The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness - Chaos Walking Book 1

The Knife of Never Letting Go
Chaos Walking Book 1
Patrick Ness
Candlewick Press
ISBN 9780763647513

Sometimes life is not what it seems; most people would say often it is not what it seems or even what you expect. But for Todd Hewitt it is even more so. Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown. Todd was raised to believe that all women on the settlement planet had been destroyed by a germ from an alien species called the Spackle. That same germ allowed men's thoughts to be visible to others and for men to hear the thoughts of animals and for animals to speak. In thirty days Todd becomes a man, for on your thirteenth birthday on this frontier planet you become a man. But for now he is the last boy and it is lonely because after 13 years of 13 months you become a man and Todd cannot wait, but his world is about to be turned upside down.

Todd is out picking apples when he notices a spot of silence, a void in the noise he is accustomed to coming from everything. He tries to follow the noise and it moves away from him. Soon he loses track of the void in the noise and heads home. He tries to hide this secret as he passes through Prentisstown. When he gets home, his adoptive parents panic when they find out about it, and start gathering stuff to send him away. Bewildered, confused and feeling rejected he struggles against this plan, a plan they have obviously been preparing for a while. Soon he discovers the void in the noise is a girl, and he and the girl are running for their lives.

This book was a wild ride, and I cannot wait to read the rest of the series. From the minute I picked it up, I did not want to put it down. A few of the plot twists I figured out well before the story explicitly told us, but there were so many, and the way they were all woven together was thrilling to read. Of the over 300 books I read in 2010 this is one of the best; I just hope the rest of the series lives up to it.

Books By Patrick Ness:

The Crash of Hennington (2003)
Topics About Which I Know Nothing (2005)

Young Adult Books:

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Chaos Walking: Book One (2008)
The Ask and the Answer - Chaos Walking: Book Two (2009)
Monsters of Men - Chaos Walking: Book Three (2010)
The New World - Chaos Walking: Prequel (Ebook 2009)

A Monster Calls (Walker Books, 2011)