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Title: The Knife of Never Letting Good (Chaos Walking Book 1)
Author: Patrick Ness
Published:: Candlewick, 2010
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 479
Total Page Count: 142,628
Text Number: 419
Read Because: personal enjoyment, e-book borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In Prentisstown, all men's thoughts are broadcasted in a mess of public Noise and all the women are dead. But when Todd finds a strange pocket of space without any Noise at all, he flees Prentisstown and discovers that the phenomenon of Noise is stranger and more dangerous than he knew. The Knife of Never Letting Go, like a lot of YA, has a good hook: surprisingly coherent, intriguing worldbuilding and a good initial pace that balances mystery, discovery, and action. But as the book progresses, it flounders. Revelations in the worldbuilding grow increasingly predictable, and both Noise and the society it creates have problematic gender issues; Ness clearly is trying to write commentary on them, but his commentary is insubstantial and his tropes are conventional, and the result puts heternormativity, gender essentialism, and sexism on display and then just lets them lie there to be viewed and then overlooked by a male point of view. The plot, meanwhile, grows tiresome; its themes, antagonists, and false sense of forward movement are almost comically repetitive, and the climax when it arrives is heavyhanded but, because of the cliffhanger end, offers no real closure. Again like a lot of YA, Knife is often compelling and, even given the stylistic strangeness, always readable—but in no ways good, despite initial appearances to the contrary. I don't recommend it, and don't plan to read the sequels.
Author: Patrick Ness
Published:: Candlewick, 2010
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 479
Total Page Count: 142,628
Text Number: 419
Read Because: personal enjoyment, e-book borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In Prentisstown, all men's thoughts are broadcasted in a mess of public Noise and all the women are dead. But when Todd finds a strange pocket of space without any Noise at all, he flees Prentisstown and discovers that the phenomenon of Noise is stranger and more dangerous than he knew. The Knife of Never Letting Go, like a lot of YA, has a good hook: surprisingly coherent, intriguing worldbuilding and a good initial pace that balances mystery, discovery, and action. But as the book progresses, it flounders. Revelations in the worldbuilding grow increasingly predictable, and both Noise and the society it creates have problematic gender issues; Ness clearly is trying to write commentary on them, but his commentary is insubstantial and his tropes are conventional, and the result puts heternormativity, gender essentialism, and sexism on display and then just lets them lie there to be viewed and then overlooked by a male point of view. The plot, meanwhile, grows tiresome; its themes, antagonists, and false sense of forward movement are almost comically repetitive, and the climax when it arrives is heavyhanded but, because of the cliffhanger end, offers no real closure. Again like a lot of YA, Knife is often compelling and, even given the stylistic strangeness, always readable—but in no ways good, despite initial appearances to the contrary. I don't recommend it, and don't plan to read the sequels.
