Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking #1)

I've fallen hard for the dystopian genre.  While I don't think the world is going to end in December, or we'll have a huge world war/huge natural disaster, it is something interesting to think about.  The Hunger Games was my introduction to the genre, and I loved it.  So when I saw someone tweet (and I don't even remember who, I'm sorry if it was you!) that they thought The Chaos Walking series was even better than The Hunger Games, I knew I had to check it out!

Book 1 in the series by Patrick Ness is called "The Knife of Never Letting Go".

  

Here is the summary from Amazon:

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.

The book is told from the point of view (and Noise) of Todd, the last boy to become a man in Prentisstown.  Noise is the thoughts and feelings of all men---not women.  My first thought when reading this book was, "Its too busy!  I can't navigate the Noise plus Todd's horrible spelling to understand!"  Todd was spelling the larger words (like direction, for example) phonetically, and for some reason, it took me a little bit to get used to.  I don't know why it took a while to get used to, when you read it with a southern accent, it makes sense.  But once it started making sense, the entire story clicked and I sped through it.

What the town was hiding from him WAS horrible.  And once Todd starts putting the pieces of the puzzle together while on the journey to New Haven with Viola, the trek becomes more and more dangerous (physically and mentally) 

Poor Todd.  While he is not yet a man in the eyes of his town, he really has to make man-like decisions.  And sometimes, he doesn't make the best ones and has to live with the consequences.  But then, don't we all?  

Also infected by the Noise gene are animals.  Since Todd's dog, Manchee, played such a large roll in the story, as I was reading it, I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to film Skipper and pretend what his noise says?"  And then....something happens to Manchee and I just couldn't anymore.  I didn't want to make light of what happened to him.

As soon as I finished the book, I did two things: I put book 2 on hold at the library and turned to my husband and said, "Read this".  His reaction was, "Let me read the first page."  Seeing that The Knife of Never Letting Go has one of the greatest first pages in history, I think I have him hooked.  

(the opening few paragraphs go:  

The first this you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.  About anything.

"Need a poo, Todd."

"Shut up, Manchee."

"Poo.  Poo, Todd." )

Yeah, he's interested now... (I won't think any less of you if you're interested now after reading that little bit).