The Knife of Never Letting Go

Title: The Knife of Never Letting Go

Author: Patrick Ness

Illustrator: Lynne Condellon and John Picacio

Genre: Science Fiction
Age: 14+
Pages:  479 (paperback)

Publisher: Candlewick Press

   
        A world where everyone can here everyone’s thoughts and feelings. Wherever you walk there's noise that surrounds you and never leaves. Not when you're alone, not when everyone’s asleep, never! Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown and boys are quite rare because every woman was killed in the Spackle war. The germ that the spackles released years ago had killed every last women. The spackles, an alien species that dominated their planet called new world, which is where Todd lives, were also annihilated during the war. Todd feels, rather than hears, an unbelievable silence, a few weeks before his birthday. Soon, he is told to run away from Prentisstown, but where do you run off to where there's nowhere else to go? In a series of events, the young boy must learn to trust people and accept the fact that everything he thought he knew was a lie! With an army chasing him and a girl at his side, Todd must make choices that may save him or destroy him!

        This was one of my most favorite reads! Starting with the writing style. It was so genius, because you could really "feel" the character. He had his own way of expressing himself and the writing technique used really showed how the characters were. For example: when Todd speaks, he usually says ain't or tradishun or thro. It did take a chapter or two to get used to it, but once you're at that point, it's really worth the trouble. The Knife of Never Letting Go had two major aspects that made the story so great.

        Let's start with the action. Even when the characters were resting somewhere, I was pumped up! The way that the author created this wonderful piece of art was made so that every event seemed interesting. It had what every great book needs and that's captivating your audience on the first few pages. The plot is very well thought out and so it wasn't hard to encourage people to read it, but to make people finish a whole novel can sometimes be a big task.

        Off to my second point. Patrick Ness is one of my favorite authors for developing characters. It's great that there weren’t many characters so he could really focus on the main Protagonists and antagonists. The characters, for me, feel so real. Like Todd can be so believable with his self conciseness and he's never sure of himself, while Aaron is just straight out crazy and sadistic. Even Manchee, Todd's dog, was a very believable and amusing character with the few words he said, or rather thought with his noise. One last thing, this book had a very very good cliffhanger right at the end, and I always like those because it encourages me too buy the second book and I at least know there's something in store for me in book number two!

        The only things I disliked was that the book really liked to go on and on about something as simple as running away. I understand the mechanics behind it, and without this anticipation you would get a very good result in the end story. Yet, it could have been reduced to one chapter of going up a hill and down the hill up a hill and down the hill rather than three.

If you guys want a book too read this is the one! I swear it's going to be well worth the 10$, so make sure to buy it off the link for amazon!

Available on Amazon

Rating 4.5/5