by
Patrick Ness on her enthusiastic recommendation. Dystopian? Intriguing characters? Suspenseful action? Sign me right up.
Todd Hewitt lives in a world without silence. In Prentisstown, all the thoughts of every man and animals are projected loud and clear, without filter - called the Noise. Constant and deafening, the Noise is inescapable and full of every secret thought.
The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.
Todd has never known privacy in Prentisstown nor he has ever met a woman. His own mother, along with all the other women, was killed during the war with an alien race called the Spackle. Now as the only boy left in Prentisstown, Todd is eagerly awaiting his 13th birthday - the one that will turn him officially into a man. A month before his birthday Todd and his faithful dog Manchee discover something that will change his entire life and will contradict every truth he ever believed in and leave him running for his very survival.
There are many different reasons why I practically devoured this book: first of all is
Patrick Ness' completely unique writing style. From the compelling and stark chapter titles to the varying type fonts used to characterize the harsh pervasiveness of the Noise - it was all just so... new and utterly real. But the real ace in the hole has to be the characterizations in
The Knife of Never Letting Go. I so loved Todd's interactions with each and every individual - I even went so far as to fall in love with his crazy dog, Manchee.
The dog. In every exchange, you can practically chart Todd's progression into maturity on his flight from Prentisstown. Take this truth Todd belatedly learns about the falseness of first impressions:
I look up at him. His face and his Noise are as blank as I remember but the lesson of forever and ever is that knowing a man's mind ain't knowing the man.
Talk about a book that will kill you with its utter, complete, blinding perfection. Which is the reason I shall now dub it as My Favorite Dystopian Read of 2010. Oh, I know it is only two weeks into January and I've got another 50 odd weeks of reading yet to come, but I cannot even begin to explain the sheer brilliance of this compelling book. After digesting this complex read, I'm more than confident that
The Knife of Never Letting Go will remain on my best of lists. That is, unless
The Ask and the Answer dares to take its place.
series reading order:
~
The Knife of Never Letting Go~
The Ask and the Answer~ Monsters of Men (September 2010)
Because Everyone Likes a Second Opinion:
Confessions of a Bibliovore reviewS. Krishna's Books reviewThings Mean a lot reviewYA Fabulous reviewya Reads reviewRhiannon Hart interviews Patrick Nessbook source: my local library
Thanks to the wonderful Holly (you remember how much fun she is right?), I recently picked up The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness on her enthusiastic recommendation. Dystopian? Intriguing characters? Suspenseful action? Sign me right up.
