Sadie Hawkins Sunday Review #22: The Knife of Never Letting Go

The Knife of Never Letting Go
Chaos Walking, Book 1

Author: Patrick Ness
Pages: 479
Publisher: Candlewick
Read: June 30-July 4, 2013
Source: Finished copy from publisher for review
Recommended by: Renae of Respiring Thoughts

Description from Goodreads:
Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.

First Sentence: "The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say."

Review:
Funny story. A few years ago I DNFed this book on the very first page. The dialect and the dog talking about poo and I was out of there. Of course, later I heard how epic and amazing it worth it the book was, and this is part of why I generally fear DNFs. Anyway, a reader finally forced me to give this series another try and, though I'm still a bit unsure just how I feel about this book that I just finished, I'm glad I did.

First off, The Knife of Never Letting Go is legit. Originally published in 2009, this book predates the whole dystopian craze, and isn't a romance novel in disguise. Ness' world building is a little bit insane (literally), but also very unique and captivating. I don't want to say too much about it, since the way the information unfolds is one of the big pluses of the book, but Ness does explain how things came about, and it's really cool that developing the world is obviously his main focus.

Todd Hewitt lives in Prentisstown, the last boy, to become a man on his thirteenth birthday in a month. There are no women in Prentisstown, all dead from the Noise germ. The Spackle, now killed by the settlers, used germ warfare during the war, and one of the germs made men's thoughts audible and killed all the women. Life in Prentisstown is angry and unhappy, a slow extinction. Men's thoughts create a cacophony of sound, and Todd likes to escape the Noise whenever he can. The concept of the Noise is so cool, and I love the way it's represented in the text. It's sort of like that Mel Gibson movie What Women Want, only everyone can hear what every man thinks.

Well, actually the Noise affects more than just humans, which brings me to my favorite character: Manchee. Remember the dog talking about poo? Well, he's adorable and I want to hug him forever. All animals can speak (though not in the traditional form of speech) on New World. Some don't have a whole lot to say, like sheep, which pretty much just say "sheep." Manchee's a pretty young pup, but you can actually see him learning throughout the book and getting smarter. He also undergoes a lot of abuse and the damn book nearly made me cry.

The dialect of the writing took some getting used to for me, but Blood Red Road paved the way for me to be able to enjoy this style. It took a couple hundred pages for me to adjust, but I did, and can now declare that I think Ness did a really good job with it. The dialect has a natural flow and is no thicker than it needs to be. I actually read some of the dialogue aloud and there's a really natural cadence to it, the sort that suggests Ness got things just right.

The Knife of Never Letting Go is also suitably scary and dark. There's really not much happiness to be had on Prentisstown, and life is almost entirely hopeless. This is how I like my dystopias. Also, no one comes out of this with their hands clean, even the most likable characters. Living on New World means getting your hands dirty.

Two things did bother me about The Knife of Never Letting Go though. First, the fact that, though this isn't Todd's written account so far as I can tell, it's edited so he says "effing," even when he didn't actually censor himself that way. He does try to remember to say effing instead, but if he said "fuck" then that's what the text should say, in my opinion. Second, how was Aaron not dead? This crazy guy Aaron should have been dead a couple chapters in but he just kept showing up again. I'm just not convinced humans can survive all of what happened to that guy, which gave me some serious suspension of disbelief issues.

If you've not entirely written off the dystopian genre and are still game for ones without romance and with plenty of world building, do yourself a favor and read The Knife of Never Letting Go. I'll be reading the whole series, and I'm really curious to find out where it's going after that ending.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote: "The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking."

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