Book Review - The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking #1) by Patrick Ness

Book Review

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

Author: Patrick Ness

Published: 2008

Rating: 70/100

Review:

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

(Review From Goodreads)

[Contains Spoilers] Patrick Ness must have had one hell of a creative brainstorming session when he came up with the plot for The Knife of Never Letting Go (Knife). He wanted to write a sci-fi book about humans travelling across the galaxy on futuristic spaceships to colonise new planets, who encounter an alien species called the Spackle. He wanted to write a "coming-of-age" adventure book about a 13-year old boy named Todd and his best friend Manchee, a playful puppy who loves a good poo and will let you know about it. He wanted to write a bleak dystopian fantasy book about a rural farming world where everyone can hear each other's thoughts, including the animals... well, everyone except females. It’s like Ness couldn't decide which book to write, so he took these ideas, chucked them in a blender and hoped for the best. The resulting literary smoothie is an amalgamation of words and ideas that won't taste like anything you've had before… and that’s largely a good thing. Another reviewer, Frank Boyce from The Guardian, commented that he was 100 pages in and no idea what genre the book belonged to. This is so true and it’s honestly quite refreshing.

Knife won't appeal to everybody and that's mainly because of the way it has been written. Ness wrote it in a first-person narrator style, in the voice of the protagonist, Todd, who is a childish, naive and illiterate boy. Todd speaks like a country hick, favouring slang, mispronounced words and crass language. While I appreciate how difficult it would have been for Ness to write an entire novel in Todd's voice (round of applause), listening to the audio book and being inside Todd's mind for the duration of the novel was a grinding and often frustrating experience. Todd tends to repeat things, go off on tangents and use silly words like "twixt". The only way I can describe it is to imagine being at a family dinner party and having your 13-year-old nephew come out and excitedly tell everyone a long and complex story... for 10+ hours. Let's be honest, you'd tell the kid to shut-up and sit-down within a few minutes. That's what I felt like reading Knife. I was digging the narrative. I loved the world-building. The characters were interesting. Everything was great, I just wanted Todd to shut the hell up so I could soak up the story. I understand that Knife is targeted mainly at teens and young adults, and that Ness wrote Knife in a style that would appeal to them, so I’m coming from a purely adult perspective.

While I enjoyed the book, there were some parts of the narrative that made absolutely no sense to me. The character of Aaron is an unrelenting and deranged preacher who comes across as being almost invincible. He hunts Todd throughout the book with a tenacity that would make a T-1000 proud. Despite suffering an unbelievable amount of injuries, including having his face and body ripped apart by an enormous crocodile, he still manages to survive and track Todd with almost no loss of speed and movement. He wasn’t on pain numbing drugs. He wasn’t a super hero. He was just too unbelievable and I found myself rolling my eyes whenever the one-dimensional character would pop up. Like, really Aaron? Just die already.

Criticisms aside, Ness has crafted a fast-paced and gripping novel that you won’t be able to put down. The novel follows a stock-standard ‘pursuit’ book structure, whereby Todd is on the run for the duration of the novel with his pursuers never far from catching him. He runs into obstacles and overcomes them. It’s standard stuff, but with the added layer of his pursuers being able to hear his thoughts and vice versa. This puts a new twist on the traditional format and makes for a fun reading experience. Throw in a bit of ‘love story’, some golden comedic moments (mostly from Manchee) and some amazing side characters, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a book. I was never bored with it and, despite my criticisms, I think this book will appeal to a huge market of people, not just young adults. Personally, I’ve recently read too many fantastic ‘coming-of-age’ stories recently and Knife doesn’t measure up to them (Red Rising), hence why I’m rating this lower than it probably deserves.

Who will like this book?
Anyone who likes young adult dystopian novels like The Hunger Games.