The Knife of Never Letting Go

Evening everyone! How fast has this weekend gone? I am actually staying at family's this weekend so if there is any editing or layout issues with this post then I will fix them as soon as I can get on a laptop! As promised, I am going back to basics this week and doing a plain old book review. I tend to go through phases of reading, I either read a book in a day or it takes me 3 months to finish it. I've been going through a slow period lately and one book which has really taken me a while has been 'The Knife of Never Letting Go,' the first book in the 'Chaos Walking'. Now, this has nothing to do with the book, as I really enjoyed it, it's just how I work. 

The plot of TKONLG is basically ''Todd Hewitt is the only boy left in Prentisstown, a small settlement on 'New World' where all boys become men at the age of 13. He is told that all women and half the men have been killed by a ‘germ’ released by the native species on his planet known as the Spackle. As a side effect of this germ, the remaining men in Prentisstown can hear each other's thoughts, described as ‘Noise’. Todd, however, is soon forced to escape after discovering an area where there is no noise.  two men immediately force him to leave Prentisstown. While Todd is escaping, they are attacked by the town preecher, Aaron, Todd and Manchee manage to escape him, Todd comes across the spot of silence and meets the girl who is causing the silence. He slowly discovers that her name is Viola and they begin traveling together.'' (That was summarised from Wikipedia because I'm lazy.) 

The book is narrated by Todd which is interesting because the author, Patrick Ness, writes in the same way Todd would speak (like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye.) This makes for a lot of subtlety funny moments as Todd attempts to keep up with what is happening to him. The plot moves relatively quickly and Todd and Viola's relation is especially well developed. My only problem with the book is that the end is really unsatisfactory, it's left on a cliffhanger. Now, I did standard grade English last year, which is like GCSE level and one of the rules my English teacher swore by was 'don't end books on a cliffhanger.' THIS SHOULD BE HEEDED BY ALL WRITERS. If you are writing a series and you have to leave book one on a cliffhanger in order to make me purchase book two then you're not writing a good enough book one. I was willing and prepared to buy book two before the ending but the cliffhanger has wound me up. It's a personal pet hate of mine as I don't like feeling as though I'm being forced to read the next book in a series. 

Overall though, Ness's writing is wonderful and the book itself has more than warranted the various accolades it has received over the years, the cliffhanger doesn't detract from that or from the overall plot, and I will definitely be buying book two now. So well done Mr Ness, your marketing worked. 

Overall :3.5 /5

Plot: 4/5

Characters: 3/5 

I have a post queued for Wednesday so that will be uploaded regardless of whether I'm around or not. I am in London from this Friday for a week so I will have to type up another couple of post for next weekend and the week after and queue them too. Until then, have an amazing week!