Book Seventeen

The Chaos Walking Series:
The Knife of Never Letting Go
The Ask & The Answer
Monsters of Men
by Patrick Ness

I've chosen to review all three of these books as one, just because it is a trilogy and it felt like cheating to actually call this books 17, 18, and 19.  Even though they are.  Because it's my prerogative.  :)

In the Chaos Walking series, Ness writes about a future New World, which is essentially a new planet much like Earth.  Because humans have destroyed Earth with our pollution and our fighting, colonists have taken to spaceships in search of a new plant to call home.  The settlers have come in waves, so by the time the series begins with The Knife of Never Letting Go, there have been humans on New World for a couple of decades.  The entire trilogy takes place during the few months between the scout ship's arrival on behalf of the new wave of colonists and the arrival of the convoy of ships holding thousands of those colonists.  I sort of felt like it took me about that long to read the trilogy, too.

Because the first group of colonists arrived years earlier and have had little access to education--their focus mostly on survival at the beginning and then on the drama created by their mayor--the language used by Todd, the narrator, was very hard to follow for me.  For the first third of The Knife of Never Letting Go, I faced a constant internal debate about whether to quit or continue.  Ultimately I decided to skim, which is a mortal sin of reading as far as I'm concerned.  It comes just before quitting a book altogether.  I ended skimming several sections until things settled in to a system that I could follow.  Then, and through The Ask & The Answer, the trilogy really got good.

There is action and a sweet friendship between a boy, a girl, and a dog.  Publisher's Weekly calls The Ask & The Answer grim and beautifully written, and I have to agree with that.  As Todd and Viola, on the run from an army built of men from Todd's hometown, progress on their journey to Haven and then, ultimately, settle in to their new roles in that town, they face a journey of hope and friendship and love and tension.  It truly is grim and beautifully written.  I found myself caring deeply about the fate of these two children-becoming-adults and wishing that fate would smile kindly on them and actually give them something for which to hope.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen--for Todd and Viola or for the reader.  By the time I settled in to Monsters of Men, I began to skim again and just wish it all would end.  Ness brings on another narrator in Book Three   (whose name I've intentionally left off so as not to spoil any of the story), and I couldn't stand reading those sections.  I felt preached at and judged.  This trilogy, which was that grim and beautifully-written coming-of-age story about hope became New Age-y and judgmental.

At the end of the day, I'm glad I invested the time in this trilogy, if only for the end of Book One and Book Two.  The messages of hope and love and forgiveness are lovely.  I just wish they'd been packaged with less judgment.