The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

[Iridescence]

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

So says Todd Hewitt, the last boy in Prentisstown. Todd is twelve and will be thirteen in a month, according to New World years. Thirteen is the age when a boy becomes a man. All the women are dead and all the men have a condition called Noise, a condition in which every thought, every memory, every emotion is audible to everyone else, overlapping each other in a torrent of...well...Noise. Animals also have their own Noise, and they can talk, too (though, as Todd says, they ain't got much to say). This is the way of things, the way it'll always be.

That is, until, while looking for apples in the swamp, Todd finds the hole in the Noise. The silence that sends him on the run for his life.

But, as the book jacket says, how can you run when everyone can hear you? How can you escape when there is nowhere to go?

There're books that are sort of slow to begin but pick up speed toward the middle and kick you right into the climax. There're books that begin quickly but continue throughout the book in a mess of battles here, random revelations there, the climactic ending, whoop-de-doo book is over . And there're books that plod along like a herd of cows, slowly killing brain cell by tortured brain cell.

This book was none of those. It caught my interest at once, but didn't shove me through a wormhole to the end of the book. Instead, time and pacing melted away completely as I lost myself in Todd Hewitt's world.

His voice is the most alluring part of this book. The book is written in first person, obviously, but it's not just him telling us what's going on. You can hear his Noise as well, even in the text, and his thoughts travel from idea to idea so realistically, so human-like, that it doesn't feel like you're reading at all. He's got the typical country boy backwater slang ("yer" and "ain't" and "direkshun" and "explanashun" and "effing") but he's also got a clarity and depth that counters his slightly hokey dialect. He is honest, but he lies to himself; he pretends to be okay, even when we can see he isn't. Books come alive for me when I can connect with the main character.

Connecting with Todd Hewitt is immediate, automatic, and moving.

The plot itself is less simple than it appears. Noise, a major plot device, is almost [I]always a hindrance (especially when you're a refugee trying to run for your life and your thoughts are screaming out to anyone with ears). When someone "read" Todd's Noise without his consent (even though it's pretty much impossible not to do so, since it's audible to the entire world), I felt annoyed, as if it had happened to me. Such is the way Ness builds the mannerisms and cultural guidelines of his world. Noise is sometimes expressed as changes in font, but it is also woven into the text, so naturally that it's almost -- but not quite -- detectable. Noise has its roots in a troubling history that unfolds slowly as the book progresses. And when I say troubling, I mean goddam.

Choice is another huge part of the plot. In fact, it practically drives the plot. I will tell you this right now: you know how many teenage characters in fiction make decisions and somehow, miraculously, they always turn out to be the right thing to do? Well, you don't see that here. These guys make decisions. They make bad ones. They make the readers wince. And facepalm.

I recommend this book to you ALL. The only real complaint I have about it is the ending. If you don't have the next book in the series, you will be pissed. (As I am.) Prepare for the mother of all cliffhangers. (Or maybe the aunt. I dunno. It's intense. :P)
:mellow: :huh: :confused: O_o :O :mad: :domo: <-- The evolution of my expression while reading this book. Get it. Now.