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"Sets a high standard in an already crowded fantasy fiction genre."
— THE INDEPENDENT (U.K.) — Independent, The (UK)
From the Hardcover edition.
— THE INDEPENDENT (U.K.) — Independent, The (UK)
From the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
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.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too,
By TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Knife of Never Letting Go: Chaos Walking: Book One (Hardcover)
On a far-flung world newly settled by humanity, twelve-year-old Todd Hewitt of Prentisstown is a boy on the brink of becoming a man.When settlers came to this world, they found it already inhabited by aliens known as the Spackle, and a war was waged against them to colonize the planet. Now, almost twenty years after the first settlers landed, the world is low-tech but free of the "spacks." However, they left behind them the "Noise germ," a chemical contaminant that causes all the men who come in contact with it to broadcast their thoughts for everyone's hearing--and kills all the infected women. On the eve of his thirteenth birthday, Todd has never seen a woman. He was the last child born in the settlement before his mother succumbed to the Noise germ and died, and now he's the only boy left in the village of Prentisstown, all the others having turned thirteen and been proclaimed men. Now, with Todd's birthday approaching, the entire town is anxious, and Todd can hear it. The men of the town are keeping something from him; although they can hear each other think, it's possible to learn techniques that allow one to control the information that others can hear. Ben and Cillian, his adoptive guardians and old friends of his parents, are both worried for him, though Todd doesn't know why. And then, with less than a month to go until Todd's thirteenth birthday, he stumbles across a secret that no boy is meant to know and all men have been forced to forget, a secret about the history of his world and the lies he's been told. Todd has no choice but to escape from the town he's called his home and the people who have been his parents, on the run from something more terrible than the alien Spackle, and more familiar. The sheer intensity of the story Ness tells kept me reading straight through this book, despite its length and occasionally hefty prose. Todd's first-person, present-tense narration has an inexorable pull that places the reader within the context of the story and keeps you turning the pages. The plot is full of twists and turns, the world is immaculately and innovatively crafted, and the characters' pain and longing seeps from the pages. My largest complaint with this book was the way in which it ended, without resolving some major issues that had been significant throughout the story. It is the first book in a series, so this sense of incompleteness may be slightly forgiven, but I felt like I'd spent the entire book hurtling forward into empty space only to be slammed at the last minute against a brick wall. That said, I'd recommend THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO to anyone who enjoys dystopia or slightly darker fiction, and I know I can't wait to see what happens next! Reviewed by: Candace Cunard
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Overwhelming, intense, addictive,
By
This review is from: The Knife of Never Letting Go: Chaos Walking: Book One (Paperback)
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.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Sigh,
By
This review is from: The Knife of Never Letting Go: Chaos Walking: Book One (Hardcover)
I read the previous comments from others here before getting this book, but turned out they were very deceptive.The story is simply another running scared version in a different setting. An average under-educated rude boy urged by his parents to escape from a hopeless gangster town to find new life. He was expected to join the gangster when he turned adult age. So when the mob boss found out he was escaping, the chase began. Running away, making mistakes, getting caught up by some bad guys, fighting, some luck helped getting away, running again, making mistakes, getting caught up, fighting, getting away, ... and the whole book is just repeating this same theme over and over, again and again to the end. Unfortunate enough, the author tries to set it in a very futuristic scene where he has no idea what it could look like. People were using rifles, riding horses, and (funny enough) adding a Taser gun, while settled on another planet after light-years of travelling to another galaxy. Could he not just use a little bit more imagination? I would rather he has set it to Texas a century ago and all things in the book could have fallen into the better places. Todd, the main character the author created, was a typical angry teenager. So it is very intense because he was consistently shouting, yelling, complaining, and swearing, whenever and whomever he talked to. The author used some self-created words to replace the swearing words to make it to print, but he obviously worried very much about readers not understanding that Todd was actually swearing throughout the book so he repeatedly jumped in to explain that he was swearing. Gosh, what's the point. The story is so simply and badly written, after done reading a quarter of it I wanted to stop. After reading half of it I wanted to throw it away. This is one of the very few books I have to force myself to finish it just because I want to make sure I have not missed anything and mis-judged it. But no, there is nothing in there worth anybody's time. If you are just curious how bad the book is, go ahead. If you have better use of your time, try something else. Wonder why there is not a NO STAR rating.
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